Quick bit of housekeeping: here’s the link I promised to my poem “Fight Me in the Waffle House Parking Lot at Dawn.” It’s now live. Yay!! Many thanks, The Daily Drunk!

I’ve decided I’m not going to write this weekend. I’m calling it a challenge. A sabbath. A truce. A polite but firm ceasefire with the part of my brain that sees everything as material. No poems. No posts. Just rest. That’s the goal. We’ll see.

I’m going to cozy up with some poetry craft books. (You see the problem with this strategy, don’t you? Those books are going to absolutely turn my brain into flames and I’m going to have to be forcefully called back to daily life. You know that, right? You know it. I know it. But sure, let’s plan like I’m actually going to see a whole ass movie and go hear a band without begging for a pen.)

Yesterday, I wandered into a café, and there was a young man, someone I’ve only ever seen in his Official Librarian Mode. He noticed the Sylvia Plath biography in my hand and said he’d never read her. I blinked. “You’ve never read Plath?” I began, just starting to open that glorious can of worms. But then my phone rang. Conversation, gone. (But a poem? Probably already blooming in the background.)

Later that day, I finished a humor essay I started back in May and submitted it. To a long-shot journal. Nothing ventured, am I right?

And since the piece was already floating on my clipboard, I shared it with a literary friend when I answered an email. He wrote back warmly, and before I knew it, we were deep into a conversation about Southern food. Specifically, cornbread. You can tell he lives below the biscuit line. I’m not big on cornbread, but I’d love some of Mia’s cheesy cornbread! (That’s my eldest.)

All this to say: I haven’t even started not writing yet, and I’m afraid of failing spectacularly. Word Raccoon asks what exactly she’s supposed to do in the meantime, work on her tan? “Word” is right there in her name, she says.

Maybe I can tempt her with a book. She’d probably chew on it, though. 👀

Welcome, New Readers

To those who’ve just arrived, maybe from a Facebook post, maybe from a journal that featured one of my poems, or maybe from that half-finished café conversation, hi! Welcome!

Word Raccoon and I leave the porch light on for readers, rebels, and people with strong cornbread preferences. This space is messy, but the intentions are good. You’re welcome here, whether you want to wave or lurk.

🎵 Unexpected Bonus Track

Oh, and I mentioned over on Facebook (yes, Facebook, but that’s where most of my writer friends and our writing program alum group hangs out, so there we have it) that my poem, Authorial Intent Ale has been published. A friend commented that there’s “lots to admire” in it, and that he’s printing out a copy to save.

A poet friend.

To save.

Reader, I melted.

That’s the real dream: not going viral, not applause, just to have your work be quietly kept by someone who found something worth holding onto. Wow.

So anyway, I’m not planning on writing this weekend. But beforehand, I’m submitting essays and poems, being read, almost evangelizing Sylvia Plath, and contemplating whether a hummingbird is a sacred object. (Several have discovered our backyard. They’re mesmerizing miracles and WR wants to hug one but I told her no, no, they are too fragile. She’s not so great with the restraint, but she’s trying.)

Don’t put money on me not writing this weekend, friend. You might well lose it. But I’ll try to write less, anyway.