Coming Events

                                                                      COMING EVENTS

New Book from Finishing Line Press! 
Also available through Barnes&Noble (online)

Relict is a chapbook of poems centered around the death of my father. It deals with questions of grief and loss, but also celebrates the ties between a father and a son, and explores questions of generational legacies. You'll be able to hear me read from Relict (along with other poems) at all the following events!

AND!! Double Vision, a collaborative art/poetry book from me and collage artist Becky Haletky!

Reach out to me at mosherb987@gmail.com for details.

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     May 16, 2026 - Saturday - time 1:00 - Taunton Art Jam - Reading with Uncommon

 Uncommon is myself, John Holgerson, Elizabeth Birch and Mark Walsh, four poets with different styles and interests, who come together once a month to provide each other feedback and advice on our poetry. Come hear all four of us read in downtown Taunton for the annual Taunton Art Jam. There will be music, arts and crafts, activities for the whole family. Free. Art Jam activities run from 12:00-4:00 throughout the downtown area. Uncommon will be on stage on Trescott St. (next door to the Union Straw restaurant) at 1:00. We'll also have a table set up somewhere, selling our books throughout the event.

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May 19, 2026 - Tuesday - 6:00pm - Norwell Library, Norwell, MA 

I'll be reading along with poets Ed Gaudet and Merryn Rutledge! Open mic to follow. Free.

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July 19, 2026 – The Old Manse, Concord MA (!!!) – time and other details tbd

Event sponsored by the New England Poetry Club. Imagine me, reading in this historic house which Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne both called home.

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Be sure to check back here regularly for more news!

In The Frame - originally published by Tap Into Poetry - 8/22/2025

 In The Frame
 
I apologize, I did not mean
to get inside the frame.
You were capturing a
photo of your family
when I passed unwittingly
between them and the famous
lighthouse. It’s impossible
to avoid these days, when
everyone is photographing
everything all the time.
 
Many regrets, as well,
for intruding on your life by
falling for your wife. She’s
everything I’ve ever wished
for, and you seemed unaware
of her magic. I see no way
to remove myself, for this
is life, not a digital image
to be altered with a click.
 
To live is to swim
in time, floating
from past to future,
unlike a photograph
which is fixed, a static study
of a single moment.
I’m sure you’ll learn to swim
in new waters without her,
as she and I learn
to swim together.
 
You’ll always have the photograph,
and can easily delete me from that.
 
 

Shelter - originally published in Lily Poetry Review June 2025

Shelter
 
library art gallery
poetry reading
a dank weekend afternoon
 
two without homes find shelter
from the rain with me
and eleven Laureates
 
as tobacco-smoke-scented
clothes and bones dry out,
are their hearts warmed by the verse?
 
probably not, but I hope

What's Mona Lisa Got to Smile About (originally published in the Slightly Off-Beat Poets Anthology "Many Voices ~ One Stage")

 
What’sMona Lista Got to Smile About Anyway?
           
What’s Mona Lisa got to smile about, anyway?
I bet Leonardo was no treat to be around.
I bet he never cared to hear what she had to say
 
About the day’s popular sonnets, or satirical plays,
Or even whatever hot gossip had been making the rounds.
So, what did Mona Lisa have to smile about, anyway?
 
If a modern artist were to paint her today
There’d be an accompanying video with stereo sound
So, we’d have permanent record of what she had to say.
 
If I could travel back to those days, I’d be willing to pay
Leonardo in Dollars or Euros or Kroners or Pounds,
To ask “Hey, what was she smiling about, anyway?”
 
Instead, she sits frozen, and Leonardo’s gone away
As thousands of tourists stand silently ‘round
As if expectantly waiting to hear what she’ll say;
 
Perhaps something witty or silly, or suitably gay.
But not one of them yet has ever found
What Mona Lisa’s got to smile about, anyway,
Or if she ever had anything interesting to say.

Coloring (originally published in The Literary Underground - 3/9/2025)

Coloring
 
My parents bought a used ’65 Dodge Dart,
white inside and out, dad’s pride and joy,
and I, just a boy left unbuckled, untethered,
saw the back of the front seat as a blank
canvas, which I covered in patternless
Crayola-tones, an abstract masterpiece, faded
to black and white in memory. Consequences
swift but not corporal. Lesson learned:
elbow grease cleans wax off vinyl.
 
Flash forward to a different world where
artificial light explodes from all
my screens, distracting and assaulting me
with hues no naive technicolor musical
could have foretold, while a gloomy
future looms uncertainly in shades of gray
and sepia-brown, and my clicking knees
and knuckles count the seconds. Punishment
for the simple crime of having survived.
 
And now, having lived through sixty-two
gray winters, green springs, white-hot
summers and firework-bright autumns,
all scrambled together in a shapeless swirl
of errors and triumphs, revelations and deceits,
injuries sustained and inflicted,
 
I still paint outside the lines, with words
instead of crayons, and still usually clean up my own mess.