What I'm up to recently

community

helping host the Just This Writing and Zen weekly online writing sessions (last 15 years)

& co-editing Just This (an online magazine of the Zen Arts) 

mutual critique of poetry and fiction through Oklahoma City online poetry group, Austin Poetry Study             Group, and Space City Critters (through Armadillocon)

marketing 

Rock and Friends  hybrid poetry and flash collection, about the elementals Rock, Jackrabbit, Turtle,                 Coyote and the Kid

The Amulet (with Sheila Simonson) (a coming of age historical fantasy set in pre-Christian Ireland, about             Conn, who is the likely heir to the clan's kingship but on the run from rivals who want to kill him)

revising

a Zen poetry collection

Promised Land, a portal world speculative novel of two brothers (one raised in the clans and the other             kidnapped by a religious extremist group) who reunite and must defend themselves against attack

recent readings or presentations

Scissortail Writing Festival, Southeastern Oklahoma University, April, 2025, reading from Rock and                 Friends and in 2023

Wayfinding talk, July, 2025 Appamada Zen Center

Panel reading, Flash, People's Literary Festival, Corpus Christi, Texas 2023

poems recently published (2023-2025)

in 

Just This (multiple poems, essays, photos)

Texas Poetry Assignment (poems, interview) 

The Marble Block (poem)

Animal Tales (poem)

Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry: An International Anthology, ed. Jonas Zdanys. Lamar University Literary Press (3 poems)

Lone Star Poetry:Championing Texas Verse, Community, and Hunger Relief, eds. Laurence Musgrave and Milton Jordan. Kallisto Gaia Press (2 poems)

Readings and Workshops

 Events where I'll be reading or doing workshops

February 23-25, 2023 time TBA People's Poetry Festival, Corpus Christi, TX flash panel

November 27, 2022 7 PM Texas Poetry Assignment contributor reading (Zoom)

June 5, 2022  7 PM Texas Poetry Assignment contributor reading (Zoom)

May 7, 2022 Reverie Bookstore, Austin, TX, reading from Red Riding Hood's Sister 

March 31, 2022 Scissortail Literary Festival, South Central Oklahoma University, Ada OK.  

        reading, A Door Into Night, Poems of the Fantastic

August 7 & 8, 2021 Georgetown Poetry Festival , Georgetown Public Library and on Zoom

                      2:15-3:30  Hewlett Room: Poetry Workshop: Out Of An Old Tale

                    Writing to draw on internal myths, led by Sarah Webb

                           

                            6:00-7:30 Blue Hole Contributors Reading

                        

                            various open mics

August 24, 2021 Texas Poetry Assignment Friendship Reading

        https:zoom.us/j/98407046849     ID: 98407046849 Passcode: friendship

August 15, 2021 7-830 PM Texas Poetry Assignment Contributor Reading (Zoom)

July 11, 2021 7 PM Texas Poetry Assignment Contributor Reading (Zoom)

            zoom 939 8432 6131Password TPAJuly11

                       

Every Thursday night at 7 PM. Zen and Writing writing session 7-830 PM. by Zoom

        co-leader with Kim Mosley and others

                

find the link on the Appamada Zen Center calendar by clicking on the event on the 

calendar

Every Saturday at 1-230 PM Art Atmosphere Poets (Georgetown) by Zoom open to whoever comes

                            
                     Zoom ID: 827 9757 2020  Password: Gull

I'll add to these as I emerge post-pandemic

Ran

Kim Mosley

To "Ran" by Kim Mosley

It is not what we see
in the bright shapes of the day--
a crinkled gold of sunshine
on flowers and steps,
a pond we walk by catching the sky
a watered lawn the right green.

These are there, of course,
and true in their way,
as is the gray of concrete,
rainy morning duty 
where we rise with not enough sleep
and drink our coffee, shake our arms, 
our shoulders, to rouse ourselves.
Look at the sunshine creeping 
under the blinds, we say,
You can do this—get out there!

But behind all that—the sun catching 
rainbow on the drops from the sprinkler,
the paper we draw from our briefcases—
lies an ocean that sun and paper 
float in, a dark they rise out of, like islands.

An antelope runs the plain. 
It leaps the absence,
the gap,
the lightless fjords between the known.
Its body—not-body—is a black possibility,
a night that turns into the face of day

that turns into so many things—faces
and oranges and isthmuses, 
crowded onto our mainland of the real.

Beyond it float fragments and wires 
of the ungraspable,

an island of fog 
where the unnamed and the unnameable
rub against each other in the mist

and the broad water beyond it all, 
the deep below things and their names,
the black of everythingalltogether 
not yet born
ready to rise.

—Sarah Webb, 11/16/20

Kim's artwork and Sarah's poem published in Just This, December, 2020

Meteor

To Kim Mosley’s “Meteor” on the Eve of the Election

Ooh, coming right at us
the slam!

It
hurls us upside
down
and sideways
splashes a thousand
ponds
into the clouds

steams us
wrings us

topples
buildings to house-
shapes
under the sand
walls
the archaeologists can puzzle over—
why?

Oh, why not?
mutter lava
and melted coins

A tree stands here and a
segment of
brook

Maybe a mountain range
can make it through
a child
a deer
or two.

Sarah Webb 11-2-20

Teeth

To Kim Mosley's “Teeth” 

Lively, happy, the Earth. 

But, no, a screaming face 

a furry man with an extra arm sending out waves of energy

a gaping whale and a gaping ghost.

Near them, coming up and out, a camel 

a man-phoenix 

a slug, a horn, the numerals 2 2 7.

Reality in all its ways—real and unreal,

spinning into numbers and dunes

breakfast and the phantasmagoria of the mind.

Out of the movement of water 

a whole that lasts a moment or a day.

published Just This, October, 2020

—Sarah Webb

Dancer

 

—Kim Mosley

Dancer

At the center a figure 

dances. Around him the 

bubble of the world spins.

Fragments float and fall,

reflections and objects:

gate, lightbulb, plant and bird.

A foot raises, a mouth gapes.

Cornets and lines of crops

moon launches and petroglyphs.

Dancing the world into being, dancing 

the end.  Continuous beginning 

out of continuous decay.

Exhausting, exhilarating, 

exhausting, creating order

out of a chaos of sticks and gravel.

Juggler, the man keeps the world 

in the air, will not let it crash

will not let it sling into chaos.

The mind tires, the body falters.

Who can keep a world alive,

keep a world from breaking?

What man can do it?

Dancers stumble and lose hold.

Their mouths go slack.

Turn then to the one inside the man 

who speaks from the dancer

through a hidden ordering

who shapes his dance

—Sarah Webb, 9/7/20

published September, 2020 Just This