Farther
I’m so pleased that my poem, “Farther”, which I share with you below, was just published in the Spring 2024 issue of Metonym Literary Journal. Metonym is a print journal, available for sale through their site at https://metonym-journal.com/ Poetry is art. While not everything written in all poems actually happened the way it reads, it’s […]
In the Pink
“Fruits on Pink” by Bink She begins. First, there is pink. Well…vivid electric magenta is more apt. She pushes the frayed brush into the water jar, hitting the bottom too hard. Taps out a neurodivergent rhythm on the canvas. Some would call it background. To her, I think, it is the main thing, the focus, […]
Anxiety, the unwelcome house guest (who never seems to leave).
Agita Sometimes I think there four of us making a life inside this sweet gray house. Add the felines, we make a quirky octad. There is the me who is I poet, I mom, I carer for everything and everyone who moves within this circle–– the him and her, the furniture which claims no […]
Still, After Years
This is the Love Poem, Mid-Life for Super Guy “Who, being loved, is poor?” –Oscar Wilde Remember the night I woke moaning, ankles on fire, some ghost gripping my arches, preventing even a twitch of toes, a wiggle’s wriggle? You rolled without hesitation from the warmth of our layered nest, cast aside your beloved pillows— […]
A Hole That Can’t Be Filled
Can you imagine being in such tremendous pain that the best path to freedom seems to be ending your life? Feeling so hopeless or worthless that you truly believe the world would be better off without you? We hear from family and community members and friends left shattered, wondering if anything they could have said […]
Grandma Moses Speaks to My Lengthening Years
Anna Mary Robertson Moses, aka Grandma Moses, is one of my inspirations. I do enjoy the quiet beauty of her landscapes that hearken back to what many consider simpler times, but what really captivates me is her story. Grandma Moses was 78 years old when she began painting in earnest— a fact that has […]
Rhyming to Death
I started writing poetry when I was 8 or 9. My first notebooks were full of rhyme, crude as it may have been. Over the years my writing morphed into rambling narrative free verse. From time to time I enjoy a quick dip back into the rhythmic river of rhyme. It feels playful to me […]
It Goes Like This
You smile down on me from a slightly precarious perch on the shelf above my messy desk. It’s my favorite photo of you—young and exuberantly happy, arms flung wide, dressed in colorful layers that reflect your signature style. I’d never seen this picture until your Memorial Service, but I loved it immediately. My second favorite […]
(She is) Unbroken
Unbroken There were times I imagined you different. My young mother mind pictured you— normal, typical, non-disabled. I can’t use those words anymore for their opposites evoke— lack, absence, tragedy, and you, my child, are a celebration of plenty, a bounty of delight, a well of fascination. In fact, you stand against the backdrop of […]
First Digit Singular
This Is What Really Happened Trigger warnings: Run-on sentences. Querulousness. Thirteen days ago I had my thumb joint reconstructed. This was elective and a long time coming—both carpo-metacarpals whittled down to bone on bone, naked osseous matter grinding boorishly against its equally unclothed neighbor, hyaline cartilage having fled years ago. I chose the off […]