April is National Poetry Month, so I'll be posting a few poems this season. Currently I spend more time writing prose stories instead of poems, so it's been fun for me to look back at poems I wrote in past decades. This poem is from a period when I was experimenting with classic forms. … Continue reading The Bear, a sestina
Hey, it's National Poetry Month, so I've decided to post a few poems this April. It's been fun for me to look back over my decades-long collection of poems to find a few that will be just right for this moment in time. None of those wild, whiny, passionate unrequited love poems I seemed prone … Continue reading How to Find the Muse
When I was 21 I went to Europe on a five-week student tour with my best friends. On our last day we were in England, and we went on a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich. I have several memories of that day, a few funny stories, conversations, photos, but there was one image … Continue reading Sheltering-in-Place
When I feel sad disconnected unsure of where I belong I invite the poet in. She will remember the soft yellow-gray belly of the mocking bird vibrating as he trills high above me on the outer branch of a tree at the edge of the bridge. Darn, I can’t remember what kind of tree … Continue reading Poetic License
Alice Hoffman’s “The World That We Knew” is an achingly beautiful fairy tale about the Holocaust. Her novel emphasizes the plight of children separated from their parents: Jewish children and the offspring of Resistance Fighters hiding with false ID’s in convent schools; others roaming by themselves or in small groups in the forest, foraging for … Continue reading The World That We Knew, a review
Written with the prompts: take a cat nap, some of the rocks, anger, majestic benevolence, grand rising, I got the real story a few days later I like to take a cat nap mid-afternoon and I won’t apologize for that. When I took up with Harold, he used to tease me about it, told me … Continue reading Cat Naps and Rock Candy
Written with the wild and crazy prompts: he didn’t, women and chair, the abyss, the opposite day, alfalfa sprouts and bacon, transient stakes, meditating on dried fruit, automatic alarm clock, unlock, how brave, nothing but the breath of a snorting dog, wanted a mother who baked, miracle, wiggle them up to your waist, going free … Continue reading The Curious Day Of Marie Cooper
Her mother named her Cheetah, hoping she would grow into a long-limbed, fleet-footed woman, but she developed broad shoulders and rounded haunches like a raccoon. Her father called her Chee, as if it were a nicked name, a shortened version of her totem animal, but Cheetah knew he meant Chi, pure core energy. She wanted … Continue reading Predator Heart
Starting the year off with a crazy little bit of flash fiction. Rest assured that resemblance of any character in this story to any actual person living or dead is strictly coincidental. It was a muggy morning. Gingin was not expecting any good news when she lifted the daily rag up off the doorstep, … Continue reading Gingin’s Cookin’
I wrote and published this piece six years ago, shortly after the death of a close friend. I came across it this week, and honestly, I'd forgotten that I wrote this as a Christmas meditation. The idea of surprise is becoming a theme for me this December. Life deals us all some pretty unpleasant surprises … Continue reading Loving Harvey: some Christmas musings
