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Stars, luck, and revelations
“The Instagram astrologers says big positive changes are coming for me this week!” I yelled from my reading chair to my spouse at his laptop, although the cats seemed interested, too. He said something like “that’s nice, honey,” or maybe just a neutral “mmm” because he was concentrating on the hundredth book of comics scholarship…
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The knife
At one of the many events I attended this fall, a magazine editor, reflecting on downsides of a generally rewarding job, sighed and said something like “so many bad poems.” What’s hardest for me about selecting poems for Shenandoah is how many good poems I receive, way more than I can accept, given a limited…
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Professor Mushroom listens to strangers
As I filtered out of a particularly fun workshop-reading-open mic at BookTree in Kirkland, Washington, one of the participants called back to me as he ambled down the dark street, “Thanks, Professor Mushroom!” The featured image above with its weird reflections, taken at a booth at the Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival, conjures, for me, that…
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Washington-bound (the other one)
I’m packing now for 12 days in the Pacific northwest (not nearby Washington D.C., which essentially seems like Mordor now). Here’s the poetry part of my itinerary: I’m excited, not just about the barding around part but exploring unfamiliar scenery (the Olympic peninsula! temperate rain forest! mountain and Pacific views!)–and seeing friends. I’ll technically have…
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Nuts raining down
I needed to get out into the woods, but between sciatica and recovering from the sprained ankle, it’s been hard to plan, or for that matter to pick a trail that hits my sweet spot between genuinely peaceful and not-too-rugged. Yesterday my spouse remembered Reservoir Hollow. It’s an obscure out-and-back trail a 15-minute drive away,…
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Hawthorns, bogs, & undersongs
The BurrenSometimes you bring pain along like a walletof funny-colored bills or a mobile phone.Here’s a knotted neck for the Burren. A spirit-fissure to echo the limestone grykes. Karstpavement matches you: riven grays, white lichen,sky pale with tiredness. Stand on a clint and becomeinvisible, perfectly camouflaged by pain.Yet in the watery gaps tiny pink flowers…
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Dickinson’s fungal weirdness
This Thursday, 7/17, at 6 pm Eastern, I’m reading with Nadia Alexis in a virtual series, Phosphorescence, hosted by the Emily Dickinson Museum. (Nadia’s great book Beyond the Watershed launched on the very same March day as my Mycocosmic so it’s been a pleasure to pair up a couple of times.) The reading is free…
![Poetic feet [sprained]](https://lesleywheeler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/summerpoets.jpg)
