“I think social media allows more access to more poems. And I think it allows me the chance to think about the work of poets I love in a more intimate way since I can see them struggling with teaching and writing and raising kids and living in the moments when it happens. Poetry is better when it comes from and happens to real people we can imagine. No oracles!” — Jericho Brown

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My interview with poet Jericho Brown is currently online in Barren Magazine. Click here.

Many thanks to Jericho for generously sharing his thoughts and insight and to Jason Ramsey for publishing it in Barren.

In honor of World Poetry Day I’m sharing my very first published poem. It was published in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature back in 2010.

Delaronde Street

By late august we’ve become
accustomed to the noise of the
locusts singing their mating song of hope.
The calls rise and fall in tandem
with the breeze that blows over
our bodies as
we lie together in the hammock,
the gnarly limbs of an ancient oak
like a cradle around the balcony and
we the not-so-innocent babes
within it’s protective embrace.

Softly we swing, holding our
glasses of gin and tonic, the cold
sweat of the glass dripping
on breasts and chest then
vanishing into skin that still
glows with the flush of sex.

The rustling leaves of the palmettos
heighten the strains of Irvin’s
“Othello and Desdemona” wafting
through the french doors and
I hum along, too lazy and…