do not yield
do not yield
for MN
Under Construction
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how to witness
how to witness
For my dear friend Jenny-Lynn Ellis, who writes gorgeous prose and the occasional poem (including the source material for “how to witness”), but who does not speak Icelandic.
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spring comes cedar
spring comes cedaran old school erasure
Source for this three pass erasure (four, but only if one counts the title): “[It’s that time of spring]” from frank: sonnets, by Diane Seuss.
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So it was
So it wasold style, three pass erasure with shadow mountains
Source: John Mastin, from Through the Sun in an Airship (1909)
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where
wherealchemy for DKK
The alchemized poem:
Image and source material, Where I Live Now, by Deborah K. Kelly.
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dogs of war
dogs of war
a multiple pass poem
Source material: War Came to Ukraine and Its Dogs Are Not the Same
Source material for the source material: Dogs of War: The Effect of War-Inflicted Environmental Damage on Free-Ranging Domestic Dogs
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It’s been a minute
It’s been a minuteActually, it’s been a year since I started posting Thursday mornings on Under Construction, with occasional off-cycle posts.
Thank you readers – whether you’re a subscriber, follower, fan, or however you’ve arrived.
Thank you to those who know me, those who know my work, those who have been introduced to Under Construction by someone who knows me or my work. Thank you to those of you who … well, I’m not sure how you’ve found your way here, but I’m glad you did.
Under Construction is where the door is always open, where we don’t blame the dogs and we don’t answer all calls, where all the doors have automatic openers, and where iguanas are not invasive. It is where we, too, dream of peace. It is for all the poets and all the mourners, and it is where adverbs and nouns are shapeshifters. (If you read all the way to the bottom of the posts, right above the Subscribe button you’ll see what I mean.)
It’s where poems echo through the years and through the poets – looking at you X. P. Callahan, Deborah Kelly, Josh Datko. Erasures, with links to the source material, are here: Call and Response: owl; we lived and we ate; and war and peace.
Where I cannot stop writing about residents dying in nursing homes, because residents are always dying in nursing homes. Where birds are poets, bees stir the mirror, and you – readers – are the one thing that matters.
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those who stand
those who standan off cycle post
For those who blow whistles in Minnesota and elsewhere else
Source material: “On Living in the Hour of Cities Under Siege” by Carolyn Forché from Otherwhere: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2026 (Scribner Books, forthcoming in September 2026)
