You cut the garlic in the kitchen prepping dinner for bean curd and spinach. Tofu pressed and ready to lightly fry to a toasty brown crispness, a contrast to the soft spinach and inner curd. They said half a clove of garlic you call to…

Five women gather at the meadow to hear the rangers talk about bluebirds – how they are related to robins and almost went extinct because of habitat loss. The rangers are young women, and they are enthusiastic about the birds, showing off a nest in…

Who am I when I’m at home alone? Quieter, perhaps, unless I sing, find rhythms on my drums, take a break at my piano. I don’t talk as much. The dogs don’t respond. I write things down instead. I’ll read my poems and essays to…

(Response to Gigan challenge)   Summer swelters beyond my exhausted window hot inside air pulled outside where it belongs.   I’m comfortable here at my computer – a cool cat writing poetry, sporting a beret back in a 1950s café.   When I was nine…

1 Nancy is such a day-dreamer. 2 and possibly a teacher and peacemaker.   3 She once came to school late, and instead of hurrying, 4 her sixth grade teacher  — and classmates — watched as she stopped 5 in the park across the street…

I’ve become obsessed with what went wrong with our big brains, our pride and joy how we lost more than we gained when we learned how to dig up coal and forgot all we had once revered the plants, the bugs, the birds, the fish…

Searching for our house, your eyes gleamed when you saw this and decided we had found home: a sturdy dog house, surely strong enough for quite a gentle giant. You had visions for it, knowing exactly what you wanted. You brought in a poker table…

What the _____ Man? Poetry Again? (Poetry Marathon 2022 – Hour 8) People think that poetry as an art form has died There is nothing left to say after you get rid of rhythm and rhyme Stream of consciousness writing creating structural associations That only…

I’ve grown numb to beauty preaching it’s worth from the shallows. Making a neat fist I shatter my vanity mirror, watching the shards fall into non-existence. Perhaps I’ll start a revolt against all the mirrors so eager to define our worth from one puny reflection…

It was a song; I sung when I was growing up. “Games people play right wrong, they just…keep you feeling blue.” Little did I know life for me would be like a game of chess. I started out as a pond with some power. It…