Been on a bit of a road trip involving ferries, Electrify America charging stations, and quirky museums of local interest and then some. Navigating the two-lanes through the Olympic Peninsula rain forests, the Whidbey Island estuaries and driftwood bird sanctuaries, and now, tonight, the fog-bound Washington coast where Grays Harbor meets the Pacific Ocean and flocks of pelicans are careening overhead. The cars downtown in this coastal marina…
My poem, “A Long Way Around,” has been accepted for publication in American Writers Review, a publication of San Fedele Press, for an issue with the theme of “Buyer’s Remorse.” This poem is in a form called a golden shovel in which the last word of each line is made from each word of pre-existing poem to which the poet is paying homage. It was created by Terrance Hayes whose 2010 poem
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We could all use a shot of delight and beauty right about now, early September in this year of ascendant authoritarianism 2025. So I present a truly glorious, curious flower, G. callianthus, the Abyssinian gladiolus first discovered and cultivated in 1888, the years when Reconstruction had been decisively defeated and abandoned after the U.S. Civil War…
The days grow shorter. The brutal heat comes and goes and comes right back again it seems. The backyard habitat plants that are used to their cool, their shadows and shade, now scald and shrivel and brown. The birds and the bees are gluttons for the many water options we have scattered about. We near the end of August and the state of this union on this precarious planet feels more uncertain, more fraught than ever before it seems. I do not think I have being hyperbolic when National Guard…
My syllabics poem, “Another Catalog of the Ending,” was featured as the poem of the day on August 22, 2025 online at Second Coming. Second Coming is a poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House and his fascist regime and is edited by Michael Broder. Second Coming is a project of Indolent Books
Here is my (mostly accurate) running life list of my published writing—print and online—in descending chronological order of the year of publication. Sadly, a number of these journals, magazines, and website are no longer publishing—the fate of so much literary these takes of screen supremacy over words. Still, gratitude to all the venues who continue to put the word out there. Even when the odds (and finances) are against success…
We have to replace the wall-to-wall carpeting in the upstairs floor of our 1938 house. It is worn out. Wrinkled, falling apart, let alone desperately in need of a cleaning. It was installed by the previous owners of this house whose daughter had the knotty pine room that is my writing studio as her bedroom. We have now been here for seventeen years so the carpet is likely twenty-five years old or more. Beyond its life expectancy according to the rug guys at Linoleum City on SE MLK Boulevard …
Two of my poems have been accepted for publication in the September 2025 edition of Halfway Down the Stairs with its theme of “Muse.” Halfway Down the Stairs is (per their website) “a quarterly literary magazine established in 2005 to publish cutting-edge fiction, poetry, and nonfiction by talented writers. New issues are published every March, June, September, and December.”
We went on a long, long drive in our relatively new electric car—nine nights, ten days. First to Walla Walla, Washington then northwest toward the Canadian border on mostly two-land roads via places like Moses Lake and Coulee City and Omak. Crossed the border into Osoyoos, British Columbia and Voila!—an immediate shift of the so-called vibes as we explored the drop-dead-gorgeous lake/wine/orchard landscape of the Okanagan region…
My poem, “the pattern of vanishing,” has been accepted for publication in the IHRAM Publishes 2025 Rapid Response Anthology with the theme of “America’s Slide Towards Authoritarianism.” IHRAM stands for the International Human Rights Art Movement and was founded out of artist-activist Tom Block’s passion to use creativity to spur positive social change. According to their website, IHRAM works to “bring together all members of society through our programming…
