Hello, dear readers. How are you? I am fine. Well, kinda fine. I am emerging slowly, as many of us are, attending to things that have been put off too long—dental appointments, household repairs, long overdue purchases, wellness exams for my cats. Stuff like that. I want to get out, but it’s scary too. I’m fully vaccinated, my health risk is … Continue reading Sheltering-in-Place: final edition?
Another re-run this week, another of my favorite #FlashFictionFriday stories. Enjoy! The route was beautiful but scary, starting in the most crime-ridden and garbage-strewn streets of the financial district, a place where hefty men in silk business suits and expensive running shoes would dart into limos escorted by taller, fitter men in cheap suits and … Continue reading A Boy With Wings
Because it was spring, Marilee decided to do one of her obsessive tears through the house—not a quick surface dust and sweep, but a deep dive, boring down beneath cushions and floor rugs, under tables and chairs, to clear out accumulated dust bunnies, cat toys, stray pens and lost coins. Her compulsion to clean next sent … Continue reading Spring Cleaning
Another original poem for National Poetry Month! This week's offering is a tale of my California childhood, back when the rain was plentiful enough that we'd often watch the winter river rising against the side of the levee. Life on the Flood Plain Nestled in the south elbow of the levee we are sheltered … Continue reading Life on the Flood Plain
Another classic poem of mine for National Poetry Month. Flow She rises through silt and sand seeps through cracks in asphalt to suckle fox tails and dandelions sprouting wild on levee roads. Her power courses through me like moon pulling water to sea rushing by pear orchards carving jagged leaf veins in my belly … Continue reading Flow
April is National Poetry Month! I've dug down deep for this one, written for my Mom at least 30 years ago when she was the age that I am now. For My Mother and Other Collectors of Strays I want you to contradict me. When I shiver in my cavernous apartment complaining that autumn … Continue reading For My Mother and Other Collectors of Strays
i Blades not sharp or brutal but tender and yielding to the weight of my bare feet sprout on this thin layer of soil that hugs the Donegal coast. I grasp a clump of green shoots in my fist: does that make it mine or does it belong to a middle-aged man with a piece … Continue reading Immigrant
Anderson Cooper came by my house to repair the busted slats on my back fence and to tell me I use too many ellipses in my writing. I told him I use ellipses because I like them!— but I told him not in a “I’ll do what I want” kind of way. I told … Continue reading Dot Dot Dot
