I'm glad you came by. Hope you find some writing you like here.
About Jerry
Welcome! Jerry is a Vietnam veteran who later survived forty years in public school classrooms and collected degrees from UW Eau Claire, Wichita State, and the University of Kansas. He shares an old cabin in the North Carolina mountains with rescue animals, grows heirloom tomatoes, and writes a little.
Photo by Terry Poth
Recent Work
Springtime and Hopkins and You
On Finding an Anonymous Notebook Full of Poems
First published in MockingHeart, February 2024. Thank you, editor Tyler Sheldon.
An Old Man Worries on Facetime
These poems were first published in New Verse News on 17 April 2022, 1 May 2023, 5 May 2023, 23 September 2023, and 13 May 2024. Thank you, editor James Penha.
Digging Out (for Richard Kirkwood)
First published in Novus Literary Arts Journal, 2021. Thank you, editor Sandee Gertz.
First published in Autumn Sky Poetry, 23 November 2022. Thank you to Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and editor Christine Klocek-Lim.
Shopping for Real Estate with Wallace Stevens
I tried to include echoes of a half dozen Stevens poems in this one. I hope he would approve. First published in Rat's Ass Review, 2022. Thank you to Stevens and to editor Rick Bates.
First published in Rat’s Ass Review, 2023. Thank you to editor Rick Bates, and to Robert Browning for providing a villain. I hope he would appreciate the punishment.
Alas, this location is now a strip mall. First published in Sublunary Review, 2022. Thank you, editor Ruslin Garrey.
The bird in this poem is an often unappreciated hero here in the mountains, cleaning messes off the nonexistent shoulders of our winding roads First published in Flee to Spring, 2021. Thank you, editor Ruchi Acharya.
First published in Rat’s Ass Review, 2021. Thank you, editor Rick Bates.
First published in The Examined Life, 2022. Thank you, editor Bruce P Brown.
First published in One Sentence Poems, 11 November 2022. Thank you to editors Elizabeth, Natalie, and Dave.
Two Tiny Poems about two little woodland plants I look for in early March as I walk my mountainside trails.
Originally published in Barstow & Grand, 2022. Thank you, editor Eric Rasmussen.
After Reading Ed Dorn's Gunslinger, I Go Out Again to Face That Obstinate Bass
Both originally published in Rat's Ass Review, 2021. Thank you, editor Rick Bates.
Originally published in Shot Glass Journal, #38, 2022. Thank you, editor Mary-Jane Grandinetti.
On Friday mornings we medics pulled carpules of penicillin from our dispensary freezer. US soldiers with venereal diseases lined up in the hall of the Nha Trang dispensary where I worked and were told to drop their trousers. Our Vietnamese nurse injected them one after the other. If she felt sympathetic, she warmed the carpules first; but some Fridays she did not feel that way. First published in Rat's Ass Review, 2022. Thank you, editor Rick Bates.
First published as "Green Beret Psychiatrist" in Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, 2023. Thank you, editor John Himmelheber.
Early drafts of this piece were first published in Teach. Write., 2022. Thank you, editor Katie Winkler.
Photography & Editorial Assistance by Christian Ray