Sharon M. Carter: Mimosas at Sunset
Sharon M. Carter’s poems speak of a close attention to the world around her. She writes of a
living, breathing otherness that feels like worship. There’s a mystical thread throughout her
work, while at the same time botany appears as a consultant. Science is this poet’s first love,
made clear in the carefully chosen facts that dance in and out of these incredibly lovely poems.
—Pamela Moore Dionne, author of Paradox and Illusion and Taut Caesuras
Honesty
The plant’s purple blooms reappear
every other year,
wave self consciously
knowing
they’re an invasive species.
Named honesty in one country
money or moonwort
elsewhere, their
translucent pods reveal all,
rattle silver moons
or dollars, each seed
a down payment for the future.
Tell me, when has money
made anyone honest?
Our world is dying
because of it—
decimal points
have no substance.
Sharon M. Carter was born in London following its devastation from WW2’s Blitz. Originally
trained as a family physician, she was a practicing psychiatrist for over thirty years. Sharon has
lived in several locations around the UK, a short stint in Greece, and aboard ship as a staff
member of the Semester at Sea. After immigrating in the 1970s via Indiana, she moved to the
Pacific Northwest to which she is more firmly attached than a limpet. A lifelong artist working in
multiple media she currently devotes most of her time to writing. Sharon is also the author of the
poetry book, Quiver (Tebot Bach 2022). Ekphrastic Pastiche, a book combining poetry and
original drawings, was released in 2024. Visit Sharon online at SharonMCarter.com
Visit Sharon’s page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Sharon’s collection from your favorite retailer:
T. Clear: Egg Money
T. Clear tends a handful of hens on a small patch of earth—her mission of care in a troubled
world. In these poems, she watches and works with love, grit, and humor, hauling water and
straw like a Zen nun, gathering eggs, and daily resurrecting the hen house. With generosity and a
poet’s keen eye, she offers steadfast beauty against dissolution. Let your heart be lifted: read
these poems.
—Kathryn Hunt, author of Seed Wheel and Long Way Through Ruin
CHICKEN VIGIL
Who will believe me when I say
my hens forgo their daily dig for bugs
and choose instead to sit like saff ron Buddhas
beside their sister-hen whose legs have failed,
whose wings lie limp as silk?
She won’t eat until I push the bowl up close
and all three peck the mash as one.
Her wattle shrivels;
not an egg in months.
Her morning squawk’s gone silent.
I’ve been accused of anthropomorphism
more than once, have seen a cat smile.
But maybe we have it backwards—
that it was a bird who first sat watch beside the dying,
and we were too busy evolving to notice.
Over her lifetime, Seattle poet T. Clear has always wanted more pets than only cats, dogs,
hamsters, gerbils, and goldfish. In 2017 she made the decision to become a backyard chicken
wrangler when she acquired three hens; and over the course of the next five years, added three
more to her flock. Over the past 50 years, her work has appeared in many publications, including
The American Journal of Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Atlanta Review, Crab Creek Review, and
Red Earth Review. She’s a founder of Floating Bridge Press and currently is an associate editor
for Bracken Magazine. Her full-length book, A House, Undone, winner of the 2020 Sally Albiso
Award, is available from MoonPath Press. Visit her online at TClearPoet.com.
Visit T. Clear’s page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase T. Clear’s collection from your favorite retailer:
Ingrid Wendt: Keeping It All Afloat
With tenderness and awe, Wendt’s poems recreate the splendor of a tropical jungle on the
Yucatán coast. Wendt captures the cacophony (and mating!) of birds, the chirping of nearly
transparent lizards, and the dazzling fish in undersea hush. She brings a moral reverence, with
poem after poem presenting the complex balance of human interaction with the natural world.
This is a profound and memorable work!
—Barbara Ras, author of The Blues of Heaven
ODE TO MY YUCATÁN GECKO
The first time ever I heard your six-note chatter from deep
inside my palm-thatched roof, no more than five minutes past
lights-out, ping went the strings of attraction. No night passed
without your bedtime serenade, and when at last
we met—your tiny feet spread wide on the bathroom ceiling,
your tender skin nearly translucent (between
your oversized eyes and mine, invisible lightning)—I finally
grasped the measure of your devotion: not a bug to be seen,
you were shielding my skin from irritation, as
you also do outside, under the naked bulb that attracts even
more of them, as does Maribel’s bulb, next door, though fifteen
of you one evening is beyond my fathoming. But that
same night at bedtime, as in an elegant, grand hotel, your greeting:
centered on my pillow, not a candy kiss but a small black
grain of rice with a tiny, white hat. Look at that, I preened,
and went to my desk to write it down. And
when the sun again splashed the eastern
horizon, there, on my desk, the second! Of all the randomly
scattered pages, you’d chosen “Yucatán Gecko.” Who needs
fifteen suitors competing?
Eat your heart out, Maribel. My Yucatán Gecko has sass.
Ingrid Wendt was born and raised in Aurora, Illinois, of first and second-generation immigrant
parents. Chosen by William Stafford, her first book of poems, Moving the House, appeared in
BOA Editions’ New Poets of America Series. Her next three books won the Oregon Book
Award, the Yellowglen Award, and the Editions Prize. Wendt has been a visiting writer for over
30 years, at all educational levels, including the MFA program of Antioch, Los Angeles, and as a
three-time Fulbright Professor in Germany. Married for 48 years to the late poet and writer Ralph
Salisbury, she lives in Eugene, Oregon, sings and travels with the Eugene Concert Choir and
volunteers as an exhibit interpreter at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport.
Visit Ingrid’s page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Ingrid’s collection from your favorite retailer:
