I think I lost myself in The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams as I read that enthralling novel. (Yes, yes, low-hanging fruit of a sentence, but I’m not writing a review, so hush.) I needed to let it soak in, needed to absorb it like tea needs time in the cup. More on it some other time. It’s a “highly recommend,” and Word Raccoon may still be living in its pages.

So far, I’ve read two books this year. After barely limping across the Goodreads finish line last year (and who could blame me? What a cruddy stretch the second half of 2025 was), I’m feeling good about this quiet start.

Word Raccoon, however, is not entirely sold on 2026 yet. For one thing, a herd of deer decided to play a game of chicken with Barry’s van the very morning he went back to work after the holidays. He’s fine, but the van is not. And now, brace yourselves, we are temporarily in possession of a truck.

A big, black, masculine truck.

Yes, I know the make and model. No, I am not saying it out loud, because WR might get attached. She’s been caught humming Springsteen and requesting flannel on laundry day, and I will not lose her to truck life.

No shade to the truck-loving masses. But for me? A truck is the flannel of vehicles. Cozy for someone else. Not my aesthetic. 

I said what I said.

Here’s something we do love: the first poetry acceptance of the year arrived this week! And it’s for one of those rare pieces that split me open on the day it came through, the kind I still can’t reread without something in me trembling: “Don Your Holy Floaties, Babe.” 

It’s equal parts daring and demanding. Word Raccoon says it came from the depths of the poetic well, and is from the muse. 

I believe her.

Funny thing, she and I received a second acceptance for it the very next day. Which is exactly the kind of math WR loves: a poem so fierce it tried to exist in two places at once. We had to let the second editor know it had already been claimed, but they were lovely and invited us to send something else in the future. We will.

I can’t explain how much it means that not just my quieter poems find homes, but my louder ones, too. I was afraid those might get me banned in Boston (or wherever). Or at least politely ignored. But that doesn’t mean I can stop writing either kind. As the title of one of my poems says: It’s all the same damn you.

More on the publication front re: “Holy Floaties” when we have more details. For now, I’m going to try to stay out of that tall, tall truck, keep reading, and let the poems do what they do, float me forward, holy or not.

(Secret: they are all holy, even the lighter ones.)