Monthly Archives: January 2013

Solace in Make Believe

I’ve been indulging in a lot of make-believe lately. Every chance I get I’ve retreated to my own fantasy world. Not the one you might expect — not the one with the magic, although I love that world, too. This fantasy world has a lot in common with the America I live in now. With one slight difference: people don’t eat animals. In my fantasy, starting in 2006 climate change was taken seriously, and it started a food chain reaction that slowly built as factory farms were eliminated and animal products become prohibitively expensive. In my fantasy world, by 2016, …Read more »

The Joy of Editing

About ten months ago I decided to sit down and write a novel. It was a crazy thing to do. I’d never tried to do anything like it before, and I really didn’t know what I was doing or even how the story would turn out. I pounded out a rough first draft in about three months (a feat which amazes me now). Then I took a deep breath and started the second draft. That added about 40,000 words to the manuscript that would (later) become The Soul Thief. It was a mess. A glorious mess, perhaps, but a mess …Read more »

portrait of a cafe

portrait of a cafe the one who is steaming milk is bright. the one who watches is light. the one who is light balances, watchful. the one who is watchful is light with expectations. the one who is steaming milk is bright and spicy; she sparkles on the wooden floor of a mocha room. the one who steams and the one who waits are together in a wooden mocha room. the room is warm and silky like mocha, inviting and cradling both the one who steams and the one who waits for lunch.

two voices

two voices if i could reach across the cold field of your stare, across this waste i have plowed, if i could find any living thing left in our garden, would you water it with your tears? did you think i couldn’t hear you slip your heart into an overnight bag? that i was struck silent by the power of your lips? a cold monument unaware of the draft you left in our bed? do you think i’m a blank page waiting for you to retrace the paths of our love, that i am a pillar of salt ready to …Read more »

sacrament

sacrament as if in a dream i touch that delicate ridge, so like the petal of a rose falling away. a hidden, salty pearl nestles quietly, waiting. your secret; my sacrament.

turtle moon

turtle moon for Anne Merchant when we met you were heavy with life, graceful and divine with purpose, making me feel like an empty shell tumbled by the rising tide. i wanted to feel every line of your broken back, burn them into my soul, thread myself to you. witnessing the relentless shudders of motherhood woke me; i am swollen now, with secrets written down to the sea, with your every step like my dying breath.

for Debbie

for Debbie “If you value your freedom, do not reveal that my face is the prison of love.” Leonardo da Vinci six years ago, and a day, i trapped you in my prison of love. you didn’t know at first that it was a prison, relaxed and easy enough to slip through the wrought iron of society. you felt the cold metal first on a January night when i couldn’t stare you away from the guy your dad said was so good for you. couldn’t stare him away or declare my love aloud in the parking lot and had to …Read more »

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NaNoWriMo 2014

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