I’m excited to announce that Whale Road Review has nominated my poem “Porcupine Denies His Vulnerabilities” for the Best New Poets anthology! A huge thanks to Founder and Editor & Chief Katie Manning and Managing Editor Ellen Huang for the nod. Here’s the poem. Please go read (and submit to!) the lovely Whale Road Review.
Porcupine Denies His Vulnerabilities
He is monogamous, but always stands quill-
length from his mate. Only the pads of his foot
are naked, his tongue, the nervous sentinel
of his eye. When she cries, he whirrs
his bristles like rainfall on the dust-
packed savanna. She forgets
their distance. She burrows while he collects
the bone-wrought scaffolding of lesser
plantigrades, builds a shrine
to what is hard.
