Official press release below:

Port Yonder Press’ new quarterly ezine (mainstream, for ALL readers), premieres this Tuesday, January 24th, at 5:00 p.m. CST at www.beyondaries.com. Along with nearly two dozen columns, we also have CONTESTS!  One of the two contests is a “first responder” contest – that is, a 3-book giveaway for the one who FIRST fulfills the qualifications listed.  The other is a random free chapter critique for leaving a note on the ezine’s blog page.  Further, 2nd quarter TEAM PYP short story contest results will be posted then (look for the TEAM PYP tab when you get there).  Port Yonder Press is “A Horizon Beyond” and we’d love you to join us as we unveil our new ezine – BEYONDARIES!

Recently, I took a Soul-cation. It was much needed and a good way to start out the Chinese New Year. I don’t know about you, but I needed a re-do on the New Year.

Below are a few of my favorite shots from this past weekend in Marfa, Texas. Much time has passed, too much time, since I’ve dusted off the camera.

On the road to Marfa

Window view from my trailer at El Cosmico

Side of a building in downtown Marfa, TX

Contraband Movie Set site in Big Bend Ranch State Park (Streets of Laredo was filmed here)

Finding the Mountains Again!

Rio Grande

Shafter Ghost Town Catholic church

old Contraband movie set

Let’s keep going.,,

I don’t want to write any poem.

I want to write this poem.

I want to write anything sweet or terrible.

To feel real, to lie down next to you,

To understand why the bitter tree grew

into a house I would like to burn.

I do not want to burn the house.

There are many boxes I need to carry to the mountain.

I must go to the mountain empty.

There can be no more boxes to carry.

I must set myself on fire.

I must drink from the river.

I want to write about the wood.

I do not want to enter the wood.

There must be a map I’ve hidden from myself.

I must have hidden it for a reason.

Do not talk to me.

Talk to me.

I hear there is a girl on a mountain with her hair on fire.

I hear there is a girl eating her arms and putting snails in her ears.

Shells in her bottom. Sticks in her stomach.

I had a friend who reminded me I am a woman.

I had a therapist who reminded me I’m a man.

There was a poem about a mountain.

And there was a poem about a field.

In the field there was a childhood

rolled out in red carpet with birds of burnt bone

This must have been the wood

I do not want to go.

On the carpet were my children

I will lay down beside you.

In my brain, a map. I have hidden

from myself, in your body.

Talk to me.

Do not talk to me.

You are my speaker.

Or I am listening.

Anger is a bad boat.

There will never be a drowning

You must drown.

There is a mountain

A girl on top who has a man

inside her, he is making sticks

into knives and calling off the hunt.

He is calling the hunters to him.

He is a king of sorts. In the field

of red carpet rolled into childhood.

I do not want to write this poem.

I want to write this poem.

She takes snails into her mouth

And the sun rises.

Ready for Ordinary Life–

Dishes in the sink, the cat sleeps on

As the sun wakes up again. I wait

For divine food. Life-Book on the shelf–

It’s time to come down, angel.

It’s time

I’m ready for as a field is ready

For whatever weather to happen,

Still, Being without asking.

The morning, unlike the rest, as people slept, stayed inside itself,

Refused its body and the poem a boy sent down the well outside his house.

The sun would not rise to read it,

Would not continue growing in the fields its fingers of barley or heat the ocean for rain.

The men in the work trucks pray for anger and get happiness, so they are angry.

This morning, unlike the rest, the boy stays in bed and listens.

His alphabet wallpaper no longer makes sense inside himself.

He cannot rise to read it,

Counts bees, bruised willow-sticks and ask for forgiveness and gets

Nothing.

The men in the work trucks break open trees and ask for water. It will not rain.

The sun will not eat. Morning turns, then darker.

Whatever poem the world revolved around is a heart now in a well and silent.

As people slept, something gave up, stayed inside itself.

I took my soul for a walk last night. If you ask her why
she misses you, she points her body toward the ceiling,
hangs there all morning, weeps

Let me tell you of the beloved skin. For to be denied is sweetness in bushels, soon to come.

The desert, where I live, leans against a fencepost and waits for the beloved. It sings into itself a song of wait. And still. And listen.

I’ve learned this as a child, holding onto the mane of a mare, herself a thistle in need of water, rushing miles in dunes, kicking up clouds of words that linger before disappearing in wait of her beloved.

I held my breath in silence as the storm approached. The mares ears ahead and shooting strait into the sentence unspoken. We waited.

The long drive to the sea of the body that waits to carry us home when we pass into night. Or pass into the searching that never stops. Our last breath as intoxicating as the first. Here is light. Here is water.

Here is where we keep searching for our home.

And if the arrival is the thirst answered, I felt a glimpse tonight.

You see, I listen for the beloved to speak. To lie down next to me.

As a child, the mare carried herself for me, and I into her as reeds waiting for shore and never landing but for a moment.

Let me tell you–to wait is to be blessed.

And I have leaned into the fencepost, looking toward the storm, listening to its promise to carry me home.

In the desert, a rain fall is the beloved’s body returning.

Now, after returning to this place, I am reminded of the call to wait, and be still.

The new horse stamped his feet. He looked toward the storm. It started to rain.

A jump to the side at the drops beginning. I held myself together. If we both burst into the sentence, we’d lose our footing.

I put him up, fed him a flake of earth. Stilled myself for the coming storm.

Now, I’m drinking wine on a porch, the rain come and gone. My own skin smelling of lavender and soap.

The sentence begins. It speaks to me of my beloved’s return.

To wait and be denied is a blessing.

It will come. And I am lying with my beloved as even the ground shakes in praising the water—the body, all of me, cleansed.