To my friends & family, who have always lifted me up: So many of you are enthusastic & interested in my writing, even though you might not otherwise be invested in poetry. Thank you for your generosity. I love you. Special thanks to my cousin, Heather McCarthy, for sharing her time & research into the McCarthy family lineage. You opened up possibilities & pathways in this book that could not have otherwise existed.

To Travis Vignon: Thank you for your time & skill in creating the JavaScript elements that completed this book; and for your love & friendship these last 20+ years.

To Emily Hagenburger Keough: Thank you for lending your time & professional expertise to teach me the basics of book publicity.

Thank you to my teachers & colleagues:

  • Dr. Marilyn Kallet for your unending support, enthusiasm, & attention to many of these poems, and for your friendship.
  • Dr. Arthur Smith for the lessons I keep discovering you had already taught me. For the witnessing the fullness of this world's tragedies, joys, & everything between, and giving it back to all of us, augmented. I wish you could have seen this.
  • Amy Kidd for advocating for me to gain my first professional position as a Technical Writer, and for mentoring me, encouraging me, & teaching me to read the damn pubLog.
  • Tom Johnson for your excellent & generous contributions to the field of technical communication.
  • Cebrun (Abe) Gaustad, Dr. Russel Hirst, Michael Knight, Dr. Bill Larsen, Dr. Ben Lee, Mary Ellen Miller, Dr. Kristin Robertson, & Wendel Werner for your work as educators, advocates, & mentors.
  • Sandy Coomer, Craig Freeman, Christine Hall, John Winston Heacock, Henry L. Jones, Dana Malone, Ciona Rouse, & the Nashville poetry community at large for being excellent writers, teachers, organizers, literary citizens, & all-around human beings.
  • Deborah Broyles, Dr. Damon Cathey, Dr. Sara Estes, Brian Francis, Dr. Richard Hatfield, Debra Smotherman, Robert Stackhouse, Dr. Griff Watson, & Leanne Wright of Metro Nashville Public Schools for teaching me to be delighted with learning.
  • Especially to Dawn Leung, my 5th grade teacher at Jones Paideia Magnet, for refusing to accept less than I was capable of.

Thank you the following for their generosity, space, or inspiration:


The following journals & magazines published versions of poems that appear in this collection:

Analog Science Fiction & Fact
Beecher's (University of Kansas)
Burlesque Press
China Grove
Connotation Press
Gamut
One Trick Pony Review
Please See Me
Poetry Salzburg Review
Potomac Review
Public Pool
Rivet: The Journal of Writing That Risks
Second Chance Lit
Sinew: 10 Years of Poetry in the Brew, 2011–2021
Social Justice Anthologies: Recasting Masculinity
Stirring
The Bosphorus Review of Books
The Human
The Mildred Haun Review
The West Review
The Wild Word
Thin Air Magazine