The rules of a Writing Challenge are never all that difficult: “Do [this] for [a certain number of days], and hold yourself accountable.” “If you are able to complete the challenge, reward yourself in self-appreciation, cookies, sending your work out, or other such pleasantries.” “If you are unable to meet the requirements of the… Read More “Failing” in the August 2014 Poetry Postcard Challenge: My Writing Process
I have asked my husband, What do you think she will look like? He frowns, and I know there is no answer. Not right now. All I know is beauty: crows bursting from a field, a candle flame, a gust of wind after rainfall. These things are beautiful, imprinted somewhere in her face, her… Read More Anticipating Her Arrival
And then I look to the fall trees, and I wonder if they ever think, “I am running out of leaves.” They probably do, they with their tall, scarred bodies, launching outward and up. Sometimes, they are probably dreaming, or worse, waking. They open their eyes to colored leaves, the green having fallen out,… Read More I Am Running Out of Poems.
Crab is such an ugly word—the hard k, its suddenness. I’m steeped in these small pools, or perched on the surrounding rocks and sand, one hole after the next, searching for shore crabs, carcinus maenas. I find their gray and tan bodies, slick with the tide, their sideways catapult from rock slide to water.… Read More Searching Tide Pools for Shore Crabs
I go out into the world, looking for strawberries like the ones from my mother’s garden. They were small and firm, sweet but bitter, dirt caught in the leaves and deeper pits. We plucked them fresh from their stems and ate them before cleaning them, the dirt and seeds caught in-between our teeth. Now… Read More Garden Stems
Yesterday, I spent the day sleeping away my life. It was peaceful, the blankets all clustered near the back porch door, and all the doors and windows on the first floor were left wide open. The sounds of wind and wind chimes, birds calling, the scent of trees, came and went. All that was… Read More Untitled; An Accordion
I want to get back into drawing, the pencil in my hand, the thick charcoal under my nails. I keep collecting spare pieces of paper, of cardboard, in the hope that something might happen. A horse, gray and white shadows, it appears—the long mane draped over one shoulder like a flag, the exposed eye… Read More Collecting Horses
You should know by now that we can’t go back. Not like this. Not back through the electric fence or past the sheep, dehydrated and teeming. Past the mailboxes and songs. Our bodies are like their bodies now, stormed over and pale with all this sunlight and dung. We never should have come out… Read More Memories
