Caroline Misner








Landfill

The grey gulls spiral like ashes in the wind;
some hover as though caught in a mirage.
I wonder what magic buoys them in such suspension.

They have been summoned by the prospect
of a meal.  Where the wilderness only offers
scant leavings this time of the year,

they have found a bounty in these jagged lobes.
I can see the mountains through the mist
where the front loader scattered the trash.

The bloated bellies of garbage bags have burst
and spewed the innards of our cast-offs—fruit peels,
in strips of rot, cartons half-full of sour milk,

textiles soaked in gummy water.
Rainbows spread their oily sheens in puddles
in the mud.  A pink doll fashioned from yarn

by nimble hands looking for something to do,
unravels, strand by strand, at the foot of the heap;
it could be the corpse of the child who loved it.
Continue...

Greetings one and all and welcome to my brand new website!  Please bear with me  portraitI work on filling its pages with news and musings. Being technologically challenged, it may take a while to work out some of the glitches and I hope to have it finished within the next few weeks.  In the meantime, please feel free to browse through the archives and have a look at some of my work.  I've been writing poetry ever since I could remember and I've decided to include a section of Juvenilia in the archives.  Most of the poems listed there were written in my early teens and many of them are just plain awful!  But a few gems do stand out and I hope you enjoy them.  Also, if you would like to know more about me and the work I do, please feel free to click on "About".  There I have posted a brief biography of myself.  I'm not trying to be falsely modest, but I really loathe bragging about myself.  I feel an author's work should stand on its own merits and where an author was born or where she lives or what she eats for breakfast are completely irrelevant.

I would also be remiss if I didn't included a big Thank You! to my oldest son, Kevin, who with a friend designed this website for me and programmed it so that even I could manage it.  And another big Thank You! goes to my dear father Jan Kurz, who was in on it the whole time and provided the stunning photography behind the text of the daily poem.  And another big Thank You! goes out to all the editors, publishers and fellow writers who have supported me and my work over the years and gave me a chance when I needed it, including a Journey Prize nomination and two Pushcart Prize nominations!


"...And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self doubt."
--Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)