Nov.
10
2025
My poem “Lepidopterist” is in the digital and print issues of the lovely journal Plainsongs, Fall 2025. We were driving through Eastern Washington recently and passed a farmhouse that evoked a memory. I doubt that it was the same house, but it reminded me of one two dear friends lived in during the 1970s. I wrote this poem about them – and everyone who truly honors the one they love. When we do this, miracles happen!
Linda lived with Wendy in the oldest
house in the county about a mile
out of town. Its attic
was perfect, with its peaked ceiling
rafters, for where Linda
needed to place cocoons: warmth
always at a slant, giant incubator
full of dust mites and pollen.
Lepidopterist, Linda’s passion was
emerging wings and she and Wendy
rented the place for their nursery.
Wendy helped tuck the finger-tip-sized
swaddles into the crooks of beams
smelling of old forests and honey.
Wendy’s calling was horticulture
and she hoed a full acre for root settings,
food for every pattern
of fragile transformation.
I remember thinking, back then,
about collaborative love. Wondering
how many swallowtails and luna moths
slept inside of me and who would
find the house where we could raise them?
Who would plant fields of hungry
beauty? And how many
would even survive into spring
when Linda and Wendy walked hand-
in-hand up the rickety steps
to witness a steeple of wings?
Sep.
24
2025
My poem, “Ache of Crimson in the Key of C,” received an honorable mention in Passager journal’s 2025 contest. The poem appears in the Fall 2025 print issue.
This poem is about my mother – or rather my feelings about my mother when, as a child, I witnessed her transportive passion for playing the piano. She was always so full of emotion, especially as it relates to the beautiful things of this world. She passed in 1999 and I feel her presence often through music certainly and also when I take the time to step outside myself into the wonders of the world around me.
Ache of Crimson in the Key of C
My mother used to cry
when she looked at the sunset.
The same far-away expression
she wore playing her piano
for hours. Whichever music
came to mind, to heart. Beauty
a vector toward purest
harmony. I remember
feeling afraid, as a child,
knowing she forgot me
in those moments, orphaned
outside her vision of heaven.
I loved the sky and melodies
but not in a way that made me
tremble the way she did.
My tears were about loss,
mourning a gift I couldn’t share.
Have I ever loved anything
that much? Words perhaps?
The shadow where a woman
should be?
Sep.
22
2025
My poem, “The Irony of Play,” is included in the Winter 2024 print edition of The Schooner (formerly Prairie Schooner). The editors got backed up so the issue just arrived September 2025. This is a beautiful journal, full of brilliant writing. I feel honored to have my work here.
I wrote this poem several years ago to submit to Concrete Wolf’s Cephalopod Anthology. They accepted a different poem, but I always had faith in this one. Jim and I have always been fascinated by this intelligent animal that looks alien! But we formed an even deeper connection when we had an Octopus Encounter for his birthday at the Newport Aquarium. We got to interact one-on-one with Mystery who delighted us by winding her arms gently up our forearms. She accepted shrimp from our fingers and even played with the toys we held out to her. We saw her change color once, bright orange to gray sand pebbles very quickly, then back again. We have never forgotten this profound involvement with a wild creature!
This poem links my first hand knowledge of an octopus with a memory I have of riding on a bus with my grandmother. She never learned to drive so we often took the bus when I stayed with her. Usually the rides were short, but once we were on for along time on a rainy day and maybe into the night. Grandma could make dolls out of anything and I loved them. She was very creative. She even turned a hanky into a toy for me. I was a child with a good imagination and very motherly intentions so I loved even this very simple baby. I comforted it through what was an unsettling journey, although I don’t remember the cause of my worry or where we were going or why.
Aug.
01
2025
My poem about my mother’s final days, “Transformative,” is the featured poem for August in the beautiful online journal Thirteen Bridges. I am so thrilled with the presentation and honored to be included in this impressive literary magazine.
This is the link to see it live: Joanne Clarkson | August 25 Poem | Thirteen Bridges
I also wanted to include the poem itself:
Transformative
From the kitchen where I am
washing a week’s worth
of dishes, I watch my mother
watch television. Become herself
through someone else’s
script. She squints, lips parting.
Once at a séance, I saw a Medium
take on another being. She changed
her features to become a woman’s
dead sister. With messages. As if
those who have passed know us better
than we know ourselves. Where
we put the misplaced thing.
I watch my mother take back
the animation that so often leaves
her face now. She resurrects in artificial
light. Calls me by my name,
not her mother’s or her sister’s.
For about ten minutes we have
a conversation about real Christmases.
All human faces look basically
the same, until they don’t. Slope
of cheek bone, arch of lip
utterly individual. Today for an
instant, my mother transformed
into someone thirty years younger.
I stood behind her at the mirror
combing her thinning hair. Her brows
arcing into mine. The blue-hazel
of her eyes becoming the recognition
of two women sharing a life.
Jun.
26
2025
My poem “Asymmetry” is in the Summer 2025 issue of Humana Obscura. This is an especially gorgeous journal because of the large amount of art and photography that accompanies the excellent writing. Here is the link to the online journal: www.humanaobscura.com. The poem is below:
Asymmetry
Firs are not symmetrical.
Neither the maple. Cedars like gods’ arms
crooked to every season of forgiving.
Each pine a lightning strike.
Each willow a map toward water
the way a break in the heart might look.
The trunk of a single tree
is a natural atlas. And bones of oak
become violins in a wind storm.
No one book contains the names of all
the leaves. No single illustration
gets the skeletons right.
Barren and white, poplar becomes
a landmark, its roots the true asymmetry,
paths the deer might follow
traveling last year’s rain.
.
Jun.
19
2025
One evening on Jeopardy there was a question about butterflies in the Amazon that drank turtles’ tears. I looked this fact up and found that it was true, along with additional details. I thought this just had to be a poem. So I wrote “Turtle Tears” which has just appeared in the Spring/Summer 2025 of the literary journal Ep;phany. The edition is beautiful and I am so proud to have my work included with the other poems, stories, non-fiction pieces and art. Here is the poem:
Turtle Tears
A humid morning, and the slow
reptile makes her way toward
a flat stone above currents
heavy with leaves and debris.
A butterfly alights on her yellow
spotted forehead. Then two, and three,
lingering like afternoon light,
harvesting clear honey.
Not myth, but health: butterflies
of the interior Amazon, drink
turtles’ tears. Less-than-thread-width
legs balance on lids
while a tendril of tongue sips.
The turtle, intent on river mud,
barely notices as if touched
by nothing more
than the tail of a rainbow.
One theory has it that the winged ones
seek salt, existing as they do
so far from the ocean. Sodium,
the mineral of heartbeats.
Another suggests tears produce
medicine, universal serum
to ward off disease
since vision and wings
are keys to survival.
Neither insects or reptiles ponder
such things, just companions
on a river healing each other
within the grief of a vanishing world.
Jun.
17
2025
My poem, “Heel,” is in the current issue of Lips Magazine 2025, Issue 61/62. This is a true story that occurred when I was teaching writing classes at men’s medium/maximum security prison in Illinois. Generally the experience was positive – except for this one heartbreaking incident that has stuck with me for 30 years.
We met in the prison library
that autumn into winter I taught
the medium security men.
In December, the librarian
who had worked there
for twenty-five years
and called the thieves and murderers
her boys, brought a small
Christmas tree from home.
Before we started our writing session
the twelve men stood around
the tiny green fir with its tinsel
and most of them wept.
Then the assistant warden stormed
through the door, threw down
the little symbol and ground it
under his soles.
We never celebrate here.
They froze, became wooden.
The librarian swept up the needles
and glitter, her broom straw
making a sound between a hiss
and hush. No one heard a word
of the lesson, season teetering
forever between boot heel
and her kindness.
Feb.
26
2025
Two of my poems are in the print edition of Peregrine, Volume XXXVII, The Caregiving Issue. This is the publication of Amherst Writers & Artists Press. Seventy-three writers are represented here and the issue is so varied, addressing every aspect of tending to the dying, the disabled, the fragile and the difficult patient.
One of my poems is “The Necessary Piece,” about when I advocated for a Hospice patient’s wife whose washing machine broke down at a critical moment during end of life care. Often it is the simple things that loom large. And how hard we have to fight to achieve a good outcome.
The other is called “Emergency Number,” a true story about a caregiver at her breaking point. Lack of sleep and constant worry can break a person. I learned that caring for the Care Giver is as important – and as challenging – as tending to the patient!
This is a deeply important collection for anyone with a sick loved one or work that involves providing care. It provides a realistic insight in love at it most difficult, and its most rewarding. Go to amherstwriters.org.