Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Apostrophe Blog Archive”
My poetry triptych, “On the Precipice in This Perilous Moment,” has been accepted for April 2026 publication in wildscape literary journal. The theme of their Spring 2026 issue is: calm // storm. My three-part poem surveys the landscape of this country since the return of the convicted felon to the White House on January 20, 2025. The first part was written in June 2025…
Unscrew the cap of the glass bottle of a beautiful black-blue ink. Submerge the barrel of the pen into the neck of the bottle. These days, the fanciest of pens have a plunger mechanism that makes them oh so easy to fill. Sometimes I find it takes me a few tries to get it right. Wipe the pen nib off with the soft, ink-stained linen dish towel scrap I keep in my desk drawer just for these occasions. Find a blank sheet of paper, bear down, wait for the line to flow…
Friday afternoon in what was a cold winter day in the Pacific Northwest, we took our newly-painted signs and caught the Yellow light rail over by New Seasons in Arbor Lodge. We headed downtown where we joined the throngs of other stalwarts at a protest in front of the Hilton Hotel. The Hilton brand has been allowing the paramilitary thugs of CPB and ICE to stay in their assorted hotels. Boycotts have been called for; we just switched a number of our travel reservations for a March trip Back East.
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 the snow street of Minneapolis, Minnesota murder a woman in cold blood. More rattling of sabers and spewing of gaslit diatribes 24/7 since then
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Solstice. Day of an equal amount of light and dark. Late December. Nearly the end of an insufferably long and disappointingly amoral year. During which …
My poem, “Monster: A Cento,” has been accepted for publication in Red Door Magazine in Spring 2026. This poem was written on the day the Oklahoma state legislature passed a law—at the time the most restrictive in the U.S.—banning abortion at conception. A cento is a poem that is made up of lines from the work of other poets. This one was created from the first lines of poems written by the (relatively few) women in The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, edited by J. D. McClatchy.
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After several days of Pacific Northwest November weather last week—downpour, high wind, dramatic clouds—it was a relief to have a weekend of sun. As our Portland universe dried out the past two days, we were finally able to sweep up more of the bajillion fallen Douglas fir needles that had become a uniform carpet on the sidewalks, flagstones, patios, and driveway. This is addition to raking, raking, raking the maple leaves from the three giant trees in our backyard. We are very close to having all of the foliage shaken from every branch. The return of the rains on Monday may just do the trick…
This is a commonplace sight on the English Boom Trail on Camano Island. A place surrounded by the waters of Skagit Bay, Port Susan, and Sarasota Passage in Washington State. Water makings its determined way through marshes, rushes, fields, the surrounding land. Insistent, dominating, winning out in the end
My poem, “A Long Way Around” appears in the print issue of the American Writers Review 2025 anthology of poetry, stories, essays, art, and photograph from San Fedele Press. The theme for the anthology is “Buyers’ Remorse.” Here is what the anthology editor, D. Ferrara, has to say about the collection: “The work in this issue springs from the moment when the best-laid schemes have turned to dust. The crash can be obvious, subtle, or not yet realized. Some capture the instant of recognition and regret. Others speak to those who will never know what caused it, but who move forward blind to cause and effect.”
We joined the parade on Saturday afternoon in downtown Portland. The chickens and the turkey, the SpongeBob and Pokemon characters, the giraffes and cows and unicorns, the T-rexes and, of course, the frogs. All 40 or 50,000 of us with our homemade signs, with our bubble machines, drums, cowbells, streaming for miles, a crowd so dense we were able to fill two bridges cross the Willamette River and returning at the same time. Even if the front page of the New York Times continues to downplay these mass protest events
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