I recently saw a brief clip where Emily Wilson critiques Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. She notes there is not enough delectable food or sex. She claims the movie does not make clear enough what Odysseus is trying to get back to, why the journey matters. I feel this way about a lot of art these days. The stakes are too low. It’s easy to swallow. It doesn’t make you uncomfortable, or think too hard. I saw the movie and loved parts of it, mostly the landscape. The big sweeping shots of the sea and rocky cliff sides made me miss living in Albania.

The journey I’ve been on the last three years is trying to make some sort of art out of grief. It sometimes feels like the last thing I want to do. Some days I feel like turning away from poems, to something like fiction where I can escape to a different world.

The thing about a death (which I suppose is also true in life), is that everyone experiences it differently. And everyone processes differently. Sometimes writing about grief feels like walking in a circle. When I question what others may think of my poems, or if I am excavating my grief in a way that is not useful, I come back to what Brad would think of the work. And mainly what I come back to, is that he cared about good art. He cared about a thing being well crafted in general: a good espresso, a tailored jacket, a perfect song. And he had a good eye for bullshit. He spent years and years and countless hours perfecting his craft. But he didn’t just love music, he appreciated all art. When I first met him I remember making note of all of the poetry collections on his bookshelf. Early on in dating we drove to Wilmington and visited Airlie Gardens. We sat looking at the Minnie Evan’s Bottle Chapel for a long time, watching the light glint off of the glass bottle mosaic. There was no question: that was art.

He understood art is not silly or frivolous, it is deeply serious, even when it is an act of play. It helps us feel sane and seen. So I am writing poems that make me feel sane and seen, that teach me about myself and about the world through the process of making. I had six poems published this month, many of them deal with his death in some way. I am not sure I can live up to his standards for art, but damn I am trying.

You can read one of the poems here in the Missouri Review.

The other two are in the most recent issue of The Iowa Review.

When Bradbury wrote this story in 1950, he wasn’t terribly far off in predicting the ways homes would become automated. The story gets its title from the Sara Teasedale poem of the same name, which is read aloud by the automated house. The poem was published in 1918 during World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic. The sentiment is that after humans are no longer part of this world, nature will go on living and “scarcely know that we are gone.”

It seems humans are no strangers to a preoccupation with the world ending. I can’t help but think of Bryan Johnson and the obsession with maximizing longevity. The wish to live forever is baffling to me. Death gives us perspective on life, it makes it precious. The world looks different from eyes that assume they have forever to see. Ending is necessary. This month I had two poems about loss published in a small journal called Comp out of Piedmont University in Georgia. While both of the poems are about endings, one addresses a relationship ending and the other is an eco-poetics poem of sorts on the death of the natural world.

Not all endings are created equal and certainly not all things come to an end like a house on fire. This month I have been reading Breaking into Blossom: Poems with Extraordinary Endings. I appreciate the way the editors break down the “taxonomy of ending types” into different categories of endings: the taper-down, the ecstatic outburst, enacts its own condition, etc. One ending type called “Words/Objects Take on Significance Beyond the Norm Due to Context” includes Robert Hass’s “Meditation at Lagunitas” which has the classic ending of “blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.” One ending I am attempting to make in my own life is a pivot to less academic teaching and more poetry teaching. In August I will be hosting a day-long writing retreat along with my friend Lily (who will cook a lovely lunch). The retreat will have a focus on blackberries and we will smell them, taste them, touch them, read about them, and write about them. How quickly the berries are here and then gone.

There’s a reason for the adage “stop and smell the roses” because the roses too come to an end. Eat the berries while they are here. Read poetry and live in the world while we have it. Toward the end of the Bradbury story, a haunting voice continues reading the Teasedale poem as the “smart house” goes up in flames.

Starting next week I will be teaching Microfiction online through Redbud Writing Project (there is one spot left!).

For local folks: On August 2nd I will be leading Sticking Palms: A Generative Writing Retreat. It should be a fun day of deepening attention, eating delicious food, and generating new work.

What I’m Reading: The New Economy by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Breaking into Blossom: Poems with Extraordinary Endings edited by Luke Hankins and Nomi Stone

What I’m Eating: All of the tasty veggies in my Helsing Junction Farm CSA!

My small delight on the first day of classes was that I found myself teaching in a room I had never been in, in a building I had never been in. It’s a building that usually houses the social sciences. There are skulls from a variety of animals in a glass case along one wall. On the opposite wall there are maps from around the world and directly across from where I stand at the front of the room, is a wall of three large windows. The room is on the second floor and the tree’s bright-green new leaves delight me in a way I didn’t realize that I needed. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re missing until we find it.

This past September I moved into a home that had been occupied by the previous owner for 87 years. She was brought home here as a baby. I often find myself thinking about how the rhododendrons and mature apple trees were small at one point just like her. I’ve never met Maureen, but I feel a connection to her every time I unearth a new artifact in the garden. I’ve noticed she had a distinct order to her yard art: front yard for frogs and backyard for cats. Each one is a surprise. When I hit something hard with my shovel it might turn out to be a frog on a lawn chair in sunglasses sipping from a cup with a small umbrella in it or a stepping stone with the words “Cats leave pawn prints on our hearts.” Just when I think I’ve found them all, there are more.

For many years I moved around a lot. I was rarely bored. But traveling is an easy way to access surprise and delight. Everything is new. But here at home I’m not challenged daily by trying to speak a language that isn’t mine. I’m watching how many days it takes for the dogwood to bloom. I’m waiting to discover that the rhododendrons are red and pink and purple. I wish everyone in the world had the space, the peace, the time to sit under a blooming tree in spring.

The poet’s first job is to pay attention. It’s sometimes easier said than done. I sometimes find it hard to justify time spent starting out a window. In an attempt to pay more attention, I’ve signed up to participate in a “Summer of Attention” hosted by Mississippi’s former poet Laureate Catherine Pierce. The Summer of Attention is not just for poets (feel free to join me!). It’s for anyone who wants to pay more attention to their surroundings. Maybe people are craving time to pay closer attention. There’s even a whole new school for attention!

Midway through the quarter I try to sneak a poem or two into my composition classes (for everyone’s sanity). “Green Apples” by Ruth Stone is one that I share regularly. I find that we all benefit from a reminder that our lives are happening now. Not tomorrow, not yesterday. But that “this is the moment,/ here, now.”

Green Apples

by Ruth Stone

In August we carried the old horsehair mattress

to the back porch

and slept with our children in a row.

The wind came up the mountain into the orchard

telling me something:

saying something urgent.

I was happy.

The green apples fell on the sloping roof

and rattled down.

The wind was shaking me all night long,

shaking me in my sleep

like a definition of love,

saying, this is the moment,

here, now.

What I’m eating: Alison Roman’s Cottage Cheese Cake (I made it with ricotta and rhubarb)

What I’m reading: Solito by Javier Zamora.

I recently had some photos taken of myself. To be frank, I don’t even recognize her. She’s not the person I see in a little square on Facetime or the person I see in my Zoom reflection or even really who I see in the mirror in the morning.

How is anyone sure of who they are? So much of the way we perceive ourselves comes from what others reflect back to us, oh you’re like this or like that. Sometimes they’re right and a reminder can bring us back to reality. But sometimes they’re wrong, or we’ve changed. I remember hearing once that we recognize how much we have changed in the past, but underestimate how much we will change in the future. It’s an encouraging thought to me; I’m terrified of stagnancy.

Making a profile for a dating app, I find myself overwhelmed by how to determine which aspects of myself to highlight in a few photos, a few prompts. When I look at my profile I think: she seems fun and nice. But is she me? Or is she like the doppelgänger neighborhood cat? Someone who looks uncannily the same, but isn’t quite.

I went to see Maggie Smith read on Bainbridge Island last week; she was on tour promoting her new book, A Suit or a Suitcase. At one moment she mentioned how her poems come from the base of her brain. She reached around and cupped her hand to the place on the back of her head where her skull meets her neck. I nearly jumped out of my chair. That’s where my poems come from! I’d never heard someone say this before. When we hear someone mirror to us some deep aspect of ourselves, we feel less alone. She talked about the experience of “Good Bones” being out in the world and becoming less hers and more a poem of the people, a separate entity. Maybe all art in some way belongs to the world.

Doppelgänger

Everyone has a twin somewhere. Like a child

given up at birth, I look for my features

wherever I go. Doppelgänger, I know

the luck you bring, but I can’t stop

seeking you out. Other self, I want to project

myself to where you are. I want to trace

your shape with my finger, but you won’t

feel my ruffling your hair. You won’t

look at me. You only echo my movements,

a sleepwalker. Other doer, with you around,

everything is slightly off, like when Dylan

went electric. The hours are striped

with light as yellow as old newspapers;

the moon is granier than an obit photo.

Not quite a door, I stand ajar. I’m two

places at once. I’m watching a movie,

but the person playing me isn’t acting.

Double walker, you’re not so bad.

You don’t have red eyes and a black,

V-shaped unibrow like most evil twins.

But you won’t look my way. You speak

but not to me. Your voice, which is mine,

crackles like a phone call from another country.

-from Maggie Smith’s A Suit or a Suitcase

I recently made a little broadside with the local Sherwood Press. It’s the first tangible object I have of my poetry. I can hold it in front of me. I can hang it on the wall. Broadsides are special. It’s a collaboration between artist and poet, between printmaker and writer. I like broadsides best in bathrooms and hallways. There’s something intimate about being at a busy party and quietly stopping in the hall to read a poem or taking a moment longer to dry your hands while reading above the bathroom sink. Like staring deeply into a mirror, for a moment the reader is transported to their own private world, sucked into the language and then shot back into the noise of the party, carrying a little piece of the poem with them when they go.

Broadsides of “Murmuration” are available here!

What I’m eating: Dinner at Homer in Seattle to ring in spring break.

What I’m reading: Swirl and Vortex: Collected Poems Larry Levis and Maggie Smith’s A Suit or a Suitcase

What I’m teaching: Intro to Poetry in May/June

February brought pruning. Not just letting go of overly ambitious goals, but cutting back the big apple trees in the backyard, my hair, the roses, letting go of some rarely worn clothes, trimming the spaghetti spindly branches of the rhododendrons, and books taken off the shelf for a second look. I’ve made plans to read through some of the classics that crowd my shelf. I’ve started reading To the Lighthouse for the first time. I have not one, but two copies. One copy belonged to my former partner, Brad whose old classics fill a few of my shelves these days. He had good taste. I’m haunted by the way they sit there unread.

Pruning brings the obvious adage: if you cut it back it will grow back stronger. But I guess, at this moment, I’m a bit more interested in looking at the thing that was cut. Why did I have those clothes to begin with? I want my cut hair used for the nests of birds rather than the landfill. I hope to make use of the books from my shelf, so that they become something in action. The discarded limbs from the pruned apple tree will be repurposed into garden beds this month, turning slowly into healthy soil.

I’m trying to shed, to clean out, to take stock of what serves me. But not to disregard. I’ve always wanted to be the kind of poet that overwrites, that has pages and pages to prune and peel back the meaning from. These are my favorite kinds of poems to work with and edit, to do a form of excavation. I’ve never really written like that. I mostly find myself pushing and pushing to get more language down, going back in to add more description, more music, not less. Each word feels like a miracle.

In Helena de Groot’s amazing new podcast Creation Myth she briefly mentions Philip Larkin’s poem “Days”. The poem is a reminder to me that longer is not always better, that more is not always best and that days are where the small acts of attention take place. Sometimes, the act of pruning is one that gives us more space to live fully in our days.

Days

By Philip Larkin

What are days for?

Days are where we live.

They come, they wake us

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:

Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question

Brings the priest and the doctor

In their long coats

Running over the fields.

What I’m reading: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, Paper Crown by Heather Christle, Worth Burning by Mickie Kennedy

What I’m eating: passionfruit on yogurt, many seven minute boiled eggs.

What I’m teaching: Intro to Memoir with Redbud Writing Project Online (begins March 12th).

In thinking about that ferry ride, I am reminded of the late Seattle poet, Martha Silano’s poem “Is This My Last Ferry Trip?” and the ways life becomes searingly potent in its fleetingness. I attended a recent virtual reading for Martha Silano. It was moving to see the way her friends and family gathered to share her incredible poems. And even more so to see a poetry-life well lived. I thought back to a September episode of Poetry Off the Shelf called Glow in the Dark where her friend Stacy talks about her relationship with Martha and that they “...were always talking about writing and the struggle to create a life that included writing.” An audio recording of Martha at age 24 plays her voice bemoaning the fact that she thinks of herself as a writer, but isn’t doing much writing. I had a very similar frame of mind at the same age.

I recently found a journal entry from 2015 (I was 24 then). In the entry I wrote about monthly, weekly, and yearly goals. The goals included: attend grad school, live for more than a year abroad, write a novel, buy a house. I am struck by what came true and also by the themes that seem to show up again and again in my journals over the years. In the margins of the page was written: “write, write, write” and “a big garden” and “dinner parties.” I think the things I loved then are still the exact same things I aspire to now: to grow things, to write, to be in community. I had also written “Before 43: two babies, big yard, full kitchen.” I am struck by the specificity of the age 43 which at 25 must have seemed a long way off. I have no idea where that number came from. It doesn’t seem terribly far away now.

In the poetry class I am currently teaching, we read an excerpt from Jenny George’s longer poem “The Dream of Reason.” The section is titled “On Waking” and begins with the line “Half of everything is invisible.” Half of my life still feels invisible. I go on writing the same goals year after year. And low and behold some of them come true: the graduate degree, the house, the garden. Others are still coming to fruition. I wonder, eleven years from now, how will my dreams and goals look to my 46 year old self? What will I be most proud of? And eleven years after that? I imagine my journals will still say something along the lines of “write more” and “be in the garden” and “be in community.” I don’t know what else will be added or taken away. There is so much of my future I cannot see. That day on the ferry, there was so much of the submarine I could not see. As the ferry churned ahead toward shore I observed the glassy water, the thin strips of cloud in the sunset.

Excerpt from “The Dream of Reason” by Jenny George":

On Waking

Half of everything is invisible.

A river drifts below the river.

A gesture lost in the body.

Wind moves through the open

windows of the trees.

Beyond the day, another day.

Dreamed I was drowning

my mother’s silk laundry

in the river,

kneeling on the wet rocks.

Back and forth I drowned it

in the gray clouds…

What I am reading: Martha Silano’s Last Train to Paradise

Train Dreams by Dennis Johnson and Maria Bamford’s memoir Sure I’ll Join Your Cult

What I am eating: I am loving Samin Nostrat’s new cookbook Good Things. The whipped tahini and green sauce are so good and I and spatchcocked my first chicken!

Outside, some leaves are still hanging on, bits of orange and red brightness in the gray. Many leaves have made their way into the ground, into the gutters, and plastic bags in front yards. It’s fall and it’s “really raining.” It’s nearing the end of the quarter and everyone seems a bit weighed down. Some days I forget a rain jacket and embrace the drizzle as I move between my car and campus, from one building to another. The walk is short; I don’t get too wet.

Last weekend the rain came down while we worked in the yard, digging up blackberry, pulling up ivy. The apple tree lost some large dead limbs. A mop of ivy hair was left to die at the top of the apple tree. The ghosts of dead blackberry brambles were tugged out of the rhododendrons. The rain came down hard, leaving everything covered in mud: shovels, loppers, clippers, gloves, and my face. It wasn’t an ideal day for yard work, but it was the day we had.

In Natalie Shapero’s new book Stay Dead, there is a poem called “Really Raining.” A line of which reads: “Who am I,/ I’ve said, to say what it’s like in the spray for somebody else”. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, the idea that one person’s “a lot” or “too much” is not the same as another person’s. Or even that one person’s “a lot” can vary drastically from day to day. Some days I feel like I could sit in the rain for hours, like I could let life’s stresses pummel me and I’d still enjoy a hot shower at the end of it. Other days, I’m the bug stuck in the storm of the single drop.

There’s a reason the expression “weathering the storm” exists. It really does feel like that some days. Everything is coming at you. When I eventually lay down in my room engulfed in “peaceful blue,” the comfort won’t come from the color description or its muted hue. It will come from the way it surrounds me at all sides. Like a boat in a storm, I won’t be able to tell up from down. Life coming at me from all angles. I’ll lay in it.

Really Raining

Every time I’ve seen the moon, I’ve thought it was the Earth and I’m
somewhere else gazing at it, gauging whether I’ll make it
back someday. Every time I’ve seen the sun, I’ve thought it was the Earth-moon burning and said goodbye. I’ve always made a point, every time
I’ve seen rain, of announcing IT’S REALLY RAINING, even if it’s just
a spattering here, a spattering there. WOW, IT’S COMING DOWN. Who am I, I’ve said, to say what it’s like in the spray for somebody else,
and by SOMEBODY ELSE I mean of course that bug, smacked over
by an eighth-inch of water, splayed and aeriform. When you’re slight
enough to be ended by a single drop, a single drop’s a storm.

What I’m reading: Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero, Housekeeping by Marilynn Robinson, Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

What I’m eating: Tons of bosc pears and Julia Child’s clafoutis (with pears). I’m using the recipe out of The Art of French Cooking, but here is a recipe I found from The Seattle Times if anyone wants to give it a try!

Also: Hailee Catalano’s Brown Butter Squash Cornbread and Chili. Both excellent!

We read “Kiss of the Sun” by Mary Ruefle, “The Orange” by Wendy Cope, and “Oranges” by Gary Soto. As a class we talked about the color the fruit brings to each of the poems, we talked about texture, and image. As homework, the students were tasked with writing their own “fruit poems” where they had to pick a fruit and emphasize the fruit’s color—bringing brightness to the poem. Students came back with writing about mangos, cherries, lemons, and watermelon. Often they tied memories to the fruit.

“The Orange” by Wendy Cope is one of my most favorite poems. It’s silly and sing songy. All I really want from most poems is surprise and a celebration of the ordinary. It does both masterfully. Every time I read it I get caught up in the rhyme. The ending hits me out of nowhere, even though I know it’s coming. I hope you will read it and enjoy it as much as I do.

Thanks for reading. In the words of Wendy Cope, “I love you. I’m glad I exist!”

The Orange

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

-Wendy Cope

What I’m reading:

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Moving the Bones by Rick Barot

What I’m eating:

This tasty orange meal

This winter citrus favorite

Writing News:

Read my poem “Thursday Again” in the most recent issue of Sixth Finch

For the past 19 years, we sit down for breakfast on Christmas morning before any packages are opened. We eat and enjoy our eggs, our cinnamon bread, the platter of sliced fruit. As breakfast comes to an end, we pull out our letters. The letters are sometimes frantically printed out on Christmas morning or written on a plane ride home, or written by someone staying up late on Christmas Eve. But regardless, somehow we all manage to have our letters ready by Christmas morning. And by the time we finish eating, everyone has their letter in front of them along with a cup of tea or coffee. Then we pass the letters one by one in a circle and read what each person has written. There isn’t a script or concrete expectations of what the letters are, but most often they are reflections of how the year went. Sometimes they are written on a theme or include goals that were accomplished during the year. We sit sipping our beverages as we quietly take in each person's thoughts on the year that has just passed. We listen to each other chuckle and nod, guessing which part of whose letter they just got to. There are always laughs and often tears.

When we started writing the letters my younger brother was in middle school. His early letters had a lot of experimentation with the size and style of font. Giant Comic Sans was a big hit. These days his letters are from the perspective of a 29 year old man who works as a math teacher.

Sometimes the letters included a countdown to retirement or a list of goals that were reached that year. The letters are ours to write as we wish. One year I just wrote small poems. In another I included a list of things I wanted to accomplish before the age of 30.

My mom has compiled all of the letters into a binder which she brings out each year so that we can sit around and flip through the letters. There is something special about the tactile nature of a letter. It makes me think of Marie Howe’s poem “The Letter, 1968”. The poem is romantic in nature but all of those tactile elements that go into holding a letter still stand true.

Not everyone wants to sit around reading letters that their family members wrote. I get that. But it’s ultimately not about the letters. It’s about having ongoing traditions that are not based in buying. Traditions ground us and give us comfort in times when everything feels unpredictable.

So, I challenge you to think about starting a new tradition this year. Maybe it’s a morning walk or an evening of board game. Maybe it is writing a song together. Use your creativity. Try not to make it too complicated. If you stick to doing it year after year, next thing you know nearly twenty years will have passed.

November meant a birthday and I am (hopefully) not quite at the center of my life. My body marks the small passage of time in the small lines around my eyes. My face is less round from the weight sloughed off from all that walking. I will gain weight again. I will lose it again. Some things are certain.

This year for Thanksgiving I made the same maple tart I made last year.

This year I sat with family and ate the turkey, the stuffing, the cranberry sauce of my childhood with many familiar faces.

I’m working to find presence in the small changes, the cream whipped from liquid to soft peaks. I have been thinking a lot about two poems by Martha Silano in the most recent issue of Poetry Magazine. Self-elegies is a potent reminder to have gratitude for all of the little (really not so little) actions in our lives, the running, the pie making, the bird watching. Read them (and weep); I did multiple times!

Small acts of noticing help with being in an old place and seeing it entirely new. In the poem below, Galway Kinnell reminds us that there is no use making the time pass before it is passed. We are here now. Now is the moment at the table. Now is the chilled wine, the clove, the butter.

There is beauty in observance. So, for my birthday this year I am gave myself the gift of presence. And as the holidays approach I will give it again and again. The challenge of continued observation and the willingness to be open to the moment.

“If one day it happens…”

“If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a café at one end
of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
where white wine stands in upward opening glasses,

and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking,
one day all this will only be memory,

learn to reach deeper
into the sorrows
to come—to touch
the almost imaginary bones
under the face, to hear under the laughter
the wind crying across the stones. Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, here,
here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

The still undanced cadence of vanishing.”

— Galway Kinnell, section 5 of “Little Sleep’s Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight,” from Selected Poems

I have also been thinking about ways I can connect with friends around the world. I’ve lived in many places and I find it difficult to keep up with everyone I love. This is a small way to do that. I know many people have newsletters. Maybe they’re out of fashion. But I don’t really care. 

Fall is upon us here in the Pacific Northwest. I am reminded of the falls of my childhood. Though of course the seasons are different now. A few weeks ago we had an odd 80 degree late September day that resulted in a late September lake swim. I have no recollection of ever swimming in Olympia surrounded by leaves beginning to change. But there we were swimming along in the crisp water and warm air, as the Canada Geese arched over us.

The cool mornings have been reminding me lately of the falls living in Bellingham where we filled vans and trucks with apples to press cider. And then filled bedrooms and living rooms of carboys full of cider to drink all winter. And I’m reminded of the fall I spent in Shushi, where we gathered apples to store for the winter. Each moment is a moment we can never return to, but Shushi is a place I will truly never return to. Which has me thinking of Asheville and the shifting devastating weather and the last few falls where I visited Mary Lou and we dug small holes in the dirt and set the individual garlic cloves to sleep in their little white sleeping caps until spring.

Today at the market I bought the tiniest apples I’d ever seen. The man selling them claimed they are the oldest variety of apple in the world. He said they ate them in the Roman Empire. I have no idea if this is true. And with a bit of googling I can’t seem to find the answer. But I did feel special, maybe like an empress, eating these tiny apples.

When I lived in North Carolina, I bought golden and tart and crisp apples every fall at the State Farmers Market where they were brought from Western North Carolina. Many of these farms are now devastated by the hurricane.

The poet Ruth Stone wrote often about the disappearance of what we love. Most often in her work, this was the haunting presence of her husband who committed suicide. We can see him here, in this poem, and of course there are the apples.

Green Apples

In August we carried the old horsehair mattress
to the back porch
and slept with our children in a row.
The wind came up the mountain into the orchard
telling me something:
saying something urgent.
I was happy.
The green apples fell on the sloping roof
and rattled down.
The wind was shaking me all night long,
shaking me in my sleep
like a definition of love,
saying, this is the moment,
here, now.

Places to donate in support of Western North Carolina:

Beloved Asheville

World Central Kitchen

The American Red Cross of North Carolina

RAFI USA to Help Southeastern Farmers in Need

What I’m reading:

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna

After Image by Jenny George

Writing News: 

My first book manuscript was a finalist for The National Poetry Series book contest. Big congrats to the winners! I’m thrilled to be included on this list. It gives me a boost of confidence and makes me think that my book may be out in the world someday. 

Upcoming online classes: 

Intro to Poetry

Intensive Poetry Workshop

Let me know if there is a type of class you are interested in taking! I’m putting together a roster of classes for 2025 and I’m open to suggestions. 

Editing:

I am offering editing services and one-on-one creative writing consults. Find out more on my website.