October: A Haiku Story Want is a cold wind. I watch the leaves fly soundless And dream of roots, deep. If I catch a leaf, Pin it close, scarlet, umber, Will I be a tree? Reaching high, sightless, What’s left behind remembered, Wrapped around my feet....
Here at Minerva Rising we believe that there is creativity and wisdom in every woman. Other than by eating cake — because we love cake — one of the biggest ways we celebrate is by publishing the creative works of women throughout the world. Which is where you come in....
Back in January, I wrote about Jane Hirshfield’s approach to revision. In their book The Poet’s Companion, poets Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux reprinted Hirshfield’s list of Possible Questions to Ask of Your Poem in Revision. This document...
I moved to a place where the loudest thing was the waves against the bulkhead, and reveled in the silence. And then I brought in birds, fuzzy and cheeping, tiny and unobtrusive, forgetting everything grows if it lives. It isn’t quiet here anymore. Outraged...
Summer is laziness, no routine. This week I even slept until ten. Most mornings I’m in the rooftop hammock with a coffee cup planted securely in the folds of my belly. I look at the infinite sky, at mountains almost as tall as God. Cornfields freshly...
The thermometer on my back porch reads 95 or maybe 98 or perhaps even 100. I don’t know as I can’t see the dial from my perch aboard the Ocean Endeavor as the ice-hardened ship eases into a fjord on Canada’s east coast. I’ve escaped the heat and humidity of...
Market In gray light between dawn and day, before drudges arrive at their towering hives, before crowds of tourists trudge the farmers market aisle, flowers come to the city in trucks. Men in aprons, women in kerchiefs, receive buckets of dahlias, stock,...
It’s ninety-five degrees and the car windows are down. I can feel the skin of my shoulder and arm burning no matter how much sunscreen I apply. The road is a bright zipper splitting my past and present: eastern Washington and childhood; western...
Meet Erin Elizabeth Smith. To shake hands with this sassafras, bad-ass, Southern-fine chicken rancher/ college professor/ Sundress Academy for the Arts director/ Managing Editor of Sundress Publications and The Wardrobe AND Minerva Rising’s 2016 Poetry Chapbook...
The Letter Last Thursday, I received a longed-for gift: a letter from my dearest friend, she who had called me her ‘other half’. As I eagerly opened the envelope, impersonal in its typewritten formality, my eyes flew to the familiar sprawling signature...