Böcker av Toni Thomas

Do some girls find another measure of moonlight, live amid the rain, half-sung roses in the hope someday they can carry them?Why do some of us permanently vanish, others disappear only to come back a rarer kind of filigree?This collection of poetic narratives looks into the lives of many women, what propels them, sustains them, what sometimes goes missing.Perhaps there are trespasses of the heart, precious things we need to learn how to carry.

Are some lives diminutive, do they come to us as a hidden pearl, unnoticed vestibule. Will the woman heavy with longing find a way to meet banishment with a different gaze? This collection of poems explores lives that sometimes move invisible, vanish, or become keepers of their own flame.

This collection of poems explores the nature of perishing; how lovers, places, family can disappear before we are even able to claim them. The poems circle longing, faith, the preciousness of connection, what we leave behind, the mysterious forces that gather in us, tempt us to flame.

What is the key we enter by? How is it that invisible bread sometimes arrives unbidden in the cramped of our soul's kitchen. What does it mean to be tender, a woman, alone, pregnant, uncertain of her place in the world. Is death a fearful proposition, a friend, accomplice? Amid the fields spilling into each other with the weight of her winter, comes this new life growing slow, wanting to believe the promise of summer still sings. The poems in this collection take us on a journey through the stories of various people who must deal with loss, uncertainty, constricted lives, love stretched tight as a clothesline. They go on to follow one woman as she attempts to navigate a lonely pregnancy, keep faith, listen to the earth, help her newborn inhabit a place thick with the language of birds.

What is it that threads through our life amongst the trees' nesting, threads through our family, marriage, hopes, pain? What does it take to be here? How can our children teach us about the future, what it means to trust, forgive, continue even amidst the brokenness?How do we learn how to listen to the earth's language of love and not turn away?There are some of the themes that the poems in this collection grapple with.

In these poems, the night can't always be trusted. Things get carried away, a woman's voice, body. But some of us refuse to parenthesis want forever behind a barbed wire fence, decide to mother the day in a spill of orchids, build a fortress in our children's imagination till even walking on a frozen bridge in a flimsy coat with your soul bleeding can feel like a work of art. To be in this company is contemplate the language of birds. To know that even amidst the plagues, there is a wild and holy spirit that seeks to carry us.

This collection of poems is a celebration of Christmas time, winter joys, family, friends, animals, nature, and play. It speaks for perennial values of kindness, inclusion, compassion and appreciation of the beauty of our natural world.

Maybe some of us are unnoticed galaxies tucked inside a heavy coat. The girl with thirst on her tongue wants to taste hot dates, pantomimes, liquid kisses. In the dowry of her heart a pole star burns bright as a secret corridor, cups flame, turns her mouth into meadow. Is it possible in some eyes even paradise on a shoestring remains the bright corsage of a burning bush?The poems in this probing collection are a radiant, playful attempt to understand our humanity, find a more accurate vocabulary for love. Toni Thomas lives in Oregon. Her poems have been published in Austria, Spain, New Zealand, Canada, England, Scotland, and Australia. In the UnitedStates her work has appeared in over fifty literary magazines including Prairie Schooner, North Dakota Quarterly, Hayden's Ferry Review, the Minnesota Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry East, and more. She has been twice nominated for a Pushcart prize, and won several awards. She has published thirteen collections of poetry and three books for children.

The idea for this book came about in a lecture about vermicomposting. The speaker was discussing the types of materials used to make bedding for the worms and mentioned that you could use shredded paper. She jokingly said you could feed them your phone bill. Instead of a student claiming the dog ate their homework, now they can claim the worms ate my homework. The joke in a meeting turned into a book idea.

This collection of poems by award winning author Toni Thomas explores the nature of love, challenges of relationship, family, the hopes we carry, things that threaten to fall apart.The poems grapple with expectation, loss, the ability to sustain beauty in an often turbulent world. At the core of the collection is a search for meaning and wholeness.

This fifth collection of poems continues to explore the themes first introduced in ACE RAIDER OF THE UNFATHOMABLE UNIVERSE, which center on the life of a beloved brother Chris as seen through the eyes of his sister. We sense this shy man’s independent spirit, struggles to conform to society’s dictates, and follow him through back breaking jobs, an impossible work ethic, the downward spiral of drugs he wrestles to contain after the sudden death of his passionate mother. While addressing serious issues these poems celebrate life in all its joy, sadness and complexity

This fourth collection of poems explores the life of a beloved brother Chris through the eyes of his sister. We are introduced to his childhood of potential and tension, his passionate mother and disciplinarian father. We learn of the relationship between brother and sister as his years unfold, his hard working life, his understanding of and care for the marginalized, restless impulses, struggle to find personal meaning and dignity. After the sudden death of his mother Chris’s experimenting with drugs results in a battle between his desperate desire to stay clean and in control of his life and the insidious pull of the drug world, as expressed through the anguished gaze of his sister. While addressing serious issues these poems celebrate life in all its joy, sadness and complexity.The companion volume of poetry, Blue Halo, is also available through Annalese Press.