When I returned to writing after a twenty-five year silence, I discovered a good poetry prompt site that I grew to love: POETSONLINE. This site introduced me to the idea of sharing and presenting poetry online for others to read, and it also taught me what fun it can...
Writing is a magic act, like slipping into the space of a pocket door between layers of drywall, contorting into a fold of space-time. All around me, the house vibrates with activity, oblivious to my sorcery. The song within, the chorus surrounding, bloodlines...
Here’s what my New Year’s Eve looked like: I drew a hot bath, immersed myself in total relaxation, thought about tea, thought I had left the kettle on in the kitchen, and got back out of the bathtub. Went downstairs. The kettle wasn’t on. Went...
I’m 68. I lived for decades with a poet’s soul, hoarding scraps of paper in drawers. I earned a living doing traditional communications work – editing and producing brochures, press releases, and annual reports; proofreading publications;...
I get my best ideas folding laundry. From the bedroom window of the home I work from as a nanny three days a week, I can see the Cascade range, the glitter of Lake Washington, and the inverted bowl of clouds that so often rests on top of Mt. Rainier. Words and...
Serendipity: the faculty of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for This summer I almost became a believer in the alignment of the stars. In luck. In serendipity. Like each summer of the last several, I spent a long weekend in June at a...
This year, I wrote about a subject that I did not want to dwell on, but for some reason could not stop writing about. I grew up Catholic and was fairly devout for most of my life, but over the past few years, given the testimony of acquaintances,...
I cannot imagine wanting to have children, which must be why I never had them. I wonder if that’s the reason I became a writer, if giving birth to stories instead of babies sublimated my maternal urges. There are indisputable similarities between the two...
A List of Where I Make Lists on a whiteboard in my kitchen in my green bird journal in my NEO-MFA journal from AWP on a pad of paper from that Paris hotel two years ago on the backs of envelopes on the invoice from the wine shop on my left inner wrist in the Notes app...
Fall is a fallow rotting scent, fallen leaves made wet by heavy rain, the quieting earth loosened to welcome the dregs for a long winter’s nap. In the city that scent is elusive, the earth wrapped tight in asphalt, cement. What patches remain are...
