Monthly Archives: August 2025

I brought Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town to the beach. I’d never read it, and what better time? A classic, or so I’d been told, a book about the poetics of place. (The title kinda tells us that.) I read it under a blue-and-white cabana, spreading the pages with delight. Nodding along.The first page broughtContinue reading “Triggered”

Friday night, August 1, Barry and I found ourselves at the Wunderkammer Company in Fort Wayne, Indiana, breathing in incense and music. The lights were low, the ceiling high, and the air hung full of reverence. We had come to hear Emma Swift. But in a way, this story started years ago. Before Emma’s pandemic-eraContinue reading “Art and Incense: A Friday Night with Emma Swift’s Music”

Now Playing: “Don’t Know Why,” Norah Jones Word Raccoon can’t get her words to stand up straight todayShe tried a poem or two, but they laid down on the job Then she wrote more flash fiction about those two doomed darlings Bonnie and Clyde who seem increasingly unstuck in time which was amusing and alarmingContinue reading “My Heart is Drenched in Wine (No alcohol was consumed in the writing of this post, thank you very much)”

by Word Raccoon Now Playing: “More Than Words,” Extreme Psst… persona prose poem ahead. No need to panic. No need to @ me. It’s just Word Raccoon, cruising in metaphor. A revised version may appear elsewhere in the future. Once upon a Sopranos-soaked decade ago,Word Raccoon had a very specific dream:a Cadillac Escalade.Gold wheels.A statement.Obnoxious.Tacky.Ironic.AContinue reading “All Revved Up With Somewhere to Poem”