The wonderful editors at Salamander literary magazine in Boston have published a poem of mine titled, deep breath here, “Poem in Response to a Friend Likening a Woodpecker to a Hammer or a Drill.” And you’re right, the good people of the Academy have created a new award category for unnecessarily long titles, with this as the first winner! Here follows the backstory for the poem: I was walking from my place, a four-bedroom shared apartment in Somerville’s Winter Hill, to Porter Square station in Cambridge, Massachusetts, along streets packed tight with tenants in triple deckers. There was nothing significant about the place, or the day. It was any other walk to any other train. But after turning onto a side street, I heard the knocking. It was intermittent, and the sound seemed to jump off the very eaves of one of the houses. I walked a brief ways down a driveway, never shy, and found the source. The woodpecker was going to work on the home and I was hooked. In my mind it was after termites, so I went with that. Later I realized I should have shooed it away from doing such damage, but at the time, the thought never crossed my mind. So I sat, and listened. Read the result here, or here: http://salamandermag.org/poem-in-response-to-a-friend-likening-a-woodpecker-to-a-hammer-or-a-drill/