Category: Writing Life
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It's not importanat
“Once (Roethke) said to me, that nervous undergrad who wanted the love of the world to roar out every time he put a word down, ‘Don’t worry about publishing. That’s not important.’ He might have added, only the act of writing is. It’s flattering to be told you are better than someone else, but victories…
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breathe
Even though I’ve placed my book aside – I’m letting it free for a spell – I still need to write and discover and not take any days off from this. I’ve heard of some people taking days off after they finish a big project, but I don’t want to. I want to get up…
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The Triggering Town
“You owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything.” -Richard Hugo from “The Triggering Town”
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We as Daughters
I’m thinking about what it means to be a daughter – what things we learn along the way, important things about our parents and ourselves. Is there one thing we take away or are there many? Does it teach us to be strong, forgiving, angry, loving? All of the above? I’m trying to finish something…
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Reinvent Reinvent
We went to NYC yesterday and I slept with it on my skin. Had red-light dreams and green-light dreams and smell like pigeons and people and musty subway smell. I like the subway smell, except when it smells like pee. I love the gear smell and the rushing smell and the dirt smell, the must…
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August Heat
August has shown its teeth. I can feel it gnawing on the side of my head, the piranha pressure above my ear. I have read that I’m not alone in feeling at odds with myself. It’s in the air, the last of the pollen, the flowers screaming to the summer’s end. Do we all feel…
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Too many
the world is too big. Too many avenues and undiscovered allies off the avenues and river streets flowing cars and the allies threading off the streets. It’s become an amoeba, a toilet bowl of ideas, a mass souped together, it’s become a stew. There’s too many of us. How will we all make it? I…
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Always working
It smells like shower. Like someone has taken a clean shower and stepped out from the curtain. it never smells clean here. It smells like buffalo wings. Hot. And bullshit. Steaming. I just reared my head like a wild pony and I didn’t mean to. I was only trying to get comfortable. I was only…
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I love more
What happens to us? the wonder? the fruit of our labor-ous (less) loves? the brown skin? seeping past the bruise itself but to more. muscle. bone – ivory no more but darkening. press a button. press it down. yellow seeps in too around the rim. a dying star of skin. am I a dying star?…
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set free
>>this poem is old. and feels old too because I’ve seen it a lot before. Maybe writers made up publishing so they could finally leave their work alone, set it free and out of their hands at some point? But then maybe not – there’s always the chance at a rewrite and then a republish.…