Bio of Gail Goepfert

Gail Goepfert is an ardent poet, photographer, and teacher. Currently, she’s an associate editor of RHINO Poetry and teaches classes online at National Louis University. Her story spans the Midwest in locations between the Mississippi River and northern Ohio, but her passion for travel is endless. She authored a chapbook, A Mind on Pain, (Finishing Line Press 2015), a book, Tapping Roots (Aldrich Press 2018), a second book, Get Up Said the World, Červená Barva Press, 2020. Collaboratively, she worked with Patrice Boyer Claeys during the COVID months on Honey from the Sun, a book of her centos and Gail’s photographs, and a chapbook, This Hard Business of Living, coming out from Seven Kitchens Press in 2021. Glass Lyre Press will publish her latest book of poetry in 2021–Self-Portrait with Thorns. Recent poem publications appear in After Hours, The Examined Life Journal, Night Heron Barks, Inflectionist Review, and Rogue Agent. She’s had four nominations for a Pushcart Prize and this year was nominated for Best of the Net by Night Heron Barks. Her photographs appear online at the Chicago Botanic Garden, Olentangy Review, Storm Cellar, and 3Elements Review and on the cover of February 2015 Rattle. She lives, writes, and snaps photos in the Chicagoland area.


Desperate Beauty

— I paint flowers so they will not die. Frida Kahlo


We are watchers, Frida.
Aching but obedient to light,

resurrected by shocks of color.
Mornings you pluck

bougainvillea or pearly
gardenias, plait them in your hair

above your brow. I shadow
the fire of spring poppies

and the profusion of lilacs
and pink hydrangea.

With the organ pipe cactus,
you spike a sage-green fence

on the borders of La Casa Azul
tuned to the rhythms of sun

and rain—its lavender-white
flowers tint while you sleep.

Our love-eyes like greedy
tongues lick the rare-red

of wild angel trumpets.
We are aficionados. Pregnant

with joy in the garden’s cosmos.
We pursue hues like lovers’

lips, stalk columns of yellow
calla-lilies, praise the appeal

of honey-petalled sunflowers
and the lobes of violet irises.

We thrive on iridescence—
our eyes attuned to its blessing.

Watchers. We bend near
in reverence to the bloom—

all pain humbled
for a time by beauty.

— first published in SWWIM