Have a Great Vacation

I. There’s a joke mothers make: mental stability is overrated! A month at a psych ward sounds like a vacation!   It’s not that mental illness is a laughing matter, but a joke in bad taste sometimes feels like the only way to say motherhood makes a psych ward sound fun.   II. The gaslighting […]

Nightwatch

I follow crumbs at Dusk along the damp  Earth. Will tomorrow’s  Materialize?   I wish I had your Wings, could soar free and See the water, the Moon reflected whole.   Instead it’s like a Maze of green hedges, Young Alice meets the Minotaur. The night’s   Labyrinth fills me With echoes and  Trembling, but […]

I Wrap Myself 

I wrap myself  Adding the layer someone else gave to me  Tossed it on me to hide; hide what they didn’t like Did I let them pick up my loose limbs and shove me into something new? Something to be worn like it was meant for me  Fitting to my body One new layer over […]

December Star

December Star     Solstice darkness persists longer than sun’s extended rays, which reach my fingertips eight minutes later than when they first sizzled out of their thermogenic home.   Electromagnetic radiation warms cool blue earth, invisibly envelops my skin. In the chill of Cimmerian nights, a tender light pierces the pining, crepuscular hour.   […]

When Will Then be Now?

Light in the Darkness Here we are—mid-December: a season of celebration that in at least one uber-educated, moderately liberal, American college town (mine), people seem confused by the juxtaposition of culture and tradition; tradition and church. Mid-December and there is more darkness than light, so we spend more time in fluorescent spaces sprinkled with glittering […]

The Gentleness of Dusk and Dawn

The Longing Arms   Emptiness filled now and spilling when arms hold and hush the long anticipated one- sweet love requited.   Did I know how empty they were- my arms, heart- before you? You laughed at the emptiness and swallowed it whole.   …of the wind she is, a soft kiss mystery come alive […]

Hope Feed

  I saw a picture on social media the other day, and it read, “Are we sure 2020 is gone?” I chuckled, like most, with a sense of sobriety  especially after the events at the Capitol,  so we’re all asking, “What is going on?”   We used to go on social media to get a […]

The Magi

Editor’s Note on “The Magi:” A dear friend recently confided that she loves the Season of Epiphany (beginning in early January) but secretly dreads its first Sunday. Just as Christmas is neatly tucked away, her church musters up one last pageant to remember the Magi. Far from the orchestrated order and beauty of Advent’s Nativity […]

In Like a Lion

On the night before my grandmother died, a tornado struck Mills County. You can always tell when it’s on the way; just slip your hand behind the sash and press your nose against the screen.   Can you hear the echo of sparrows? Do you smell the sweet- ness of rain? Then draw in your […]

Bellows

  For National Poetry Month we’re reposting this amazing poem by Anita Scott. #poetrylife   Be the bellows of my soul. Be the bellows in my soul. Be the push and the blow that reconciles gaining with letting go, releasing while receiving.   Be the reason that hope lives in tears. Be the One who […]

Belief

The many tunnels honeycomb me in one by one, I become frozen in deep blue. I become noisy as a bee cloud. I become holy like a rooted tree.   The many tunnels open me into their skin,   to see the golden lamp, a golden calf reborn. To believe in the candle who outweighs, […]

Psalm to Mom

You’re not my own but you read me to bed, and tickles me to the bone love how my fat cheeks dimple up. And I’m barely two and my curls are brand new. And you don’t know what she’s doing,  trying to make my braids, Put your head down, hold your head down, hold it […]

Faith Is Figuring Life Out

Who’s to say I came out of the womb triumphant and beckoning, suckling sunlight and justice with indignant power, bewildered eyes ablaze to teach and be taught, or renting immaculate spaces with poise and unconscious infatuation. Suppose the wind coughed me out into this new world and then made me stand up and become my […]

Portrait of A Both Girl

I am not black. I am not white. I am somewhere between the ink and the page, the word that is blurred      out. I am not what you assume She speaks Spanish… can’t quite place her…. definitely not from around here I am from around here. I grew up down that stone road […]