Sandra McPherson is the author of twenty books and is retired from teaching at the University of California at Davis. Her twenty-first book, Quicksilver, Cougars, and Quartz, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry Press. Recent poems appeared in TriQuarterly, Poetry, Plume, Iowa Review, Crazyhorse, and Ploughshares. She founded Swan Scythe Press.
Poetry
May/June 2021
For Eleanor, from a Line by Zora Neale Hurston
I remember you, your things, you through your things. Look: On your horizon a sugar bowl is setting. The sea is decorated by wind. Pictures are up, small as sponges. […]
Nature's Nature
May/June 2017
The Dijon Sky
The Dijon sky, a little hot on the tongue(this dog has panted out to see its evening), used to feel its reflection in a field of mustard when people— the […]
Poetry
Spring 2012
Interior Accents, Denmark
— 19th c. oil, C. Sørensen When I am in "these rooms," as all say when sober, I know the autobiography of "this room" has to differ from biographies of […]
Poetry
Spring 2012
Peace Sign
He hitched and balanced this quiet outcome of his carpentry. Finding traction on the roof, he waved the hammer, keeping the rhythm safe, and marked the Dutch facade with code […]
Poetry
Summer 2004
Gospel Disinclined
The baritones and tenors simply will not sing. My Wurlitzer’s mistakes of hand sound very loud. Their heads lean either down (but are not bowed) or back (but not in […]
Poetry
Summer 2004
Foil
Lawrence Lebduska, folk artist, painting to please himself, 1961, afterfame and subsequent institutionalization Lebduska makes fun of a painter, A “genius” By the painter’s own reckoning, Who makes mild […]
Poetry
Winter 1999
The Life Concise
FROM THE UNPUBLISHED DIARY OF CORA S. CASWELL, WESTERN NEW YORK STATE, 1881-1890 One day, one line, a thumbnail equilibrium, poised symmetry of summary that adds up like the […]
Poetry
Winter 1999
Jeffrey Dahmer’s Boots
EMMCO, CIRCA 1966, MADE IN USA Little red button tightening the rim— clown on toes, its head at stub-end and feet sprawled up leg.Elephant on heels. Swags of a circus tent decorate […]
Poetry
Winter 1999
My Daughter Visits Me at High Camp, Placer County, on My Fifty-Second Birthday
Her blind friend lets the air out of her tires because she will not sleep with him. Up here there’s not much driving; I don’t and there’s not a real […]
Poetry
Winter 1994
Outsider: Juanita Rogers
Except for when she’s spirited away, she’ll never leave Alabama. Cohorts and tutelaries believed from the television line the one-room surrounding her […]
Poetry
Winter 1994
Outsider: Minnie Evans
Now, because of you, symmetry and asymmetry interest me equally. Paints tinting the cisterns in which they mix slosh and overflow, but you tend […]
Poetry
Summer 1992
Women and Vision
One hundredth of what we see: the nearblind daughter of the decorator, row 6 seat C, beside me on the flight to Providence. A hundred times what we see: Faye’s […]
Poetry
Autumn 1990
Center: Strip and Medallion Quilt, 1890, by Mrs. Longmire, African-American Seamstress for Her Town in Maryland
It is freely placed, freely found, a focus like silk rain on a wide landscape, not bound (as an island can seem) by its detached escape. I am fashioning a […]
Poetry
Autumn 1990
Suit and Tie
Sewing up shadows: she has no inkling what it's like to be this man. Is it wrong, too dainty, not to want to imagine? She keeps doilies on the bedstands; […]