The photo on the right is one of a bunch of family photos in my living room. Is that your daughter? people sometimes ask, and I smile. She does look like me, doesn’t she? I say. But the girl on the windsurfer is me, long ago, back in a life I used to live: a … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Maggie Smith
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. I’m a self-taught maker of extremely imprecise, freeform story quilts that I hand-quilt and then embroider. This morning as I flicked around the internet looking for cool hand-quilt block patterns, the word “quilt” suddenly looked entirely wrong. Too short, too abrupt, missing one or more letters, and … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Robert Francis
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. One afternoon when I was twenty-six I left South High School and jumped into my little red car. Turned on the music –was it a tape?–as loud as it would go. Maybe Annie Lennox, maybe Joan Armatrading. Stopped at the red light on Cedar and 22nd, waited … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Nikki Giovanni
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. Think up a person, I tell the zoom room, like a toddler with wild red curls. Hands go up. People emerge. Now give me an object, like a ceramic pit bull. Objects appear. We write them all down, column A and column B. Now put one from … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Joy Harjo
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. The world is too big if you make it so. This sentence has been running through my head lately. Every time I feel besieged by the world’s problems, which is most of the time, it comes back to me. This morning the dog and I got up … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Ellen Bass
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. Whenever I pass a baby on the sidewalk our eyes meet and hold. Babies turn their heads to keep holding that gaze, sometimes all the way to the end of the block. They want to examine me, so they do. This is what I most appreciate about … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Laura Gilpin
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. Here in my neighborhood, in the wake of another shooting of a Black man, choppers circle nightly, protests happen nightly, and stores and restaurants keep their window plywood boards on standby. Tension runs high. I scan the streets for cars and trucks with out of state plates … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Langston Hughes
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. The way my dog places his paws on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. That day last week when the rain blew in and the temperature dropped 29 degrees in twenty minutes. How coffee beans smell when they’re ground fresh at dawn. The way the man … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Eileen Myles
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. Years ago my daughter and I spent a magical week in Istanbul. We visited mosques, ate Turkish candy, drank mint tea, took a boat down the Bosphorus to the mouth of the Black Sea, smoked a hookah on the front porch of a restaurant where we sat … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Cathy Ross
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. Dog person versus cat person versus beer versus wine versus Gen Z versus baby boomers versus millennials versus Gen X versus The Greatest Generation versus red states versus blue states versus New England versus Midwest versus West versus North versus South versus pro versus anti. Categorization makes … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Goodies from my mailbox and camera
Telling all sides of the parenting story
Waking Up to Your Dreams
On James Baldwin and Diverse Literature
Putting those recalcitrant toddler cancer cells to bed...
your own PDK for writing
a collection of beautiful words.....
Objects, Memory and Meaning
If it can't be said in a hundred words, then it can't be said in a thousand.
sewing a handmade wardrobe
"drink from the well of your self and begin again" ~charles bukowski
Musings on poetry, language, perception, numbers, food, and anything else that slips through the cracks.
Thoughts on the world around me
