So National Poetry Writing Month—shortened to the (to my mind) bizarre acronym NaPoWriMo—is almost upon us again. And, insane as this may be, I am …
Poems Can Also Be Short!
My husband and I are avid gardeners. Every year, our community garden plot near the Woodlawn Elementary School is 400 square feet of asparagus, beets, carrots, delicata squash, leeks, peas, peppers, pole beans, potatoes, spinach, tomatoes, green and yellow wax bush beans, and some years even zucchini. Often we grow heirloom varieties…
Publication News: Snail Mail Review
Snail Mail Review is a literary magazine that is/was print-only—on purpose. Its title tells its story. You submitted via U.S. mail, you got your response as to acceptance or rejection via U.S. mail, and the copy of the journal that had your poem in it arrived by—you guessed it—U.S. mail. I have no idea if these folks are still publishing…
Three Shining Stars
The composition was a trattoria in a shadier part of a somewhat upscale (in parts) college town. Tre Stelle, three stars in Italian, because initially there were three and then there were two. The things seen were art on the walls, sculptures scattered across the floor, copper counters, a wood-fired pizza oven, an Illy espresso machine. A a Hobart dough-kneading machine in the kitchen with the face of a pig painted on it. A Hobart dishwasher. Choice bottles of Italian wine cellared in the dank and cobwebbed cellar down a flight of rickety steps…
Preparing To Be Dazzled…
We are still a week away from the official vernal equinox, when the sun crosses the celestial equator making its way to the north. I just learned from a Duck Duck Go search that spring arrives a half-day or so earlier than usual because 2024 is a leap year. It will be dark when it finally hits, just after eight p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Unlike today, the first bright one after what felt like a forever of gray and cold and windy and wet Pacific Northwest days. Walking around, celebrating an afternoon of sun, the streets are muddy, littered with fallen branches, matted leaves along the curbs and in the storm drains—the detritus of a winter that had its moments of harsh and formidable patches, that ground me, for one, down, made me want to hide inside with book after library book…
Publication News: riverbabble 28
Over the years, a number of my poems were featured at riverbabble, a literary journal that unfortunately is no longer online. riverbabble was founded in Berkeley, California in 2002 by Pandemonium Press and published twice a year—once in June, the Bloom’s Day Issue, and once in January, the Winter Solstice Issue. Every month, the Press also curated a reading series at the Spice Monkey Restaurant in Oakland, California…
Spring Ahead
The clocks do their foolishness also known as moving one hour ahead tonight. This late winter in the Pacific Northwest has been unseasonably cold; the first daffodil in our garden—opened today—is usually parading its yellow trumpet many weeks earlier than this…
The Honor of Being Nominated
What is a Pushcart Prize and what does it mean to be nominated? According to its website, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, “published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America – including Highest Honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.” Their annual nomination process is pretty straightforward…
Publication News: “Evidence, Occurrence”
This ekphrastic, free-verse poem was inspired by Dianne Kornberg’s photographs of kelp from the University of Washington’s marine algae Herbarium in her exhibit “evidence of its occurrence” at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, Oregon, 2005…
Travel without Traveling: Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy
I have spent the past few days attempting to fit random-shaped jigsaw pieces into a puzzle. My back is to the television set where my convalescing spouse watches the second season of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy for the second time; we originally saw them during the pandemic when they first migrated from CNN (which we don’t get because we don’t have cable) to HBO…
