before you

I am so honored to be selected as a finalist for the 2026 Rattle Poetry Prize! 11 great poets, 11 amazing poems. Congratulations to Marcia LeBeau as the top prize winner. I’m grateful to be selected, but also excited that the selection was my poem Crown of American Ashes. It’s a heroic crown of 14…

It’s been a while, but I’ve placed my poem Obsequies in The Beatnik Cowboy. They have a great online journal, just the write tone of wry cynicism that fits my style. Check them out, they publish new work every week or so.

I was thrilled to see my manuscript, Overseeing the Downfall, as a finalist for the 2016 New American Poetry Prize at New American Press. Overseeing the Downfall is a collection of Midwestern poems about work and family in the digital age, and the anticlimax of middle age. And music. It comes complete with a suggested…

I’m thrilled to see my poem In The Corporate Conference Room in the journal Straight Forward. The poem is a bit of a screed on ‘CorpSpeak’. The editors at Straight Forward were wonderful and encouraging!

I’m honored to have my poem Devil Inside published by Granules. Granules is an online anthology by the folks at Mouthful of Salt, filled with great poems, prose, visual art, and hybrid work. Stay tuned, Mouthful of Salt has also accepted Nothing Was Lost Yet for their print journal, coming this fall!

I’m honored to have my work, Liner Notes included among that of the other great poets featured in the July Ground Fresh Thursday poems. GFT is always a great hit of monthly poems, fiction and flash fiction. So much of my work reflects and is inspired by good old rock & roll, so it’s nice…