The Surgeon General has declared the state of loneliness a national health issue. I read about this in my various news sources, and while I do believe he is absolutely correct, I haven’t felt very much aware of its applicability to me. After all, I have a loyal husband of sixty years, a caring son and his wife, three special grandsons, a sister and a niece, many wonderful friends, a loving black lab, an ongoing and fulfilling teaching and writing career.
Read moreMAY IS THE CRUELEST MONTH (revisited)
I was going to tell you about the great Zoom re-creation of my women’s writing group last Sunday, when seven of us joined for the day to express in words the many feelings and thoughts prompted by poems I shared, but I’m not going to do that.
Read moreTHE GLASS IS ALREADY BROKEN
I’ve been waiting to write all of you about my new full-length collection of poems, The Glass Is Already Broken, until the publisher got the cover colors corrected. Three books later, that has not happened yet. The cover art by my dear friend Jarrod Beck keeps being reproduced in an orange-y tone rather than the clear yellow of the original; the lettering comes through as dark brown rather than black.
Read moreSECOND SHOT
I got it, a week ago now. This time, my arm isn’t even sore. After the first one, I woke up two days later, with a piercing headache, nausea, and a fatigue so overwhelming that I spent the afternoon napping and went to bed at 7:30, my body so leaden it was hard even to move. The next day, I was totally fine.
On our daily walks, we meet neighbors with whom all conversation centers around “the shot.”
“When are you getting yours?”
Read moreSmooth Pain
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about a few ideas I have with all the things going on in our country,” Tarray messaged me yesterday while I was thinking about what I would write this week, knowing no white woman’s words could be as important as hers and theirs---my Touchstone girls, their poems and stories about violence and abuse in their black and brown lives, my passion to get them out into the bigger world. How I’d wanted the privileged milieu I inhabited to grasp what labeled these young women as delinquent—I wanted them to understand what led them to do the sometimes lawless stuff they did, the drug use and selling, the prostitution, the truancy, the assaults. That’s why I’d brought them to so many reading venues, started the joint group with The Hotchkiss School girls, tried so long and hard to get I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent published. And now, why I’m rejoicing that it has been, especially now.
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