Awards
  • Finalist, Naugatuck River Review Poetry Contest, 2026. ("The Stitcher")
  • Winner,  Livingston Press Changing Light Novel-in-Verse Contest, 2025. (The Enchantress Queen and The Ghost Who Made Me, 2026)
  • Semi-Finalist, WordWorks Washington Prize 2025, 2024. (Some of the Ways I Might Not Have Been Born)
  • Honorable Mention, Passager Poetry Contest, 2024. ("You Drive Like a Man")
  • One of six poets selected for showing on Arlington County buses through Moving Words, 2021. ("Second Born")
  • Best in Issue, Poetica: Reflections in Jewish Thought, March 2009. ("Grandpa, Where Did You Get Your Grey Eyes?")
  • Finalist, Arlington Reads Poetry Competition, 2006. ("The Shamash Is the Tall One")
  • Invited Poet, Joaquin Miller Cabin Reading Series, 2002. (Selected as one of six series readers by The Word Works through a competitive process)
  • Hamilton College John V.A. Weaver Prize in Poetry, 1987. (Various poems)
Second Born

You are the day of short sleeves in March,
the bouquet held behind the back,
the giggling group waiting in the darkened room.
Named only for yourself, you carry
no weight, gliding in the glorious
center of your own moment.
With your sunburst face, you teach
that love is not a cup but a window:
hearts cannot overfill, instead they open
to the infinite we are willing to admit.

​Moving Words Winner Posted on Arlington County Buses, 2021
The Stitcher

I was a loose thread
born of carelessness.
 
Even my face came out
unfinished and had to be sewn.
 
My mother held me
in her skinny girl’s arms
 
like clumsy thick needles
she didn’t yet know how to use.
 
It was my father’s mother,
the Stitcher, who fixed us
 
together on Sundays,
tucking me in tightly.
 
She seamed me princess clothes,
tiny velvet coats trimmed in fur,
 
basted me to the center
of every holiday photo,
 
hemmed my fragile new ménage
with hope; for a time, her work held.
 
I was a mistake to my parents
but to her, I was the intentional
 
error in the silken carpet, signaling
only God can be perfect.

Finalist, 17th Annual Naugatuck River Review Poetry Contest, Chosen by Octavio Quintanilla
The Shamash Is the Tall One
 
Now is the hour when we turn
darkness to light.
Now is the hour when we assemble
those we love.
Now is the hour when we kindle
memory’s flame.
 
The shamash is the tall one,
responsible for lighting the rest.
 
At first, these candles were oil
throwing shadows on stone temple walls.
At first, we were few, fanatics
defying darkness and desecration.
At first, our candles were lit by those who knew,     
a necklace of lights stringing the generations.
 
The shamash is the tall one,
responsible for lighting the rest.
 
In the tinder of our patchwork nation,
our small celebration has ignited
beyond its birth into a flare
of identity and remembrance.
We who are Jews use blazing menorahs
to find our way in the blinding dazzle of Christmas,
we pump our eight days of dreidl and gelt
like bellows to show we too can offer fuel for December’s joy--
even when we know little else of our own story,
we take out our necklace of lights and dress for winter,
writing new chapters in this young land that is now our home.
 
The shamash is the tall one,
responsible for lighting the rest.
 
But even if you have no memories
of beloved elders chanting their guttural holy tongue
while holding the shamash aloft at dusk,
the menorah compels us all to consider
how centuries change stories,
how celebrations reflect as much as preserve,
how we shape consecration of our own rituals.
We can all remember
that it takes only a candle
to light the way for each other,
it takes only a candle
to gather us together,
to set alight the bonfire of memory.
 
The shamash is the tall one,
responsible for lighting the rest.
 
 
Author’s Note: The shamash is the tallest candle in a menorah, used for lighting the rest of the candles each night of the Hanukkah celebration.

Arlington Reads Poetry Competition Finalist, 2006--This poem has also been used in congregations around the country for Hanukkah services.