Here’s a sampling of published poems
Some Poems Available Online
Straight Shot Between Friends
https://sandyriverreview.com/category/poetry/
Poems of the Moment (Prairie Public Radio)
https://news.prairiepublic.org/post/bonnie-larson-staiger
Elegy for Mary Oliver
https://bit.ly/3asXC0K
Second Finding
https://bit.ly/3p1owRe
Litany of Druthers (Scroll down a bit)
https://bit.ly/38aCJ7u
The Rune’s Requiem
https://bit.ly/3msBtlt
Pear Tree on Highland Acres Road —
https://bit.ly/2QCjtro
Stressed / Unstressed —
http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/index.php?artwork=4112
Some Audio and Video Recordings
The title poem from my chapbook:
Destiny Manifested
Years after his failed attempt to take control of tiny Leith North Dakota and turn it into a haven for white supremacists and racists, Craig Cobb, convicted of terrorizing, is still buying up properties and land across the Midwest—Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri.
Two centuries ago
white people came
to lay claim
for Jefferson.
His vision, illusion
to make the plains great
to colonize, capitalize
politicize, and nationalize.
Now you come
to sanitize, blacklist
black people, ridicule,
remove red people,
berate Brown
vs. Board of Education.
But you’re too late.
It’s already been done.
© Published in Destiny Manifested, the 2018 winning chapbook of ‘Poetry of the Plains and Prairies Award’ from North Dakota State University Press.
Seraphim in Snow
Neither starshine nor moonlight.
Instead, snow shine wraps me
in diamond dust at midnight’s hour.
Clouds cling to the earth, yet
a thousand celestial luminaria
light this solstice night. In the yard
a host of snow angels pressed
everywhere. No sounds, no footfalls.
No crinkle of crenelated wings.
© Published in Destiny Manifested, the 2018 winning chapbook of ‘Poetry of the Plains and Prairies Award’ from North Dakota State University Press. (unenhanced photo taken 12/21 at 4:00 AM)
Shuttle to Rockport by the Sea
after Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Moose”
As the plane taxis into Portland’s terminal
I’m giddy for a Norman Rockwell ride
northward along Maine’s serrated seacoast
far from my landlocked Great Plains
I’ve spent all day leaving
My instructions say the shuttle driver
will meet me by the baggage carousel
and there he stands holding a placard
flashing my name as if I am some dignitary
Grab your bag, Dear, and I’ll get the van
I’ll be drivin’ a gray Honda Odyssey
As we head up Highway 1 my vision
to drift in soft focus fades in a clatter
of his chatter and a touchy transmission
Wistfully I watch a 400-year-old shipyard
dissolve out the rearview mirror as forests
thicken and sugar maples saunter by
We rumble past foreign-looking
New England farmhouses awash
in timeworn shades of the tides
We thread through seaside villages
with church steeples piercing their heaven
and I lose count of lobster shacks beside
inlets with furry river fog rising
A gray odyssey indeed as I watch for dusk
to filter through primeval pines hoping
for a moose to meander onto the road
so we might pause in her magnificence
© Published in Destiny Manifested, the 2018 winning chapbook of ‘Poetry of the Plains and Prairies Award’ from North Dakota State University Press.
Bonnie Larson Staiger 