Sitting down to write one night I turn off the music—Miles. You’d think I could manage jazz but the trumpet’s persistence fills my page before I have the chance to. Distracted, I find myself opening a web page. Next thing I know the trumpet begins to argue with the bass.

uninvited
you barge in
a head filled with daffodils

Carla Schwartz’s

poems have been collected in her books: Signs of Marriage (Finishing Line Press, 2022), Mother, One More Thing (Turning Point, 2014), and Intimacy with the Wind (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Recent curations include The Banyan Review, Channel, Cutthroat, The Ear, great weather for MEDIA, The Inquisitive Eater, LEON Literary Review, The MacGuffin, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, Remington Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Silver Birch Press, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Verse-Virtual.

Carla Schwartz received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in 2023. Her poem “Pat Schroeder Was Our Mother” won the 2023 New England Poetry Club E.E. Cummings Prize.

Learn more at the author’s website, which also includes links to her YouTube videos: https://www.carlapoet.com/