Room for Something New

While making resolutions can be inspiring and enlivening, this year I seem to be interested in the opposite. Instead of resolving, dissolving. Opening to possibilities that I’m only dimly aware of, if at all. I don’t want to be constrained … Continue reading

The Power of Metaphor

Cut Flowers Because I want the blooms to last,I scald the stemsof roses, hold an orange poppy to a matchuntil the milk burns in the flame.It’s an art they call conditioning.I crush the base of a chrysanthemum—the heads keep blooming, rootless,like the … Continue reading

Tasting Words

English Flavors             I love to lick English the way I licked the hardround licorice sticks the Belgian nuns gave me for sixgood conduct points on Sundays after mass.            Love it when ‘plethora’, ‘indolence’, ‘damask,’or my new word: ‘lasciviousness,’ stain my tongue,thicken … Continue reading

Why We Read

So often writers sacrifice their characters so that we, the readers, may experience a different outcome. In David Jauss’ story Glossolalia, the protagonist is consumed by regret. “Perhaps if I had said yes, we might have talked about that terrible … Continue reading

On Tone

Have you ever wondered how many ways there are of saying Oh… The following poem give us an exquisite lesson on the subtleties of tone. OH  As if she were to bump her shin in the night and utter a … Continue reading

The Syntax of Cats

Every move a cat makes is elegant, deliberate. The moments of awkwardness are so rare, and the cat appears so discomfited when they occur, that I have to laugh, unkind as it is. What if we as writers, in the … Continue reading