​Would you like to start the new year with an hour each morning of quiet writing in the company of others, but without the pressure of sharing or feedback? Please join us January 6-11 for Write Together. 10-11 am Central Time, $100. I’d love to see you in the zoom room. Click here for all the details. 

There are a thousand people and places and things I’m grateful for and most of the time it’s easy to conjure them up. But on days when the world is gray and I am gray and the horrors feel as if they outweigh the goodness, I trick myself by imagining the phone call or test result or text that will come someday. Today could be the last best day of your life, Alison, I think, and boom, light and love come flooding back in.

Mammogram, by Jo McDougall

“They’re benign,” the radiologist says,
pointing to specks on the x ray
that look like dust motes
stopped cold in their dance.
His words take my spine like flame.
I suddenly love
the radiologist, the nurse, my paper gown,
the vapid print on the dressing room wall.
I pull on my radiant clothes.
I step out into the Hanging Gardens, the Taj Mahal,
the Niagara Falls of the parking lot.

Click here for more information about poet Jo McDougall. Today’s poem is from her collection Satisfied with Havoc, published in 2024 by Autumn House Press. 

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My poetry podcast: Words by Winter