The Apostrophe Blog
That about hits the nail on the head—BINGO and then some. Twelve days into a new calendar year and the de-compensating, dementia-addled narcissist-in-chief starts a war. A few days later, his thugs on a snowy street in Minneapolis, Minnesota murder a woman in cold blood. More rattling of sabers and spewing of gas-lit diatribes 24/7 since then. We gather, we protest, we march. Horns honk in solidarity and peace signs are exchanged from vehicles speeding by the corner of NE 16th and NE Multnomah where folks have been gathering for close to a year now, decrying what is being done in our name here in this formerly democratic republic, clearly now under the boot, the heel, the manic madness of a dictatorial playbook. The heartbreak of day after day, to my way of thinking is, that it did not have to be like this.
In 2020, Renée Nicole Macklin (later Good)—the American citizen shot in her car by ICE officer Jonathan Ross earlier this week—won the 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize for her poem, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.” Quite the honor in the esoteric poetry-nerd world. Its final lines are far too prescient now:
now i can’t believe—
that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—
all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:
life is merely
to ovum and sperm
and where those two meet
and how often and how well
and what dies there.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
- Days Are Getting Longer, Blossoms Are Returning - February 3, 2026
- Acceptance News: wildscape literary journal - January 28, 2026
- To get the ink flowing again… - January 27, 2026
