Featured Poet: Kris Whorton

Everyday Omens is NOW SHIPPING from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions

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https://sheilanagigblog.com/shop-sheila-na-gig-editions/kris_whorton_omens/

Attend the Zoom reading: Thursday, April 23, 7:00 pm (EST)
REGISTER FOR THE KRIS WHORTON EVENT

Everyday Omens 

Five golden planets and the moon. 
A silver moon full against indigo
slipping to ultramarine as dawn softens the sky.
A scatter of white feathers in the road.
Post-It notes a swirl of fallen leaves
            across my desk.
A faint scar around my middle finger,
            first knuckle. The fingertip skin once nearly flayed.
The buff and black stripes of a chipmunk’s bushy tail
left on a rock in my yard by a hawk.
A caginess when I see texts or voicemails, just before
            I open or listen and wonder what I’ve done
or haven’t done.
Tired white sheets on an unmade bed. Fat
            pillows flattened.
The natural bend of a red bud branch after the leaves
            have turned yellow and fallen off.
A fox’s skull, mostly clean, atop the dirt as though dropped
            like a disregarded sock or careless comment.
My coop, invaded by a masked prowler. 
            Three of my hens dead, but not eaten.
Abandoned brown oak leaves, 
potato cracklins on the forest floor.
Cold crisp dusk falls on my yard. The breeze bites,
            coaxed last leaves from the sunbright yellow maple.

About Grimmgirl

I co-founded the small press poetry magazine Sheila-Na-Gig in California in 1990. I ran the press for 10 years, producing 14 print copies of the journal. I now hold a Ph.D. in 20th Century American Literature from Ohio University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. I am currently an Associate Professor of English at Ohio University Southern, where I teach courses in composition, American literature, and creative writing. My poetry, creative nonfiction, and critical essays have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Brock Review, Proteus, Rattle, Spillway, and the critical anthologies, The Body in Medical Culture; On the Literary Nonfiction of Nancy Mairs; and Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics: Reflections on the Modern Master of Horror.

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