Published Poems in Print
RHINO POETRY website landing page 2024
“Fragments”
• Pushcart Nominee 2024
• Second Place 2024 Ralph Hamilton Editors' Prize
• Finalist Founders’ Prize
[excerpt]
I didn’t know about the other bullet, or why
I had a wound
on my left finger knuckle, until a friend combing
what was left of my hair found fragments
lodged in my occipital bone where my hands
had been clasped when the next bullet flew by. How
tenderly, one by one, she pulled them out.
“Such deeply expressive work.” —Joanna Klink
[excerpt from “Commonalgia”]
there's an erosion
as it’s common to overlook, ignore
the numbers of common birds
and not common practice to count
19 common species
our taken-for-granted favorite birds
have each lost
their once-communal flight
more than 50 million birds since 1970
can hardly be found —
Three poems in the anthology of bird poems:
Little by Little the Bird Builds its Nest
”Commonalgia”
“Spring Garden”
“Letter to Edwin Way Teale”
“‘Commonalgia is a true bridge piece and it offers the opportunity to bring people together.” —J. Drew Lanham
“Letter to Edwin Way Teale”
~ see Broadsides & Vellum on About page to read entire poem ~
[excerpt]
Edwin, after your son was killed in World War II, you shared with us
how you and Nellie crossed the immense wilderness
of your grief by immersing yourselves in the wilds of Nature —
its perils and astonishments. How then do we grieve the loss
of Nature herself? Perhaps your next book would have issued forth
the wild, far-carrying wail of the river limpkin, your voice lifted
into a caterwauling crescendo so as to echo back to us
a new loneliness: the false Spring of wrongly shifting seasons.
“In the woods I was”
~ see Broadsides & Vellum on About page to read entire poem ~
[excerpt]
Look, she said: a ring of threes! I looked. She looked.
It looked. Three petals, three sepals, three
leaves a trinity of trinities one spirit rising
from dirt into the tremble of bloom.
“Flora. Time and cycles. Effulgence. And the energy of breaking into song.” —Jay Deshpande
“Sometimes I Have to Eat a Fig”
~ see Broadsides & Vellum on About page to read entire poem ~
[excerpt]
[I] fold open the halves, tip still connected, exposing
a pair of figgy lungs to human air, then with my mouth
take in the moist yellow flesh and seedy pink pulp
of the inverted flower: flower folded in on itself
to taste its own sweetness — a subtle sweet, not the sweet
of the fruit that shrivels past ripe to a chewy earthy bite
but the deceptive sweet of the waiting chamber […]
“Death Enters the Garden”
”Winter Garden”
”Untitled”
~ see also Published Poems Online for poem links ~
[excerpt]
JULY
From the floor of heaven, a cardinal simply descended: small, noble seraph-bird of the spheres above. Scarlet as his namesake’s robe, the bird fell fast despite his faith in flight. Held aloft by a briar upon his landing, the feathered red was just-so juxtaposed amidst the garden’s myriad greens. Seen in such stark repose, both God and I almost mistook him for a rose.
“Ode to the Star-nosed Mole”
- see also Published Poems Online for poem link -
[excerpt]
But I was not root or stone, worm or loam,
I had to put him down —
faster than a flame gone out, he disappeared underground.
It was love. There is no other word.
I longed to follow him down.
Alison shares her poetry news on Instagram #alisongranucci