Bill Cushing
Called the “blue collar writer” by classmates at the University of Central Florida because of his years serving in the Navy and later working on ships before returning to college at 37, Bill Cushing lived in several states and the Caribbean. He moved to California after earning an MFA from Vermont’s Goddard College. A semi-retired college English instructor, he lives in Glendale with his wife and their son. Bill has two award-winning poetry collections, A Former Life (2019 Kops-Fetherling International Book Award) and Music Speaks (2019 San Gabriel Chapbook Award; 2021 New York City Book Award). Another chapbook, . . .this just in. . ., was released in 2021. His second full collection of poems is Just a Little Cage of Bone.
Called the “blue collar writer” by classmates at the University of Central Florida because of his years serving in the Navy and later working on ships before returning to college at 37, Bill Cushing lived in several states and the Caribbean. He moved to California after earning an MFA from Vermont’s Goddard College. A semi-retired college English instructor, he lives in Glendale with his wife and their son. Bill has two award-winning poetry collections, A Former Life (2019 Kops-Fetherling International Book Award) and Music Speaks (2019 San Gabriel Chapbook Award; 2021 New York City Book Award). Another chapbook, . . .this just in. . ., was released in 2021. His second full collection of poems is Just a Little Cage of Bone.
LIGHTING SHADOWED DESIGNS
While singularly high on chem-trail theories,
a mad Ulysses whose image might hide past
icons for a lucid siren. Then he saw himself
in others, survived by living more obscure
and even stranger lives. Elements of surprise
invited a state of being, frighteningly
similar and rivaling unself-conscious
recycling, twisting reality slightly
when the muse struck hard and fast and repeatedly
with a club. Images, like party crashers,
with faces that clash with nature, fractured color,
shade, or hue. Lives are altered forever
through brute evolution of thought, and living, like
finding Nessie—ever sought yet rarely seen,
dissolves into a series of hallucinations.
While singularly high on chem-trail theories,
a mad Ulysses whose image might hide past
icons for a lucid siren. Then he saw himself
in others, survived by living more obscure
and even stranger lives. Elements of surprise
invited a state of being, frighteningly
similar and rivaling unself-conscious
recycling, twisting reality slightly
when the muse struck hard and fast and repeatedly
with a club. Images, like party crashers,
with faces that clash with nature, fractured color,
shade, or hue. Lives are altered forever
through brute evolution of thought, and living, like
finding Nessie—ever sought yet rarely seen,
dissolves into a series of hallucinations.
© 2023 Bill Cushing
Bill Cushing was a Featured Poet at the June 2023 Second Sunday Poetry Series
Bill Cushing was a Featured Poet at the June 2023 Second Sunday Poetry Series