Lyrical Somerville re-prints my blog post along with the titular poem from "The Shutting Door"

Although I sent it correctly, the stanza breaks appear incorrectly in print and on their site. More and more, I'm finding journals not going to the poet to check the proof for approval; without considering that line-breaks, lengths and stanzas are important. Because I line is long and doesn't fit in the journal DO NOT BREAK THE POEM LINE TO FIT IT IN! I've had poems with extra single word or two word lines in it that doesn't make sense, which makes it look like that was my intention. I've written about when journals screw up last November and to me it's loose and sloppy work.

Here is the article, memoir and poem from The Somerville News. Currently, in their print edition it is published as a block poem which was not my intention. My intention was this:

The Shutting Door

We are solid oak doors that shut
on our past, close on dead mothers,
sons, daughters. These doors swell
often, won’t open. One midnight

we walked towards woods, the moss
cold under our toes, as we were,
caught in the light for a moment;
a glimpse of half full. We are dim

lights on dark nights, sending out calls
to the wolves howling at the sun
because the moon hanging there,
yet never seems to hear them.

If I should need to step back to see
how you glow in this light,
illumination, I can be at one with that,
us, growing like violets in the dark.


Now about the memoir section. It's kind of scary to see it in print but I asked people important to me in my recovery, what I should do about having my story, one I never flinch to tell in a basement, in print for the world to see.  They told me if I was comfortable with myself and with whom I pray to that there shouldn't be a problem. So here it is, today in The Somerville News. If there's any repercussions, I'll write about then.

Also, I get to list this under published poems as well as non-fiction/essays on my website!