Drogue

What opens in your throat when you look up? And do you find, in it, a line to your heart?

All the math spiraling around the guidance, navigation, and control of a spacecraft means precious little if its parachutes fail to slow it down upon re-entry. This urgency was an inspiration. In writing, I began to imagine into the tempering and blessing potential of a parachute. Its precarity and strength; softness and material precision. In this, I discovered a metaphor for the risks and releases that live in a relationship, when I wrote the last poem in Two Signatures. It’s aptly titled, “Parachute.”

I intuitively felt that the last gesture of the book should be both homed in the speaker’s body and animated by desire, ambition, and longing. In the logic of my poetic lexicon, these are synonyms for hope; the moments of reaching—of extension and imagination—are the most intense and of pure intention. The last lines of the poem:

            Drogue heart, air and light — // I am waiting, / looking up.

I got the call in September. I turned my files in to the University of Utah Press in October. The cover was designed in November, and the pre-order link went live in December! Please help me continue to shape the stewardship for my book making her way in the world, arriving Spring 2024.

A drogue parachute is a small parachute used as a brake or to pull out a larger parachute or other object from an aircraft in flight. I think of that final poem as a way to temper the velocity of reading as the multiple trajectories of the book find their landing path. And, importantly, it’s a love poem—the tensile strength and raw integrity of devotion across uncertainty and attempt after attempt. One that could not have been written without an ambient exposure to physics, courtesy of my sweetheart. 

When I look up and into 2024 I feel my mouth open, and I know I’m ready to share my work more widely, sincerely.

In the coming weeks, I look forward to introducing you to the writers who have supported my book. 

If you have specific questions about the process of writing or publishing these poems, let me know. I’d love to address them this spring.