by Tricia Knoll
So much needs exercising, soothing for the opening to beyond and next. Where applause for sun reverberates across plains and oceans to replace fumes of exhaust. Even on the balconies of apartments in my hometown. My car hides in the garage to avoid the steep price of gas. I plot where to scatter a bag of saved marigold and zinnia seed. Where mornings come unchallenged by worst-yet shock. When the bully pulpit voice, a vulgar weaving from Greenland to birthright, issues ultimatums that seem to threaten using nukes to resurrect the stone age and abuses the many names we use for god. A cardinal teeters on my fencepost listening to the oven bird.
Tricia Knoll’s The Unknown Daughter was a finalist in the 2025 New England Poetry Club chapbook contest. Her
poems appear in journals and nine collections, full-length or chapbook.
Wild Apples (Fernwood Press) details downsizing and moving 3,000 miles
from Oregon to Vermont. After 18 years of working with free verse, she now writes mostly
prose poems. Fernwood Press will publish her full-length poetry book,
Gathering Marbles, in July 2027. Knoll serves as a Contributing Editor
to the online journal Verse Virtual.