This morning, I huddled with my tea (in the Jane Austen mug, naturally) and the falling snow, all of us quietly keeping company.

I’m not usually a snow person. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s beautiful. But cold means having to be indoors, away from my friend the sun, and snow is a visible sign that it’s undeniably cold. 

But this morning I couldn’t wait to yank the curtains open and watch the snow drifting down while I read Austen while drinking from my Austen mug. I didn’t even realize the matchup until later. 

I waited a beat to go to the gym to let the snow melt a bit. I rarely enjoy driving and I am not a fan of driving in snow. Like, at all. 

When I got there, I discovered that others must’ve had the same idea because there were several there, including a mother with a baby in a carseat. Which worried me for the poor little one. Then again, everything worries me. 

Happy to report that the joints are doing better. In fact, I pushed myself some at the gym and am not yet feeling the effects. I want to mention a milestone but it may seem small potatoes to anyone else. Regardless, I marked it.

Today somehow turned into a lightning-round decision day: 

My birthday: Go away for the weekend or stay home? Eh. Might as well save the money and not go anywhere. I’m not feeling it this year.

Thanksgiving at home or travel? At home. 

But an at-home meal or restaurant? 

Dine out, unless the son (who will be joining us) has major reservations about it. Then I will gladly cook. But he’d better tell me soon if that’s what he wants.

Go on a winter writing retreat? 

I’m on the fence.

But also, my novel STILL isn’t finished and maybe, maybe she needs some quiet. Maybe she needs housekeeping and a daily prepared breakfast. Maybe she needs wooded trails (I did mention that things are going well for the body?) and yes, quite possibly some snow at a writing retreat.

That might interest me. 

Definitely maybe.

Yesterday morning, before my niece’s baby shower, I decided that before anything else, I wanted to write. I wrote a poem.

Then another.

And another. 

Word Raccoon says I really shouldn’t admit that I wrote twelve in the morning and more in the evening. 

I even wrote a poem about how years ago I noticed a poet listening to two girls talk about putting on lipstick and I’ll eat my hat if said person didn’t end up writing a poem about that, though I don’t know for sure.

(Oh, god. Is that too Van Gogh/Gauguin?)

Not according to WR.

I wish I could ask. 

I’m tempted to share my version of the poem being born here, but I only have a rough draft of it, and no. Not sharing. Not yet. Maybe never. It’s one of the tender ones. 

Mostly the poems from Saturday were of the art-as-revolt kind and one was so heated I would only ever publish it under a pseudonym. I came after pretty much every institution in my poems, every ready-to-wear, standard issue, outfit.

Speaking of, society, are we REALLY sure we want to return to wearing matching top and bottom pant sets? I wasn’t a fan the first time around, not a fan now. It’s too limiting, and the eye wants variety, loves. Or so WR tells me. 

And honestly, do we really need Garanimals for adults? 

(Obv. I’m not talking about suits, which are their own animal and not generally multihued and are smart as hell.) 

Now back to poetry.

Some of the poems are currently untitled. Some are temporarily titled. 

– Just Realized the World is Ending, Eventually (How cheery, am I right?)

– Puddles and Squirrels Will Complain

– Paddling

– That Damn Emily (from Our Town, loves)

– Redacted (It’s not THAT bad, but still.) 

– Redacted #2 (Don’t want anyone clutching their pearls on a Sunday, do we?) 

– Farmer’s Almanac Leaves the Scene

– Superstition Factory

– (…..) Cry (It’s a pun. I’m embarrassed. And also, that’s the hot potato one.) 

– Steeps

– Microwave Reheat #3

– Banned in Boston (placeholder, but that’s the vibe; it has everything: Cheap lipstick, black eyeliner, and Dollar Tree posterboard)

AFTER THE BABY SHOWER I WROTE:

– My Private Le Cordon Bleu (My newest Dutch oven, btw, is a beaut – white enamel, gold, filagreed knob. I think I’m getting addicted to them! And it’s not Le Cordon Bleu branded; IDK if they even make Dutch ovens.)

– Midwestern Caviar (Spoiler: it’s lentils) 

– Why Left, Not Right, in the Poem: The King’s Speech (Wish I had heard that one. But I was told about it second hand, so.) 

– Pretty to Think So 

– Marshalls and the Lipsticked 

The baby shower was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the impending arrival of a baby girl I cannot wait to hold, but it was unfortunately also a showcase of all who should have been there but were not. There was a nice turnout, for sure, but it was difficult not to notice those who are no longer with us. 

I spoke there with a niece about my youngest sister’s art. She is the one doing the sorting, and she revealed there are notebooks full of song lyrics, too. I have already politely asked for one drawing to frame, but now I want it all. I want every scrap of paper, every napkin she drew on. They’re not mine to ask for. As I’ve mentioned before, she has one child, a son. They are his now, as they should be.

(And maybe I had to go hide in the bathroom and cry for a minute at the shower hearing about those notebooks, but I survived.) 

I will ask for copies. In fact, Word Raccoon has an idea for a project using them if my nephew doesn’t mind. She says she can’t say anything else just yet, that I need a few months to breathe before I even consider it.

She also reminds me that I have a novel to finish. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It’s a rainy morning, which I don’t mind, not today, but Word Raccoon protests as if I control the weather. I’m placating her with classic Christmas music and our favorite umbrella. I tossed a pair of earrings into the bag before we left. I’m onto her.

Just before walking out the door, I discovered our usual café was closed. No notice. Just a FB post saying they’d be back Monday.

Uh huh.

But since I was already dressed (by WR, obviously) in a pink, liturgical-dance flavored dress (long-sleeved, ankle-length, plenty of polyester movement), and since she’d topped it with a pink and black checked flannel shirt (she knows we are very, very careful about flannel and we prefer flannel on men, but whatever, we reviewed it and it’s pink, so we kept it), and since we had on our silver shoes to protect our toesies, we visited the other writing place.

In a meta act, I read an essay this morning on reading by Mary Ruefle. We’d left the book in the not-our vehicle last week, but we retrieved it and are using it as our jumping-off point this morning. We’re doing that very new poet thing, encountering a new word and needing to write a poem about it now, now, now.

Well, I am a new poet, so there. 

The essay, called “Someone Reading a Book,” includes Ruefle recounting how she once threw a book across the room. Same, Mary, same. Mine was Of Human Bondage. I’ll keep this light, though it wasn’t that way for me, but basically, I thought I was finally on the brink of allowing myself to write true to who I was, only to be told that a mundane, artless life was the better option and possibly my duty.

Surely I can speak of Philip without spoiling a century-old novel?  In the end, he gives up on art and settles for his little “happy” life. Emphasis on little.

When I asked WHY HE COULDN’T HAVE BOTH, I was told artists didn’t do that. They either had one or the other, back then. There were no amateur artists.

I felt slapped. I felt heartbroken. I took it personally, because I was approaching, for the first time, permission to write from all of me, not just the “sanitized for your protection” small areas.

But I didn’t surrender. I rebelled. I lived the opposite of Philip’s life.

I would write. I would.

I had been writing, but safe, half-color words. Unobjectionable. Reader, I don’t write those things anymore. I also don’t write to shock, though. That implies I know what’s best for someone. And I can say from personal experience, no one does, though some people know you well enough to advise you. There are a handful I trust. Fewer still that I listen to.

It took time. It took stripping away so many, many things. I fought myself, argued, cried. I gave up concepts I had clung to like a floating log, the only thing solid in the sea around me.

Some ideas I stopped wrestling, because I discovered they simply were what they were. 

Then one morning I woke up and said “okay.” The storm was over. I was done trying to change what couldn’t be changed.

Just like that.

And I began writing poetry. 

Last night I reviewed some poems I haven’t looked at since their first drafts. WR interrogates many, many things. I let her.

Ruefle also mentions never having seen a painting of a man reading. I immediately thought of Sargent’s Man Reading, and a quick internet search turns up more, but her point stands. She says that paintings of women reading tend to be eroticized. As in, the act of a woman reading is eroticized.

I think it’s more that we rarely get the opportunity to witness unguarded moments. When people are not performing, we get to know parts of them that are only knowable when unknown to them.

She also mentions authors she felt she should read, and some she refused to.

I had somehow gotten the impression that Proust was a writer’s writer. Larry McMurtry has Duane, a character in multiple McMurtry novels (Texasville, Duane’s Depressed, more, read Proust on the advice of his therapist when he loses his wife, Carla.

I resisted. If memory serves, that therapist recommended Duane read one sentence a day, because it was just that difficult. It’s not that I’m afraid of difficult books. I’m afraid of discovering I won’t understand them.

Ruefle writes a sentence I don’t get. I think I know what she means, but she uses the phrase mirrored erotics in reference to reading, and I both know and don’t know what she means. And did she notice she used the word erotic twice in the same essay?

She also floats the idea of retiring a word an author overused once they die, as an honor, like retiring a jersey, maybe? But then she walks it back. Says language doesn’t want that. BUT IS SHE USING THE WORD EROTIC SO WE WILL PUT THE WORD OUT OF ITS MISERY ON HER BEHALF SOME DAY?

Is she plotting against the word? 

Maybe I’m trying too hard to be clever today. But another group has just descended on this café and I don’t want to go home in the rain, because at least these windows let in more light than our tragically carported house.

Once, in a class, someone brought in madeleines. I was reminded of the Proustian line, which I did know, though I’d never read the book. I wanted to read it. I wanted to love it. What if I read it and hated it?

What if I, who had conquered Woolf’s stream of consciousness, couldn’t penetrate the dense forest of Proust?

Also, it just seemed like a lot of work.

When I went to China in 2014, I decided that was the time. I took the first volume with me. I made myself read it. Slowly. I tried to enjoy the language. There were passages I greatly admired. I remember the plot feeling thin (and I don’t need much plot) and it struck me as a bit whiny and self-indulgent. I could be misremembering.

I was disappointed in myself for not enjoying it. But reader, I did not.

Still, I tried.

Ruefle shares a legend that Somerset Maugham read Proust while crossing the desert on a camel, and that to lighten his luggage, he tore the pages from the book as he went and let them drift onto the sand.

That’s gorgeous.

Ironically, I don’t know what I did with my own copy of Remembrance of Things Past. But I let go of the guilt. I decided my reading list would be my own. I would try a book. If it wasn’t for me, I’d let it go.

Word Raccoon agrees.

But Dear Reader, there are some books she will never give up on. There are some books she will read and re-read with great pleasure on repeat. They’re books that keep revealing new sides to her. She is very pleased with those. 

I woke this morning knowing I’d turned a corner. Not loudly, not with a sunrise and a soundtrack, but the kind of quiet shift you almost miss unless you’re paying close attention. Grief is sneaky like that: one morning, your body remembers how to breathe before your mind does. Today, I feel lighter. 

As if some secret courier had slipped my cares into their theoretical basket and carried them off. I’m so grateful. 

Word Raccoon said she never doubted we’d get here again, that we are indomitable. I told her she’s thinking of “Domino’s,” the pizza place.

She also told me as we were leaving the house for the café that it was fine that we weren’t wearing earrings, that we “probably” had some in our beauty pouch. 

Reader, we did not. But the café has a rack of locally made ones, and WR casually suggested I buy a pair of heart-shaped earrings before I even ordered tea. I told her I was onto her, but I bought them anyway. 

I’m supposed to have lunch with a friend later, but first: all things poetry. I’ll be submitting, sorting, maybe writing something new if the caffeine hits just right. (I’m thinking it’s hitting a little too much just now.) 

(Also, note to the friend who brunched with Mopey Drema yesterday: I probably owe you a text. You got the gray-cloud version of me, but today I feel a little more sun-dappled. Do-over soon?)

Last night, after dinner the guys playfully fought over who would get to take the leftovers of the meal I made for lunch today. Barry won. I caught up with Jeff for a few minutes and then excused myself to watch Gilmore Girls in the background upstairs while I submitted poems to places I probably shouldn’t have since I was in emotional hiding mode. 

Two packets felt off the second I hit send, but I was already in deep, so here we are. But you never know. 

I cleaned out four of six drawers of my downstairs desk/vanity today, so see, progress. My friend I’m meeting for lunch will be getting a gift bag full of my previously-reviewed treasures. Some of them are funny, some are practical. Some are still pretty cool but I refuse to be a packrat. 

I tried to convince myself I’d actually wear the watch. Reader, I will mean to, but I will not. In the box it went.

My mantra for fall decluttering is “Better, not perfect.” And “Less is more.” 

WR says her mantra has better in it, too: “Better not get rid of any of my earrings.” 

Don’t tell the café, but the tea I chose this morning would make a better tub cleaner. Or maybe since I am (I hope) over the worst of the long, dark tea time of the soul (definitely a Douglas Adams reference) we should’ve gone for something herbal. 

(I’m listening to Gilmore Girls now while writing. Ooh, we’re up to Season 1, Episode 10. Luke and Lorelai are at the hospital with her father, even though Luke hates hospitals. He says “I’ll be here,” when she goes in to see her dad. She sees his effort and loves him for it. And that is everything, Word Raccoon says.)

Settle down, WR. There are a lot of seasons to make it through yet. 

Then again, much like submitting poetry, you never know.

The crockpot is filled with a pot roast and root vegetables. Rolls are waiting to be baked for when Barry’s bestie comes over this evening. 

We have been prepping the house the past two days. It’s clean. (Not that it needed that much, but one task leads to another.)

I am getting ready to meet a friend for brunch in an hour and a half. 

I am showered. The hair is combed. I even have makeup and jewelry on.

I wrote poems yesterday morning and afternoon:

• And Now, Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program
• Posthumous Love Letters
• Paging Superman
• Mislabeled
• Long Enough?
• Haystacks
• At Your Own Risk
• Talismans
• Gens
• Fill the Hopper 
• Another Kind of Touch
• Ashes for Beauty
• Midwestern Manners

I submitted three packets yesterday.

Recorded two rejections. (One of the journals, I had to withdraw two poems that have since been accepted elsewhere, so I don’t blame them for rejecting the other two. Though someone tell them I wasn’t rejecting them first, just doing admin.) 

RSVP’d for another anthology reading I will be doing this weekend, before a niece’s baby shower. (Sprout of life. Hopeful.) 

Received, and was pleased by, an acceptance in another anthology: Bards Against Hunger: Indianapolis (and surrounding areas, obv.) They accepted my poem “Sonshine.”

There will be a reading for the anthology. 

Speaking of readings, Word Raccoon says to tell you that not only was I asked to read after all for Moonstone Center’s reading last Sunday, but I was asked to read first. 

Breathe, enunciate, and read more slowly than you think you should. At the end, thank the host as a way of both being polite and signaling that your poem is over. Those are my rules for reading. Especially when reading unexpectedly. 

WR says performance is important too, depending on the poem. The one we read was more earnestness than fire, so we tried to read with authority but no drama. (Is that the way to do it?)

We hope our sentence patterns today, WR and I, say all that needs to be said about how things are going.

They’re going. 

They’re tough.

One foot…you know.

Yesterday afternoon, once home, WR and I wrote the toughest poem we have ever attempted. We literally yelled into a towel on the porch in front of our house, wrote a few more words, and yelled and cried again. (Thankfully the street was deserted. We don’t blame it, though when we were through we raised our tear-stained face and looked for…well, we looked.) 

We managed to write it, though, and we are filing it under “This is necessary but this is a knife and we are putting it in the metaphorical butcher’s block until absolutely necessary to pull out as it is social commentary based on personal experience.”

We don’t know if we will ever be able to read it again ourselves. 

But the poems early in the day, at the cafe, flowed more easily than expected. The barista is also a fellow artist and we both created (in between his getting coffee for others) quietly on our own, with an occasional comment. 

Actually, a conversation we had just before I settled in to write prompted my first poem, which I really enjoyed writing, the one I called “Gens.” 

“Fill the Hopper” is about, shock, Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” 

Lest you accuse me of going for low-hanging fruit (you’re not wrong), remember that fresh things can be said about anything. 

And also: accessibility, babe.

And also also: I have to get past the backlog of things in my mind that I want to write about, talk about, before I can make room for more.

Hence “Haystacks,” too. But also, I live in the Midwest where I see the same scene on repeat, and yes, it sometimes includes hay. 

This post has taken a lot of effort, and yet I feel a bit lighter for having written it. Yesterday was rough. Very. I woke up still feeling like I had an anvil chained to my ankle. 

Even now, life is a miracle, an unexplainable, magical wonder and in between the pain (which is its own exquisite joy because it means you dared loved someone even knowing what it might cost), I am grateful.

WR sticks out her tongue at any of you who think that was too much. It’s okay to be earnest once in a while. 

This is “gratitude month,” right? (That’s the best way we can frame it, considering the holiday’s origins, right?) 

It also happens to be my birth month, as my son just reminded me via text.

True, the titles to yesterday’s poems seem a bit safe and predictable. They are just drafts. Just. (Although if you ever read “Mislabeled,” you’d know it’s spot on. But I am not going to ever, ever subject you to that. That’s the one, love. That’s the one.) 

I could end this with telling you that the house is filled with the scent of beef and potatoes, and it is. I could say it smells of pumpkins and apples, and it does. 

You know what? I honestly don’t know how to end this post. 

But it came to me suddenly what will make me feel better: I will rewatch The Gilmore Girls. By the end of the series, I will be furious at them both, but especially the early seasons will be just the thing. Yes, that and a cup of tea or hot chocolate. Perfect. 

P.S. Ugh, WR says the title of this post could have been taken straight from a list called “Blog Post Title Suggestions for the Utterly Uncreative.” Sorry, It’s all I’ve got.

NOW PLAYING: The Christmas Song. Nat “King” Cole forever, duckies!

Word Raccoon is pleased to announce that the issue of Suspended Magazine, Volume 3, that she has wriggled into is out today.

My poem, “What Does a Poem Do When No One’s Watching?” is in it.

WR says that technically, she’s the one doing things when no one’s watching (I just bet she is), ergo, it’s her poem. 

WR, I will call it my poem, you naughty raccoon, incapable of subtlety. There’s no way you, with your pom-pom earrings and total lack of impulse control, wrote it.

And why are you so damn comma happy?

Also, it’s early. No one needs an ergo on a Saturday morning. Or, maybe ever? 

My contributor copy is in the mail, currently caught somewhere between a post office bin and my porch. Suspended, if you will, between worlds. (Yes, I see what I did there.) 

I’ve been zooming in on the digital cover like I might spot the poem’s little limbs kicking inside. (That’s an inside joke. Cough, cough. Read the poem.)

This piece grew out of a question I can’t stop asking:
What happens to the words after we stop looking?
Do they keep growing, transforming?
Are they in conversation with the rest of the journal? With their sister poems on my laptop?

(WR: I’ve caught a few napping under the porch. They snore in stanzas.)

But truly, I barely had time to ask the poem’s titular question when I wrote it. This poem came roaring out during my spring poetry fever, where I wrote for hours without lifting my head or hand. Everything I hadn’t said for years leaked out in dozens of ways for weeks. (Months…a half year…shouldn’t there be a special word for half a year? Is there?) 

This poem haunted me, felt alive, stitched together from nerve and memory. Very Mary Shelleyan.

NOT Percy Shelley, but Mary, thank you.
And yes, I’m irritated that I still have to say “Mary” first, as if we’re expected to assume Percy unless told otherwise. Her ghost deserves better. She’s the one who built a mythic monster with words and kissed it alive. 

I’m just trying to do the same with a porch and a side of Midwestern potatoes sans parsley, thank you very much. (That will make more sense when you read to the end. WR is writing backwards today.)

Anyway, thank you to the editors at Suspended Magazine for letting this strange little poem-creature out into the world. I’ll share photos once my contributor copy lands.

Until then, may your poems behave while unsupervised.

No, I hope they don’t.

Because well-behaved art is just parsley on potatoes: unwanted, unneeded, and utterly bland. The untouched filler dish on a buffet.

You won’t often hear me say “keep it in your pen,” but this morning, as I await caffeine (mere feet away, so no crisis looming), I say exactly that.

Word Raccoon says we do not need more Lawrence-Welk-level art in the world.

(WR says she said what she said. Even if we did grow up watching his show.)

🎄 In the meantime, I HAVE CHRISTMAS MUSIC TO LISTEN TO!!!!! 🎄

Now Playing: Not Christmas music! Two more days!

I’m going to be maudlin, because I need to be. Word Raccoon says go right ahead and is standing by with a frown and a shaken bottle of Coke Zero to spray at anyone who complains.

Today, I threw away the last of the condolence flowers. I had to think and think to remember how they even came into the house. Were they delivered? Did someone bring them by? Did we pick them up?

I just couldn’t remember.

The vase is on the counter. I think I’ll wash it and donate it. I hate to throw it away, but I don’t need another one. It’s pretty, blue, large, but it’s…

Another one.

I can’t think too hard about what that means right now.

I need to say something that will likely piss off or hurt people I love. But I do need to say it. I guess I’ve said it before, but in different words.

My sister Cherokee was, in my heart, my third child. And maybe that helps explain why it’s been so tough.

When my oldest sister Tammy passed (only 17 months ago, dear god), I was hurt, I was broken, but she told us she was ready to go. That she was too tired to stay. Though she was a fighter, by the end, she was suffering, and none of us wanted that.

We were there when she passed. We knew it was happening. We told her over and over that we loved her. We sang to her. 

I saw the most beautiful kiss I have ever witnessed. 

Then we had the funeral. We gathered, told stories, and went to eat at her favorite restaurant afterward.

We grieved as a family.

Then our mom. She died in June. Again, we knew she was suffering, and things weren’t going to improve. Her quality of life was going downhill.

We were with her when she passed. We had her funeral.

With Cherokee, we haven’t had that. It’s been tough.

Today, going through the drive-thru after the gym, I saw the woman in the vehicle behind me.

She looked like Cher.

Healthy Cherokee. Before.

She did and she didn’t look like her. I knew it wasn’t her, of course, but I wondered if that’s what she would’ve looked like, had she not been ravaged by drugs.

The woman’s cheeks were full. She smiled. She glowed.

I don’t know the last time Cher looked that way.

I drove home. I came inside. I put my straw into my Coke Zero.

I picked up my laptop, put on my robe, and came to the porch.

There are some aches only writing can touch.

Word Raccoon replenished my porch stock of gingersnaps because they are apparently now Drema’s official mourning cookie. Didn’t know I was such a fan.

I wrote in cafés twice this week. Had some inspiring conversations. Wrote the poems. I learned the shy barista I thought maybe didn’t like me had actually told the new, talkative manager, “Don’t scare her off. We like her.”
Aw…same. 

WR and I went to the thrift shop and bought the white Christmas tree yesterday. It didn’t come with a box because of course it didn’t, but it’s pretty. I think it’ll be the porch tree. I can’t wait to see how Word Raccoon decides to decorate it. 

How we decorate: 

1. Put up the tree.
2. Gather items from around the house/holiday boxes/get an idea.
3. Start putting stuff on.
4. Repeat.

We let the tree tell us how it wants to be decorated. 

One year we put up five trees. Usually it’s just two, one large, one small. This year I may put up a dozen. I might go back to the thrift shop and buy all of the trees they have. 

I may put so many in the house we can’t walk between them. 

Or not. 

YES, I KNOW THE HOLIDAYS ARE GOING TO SUCK, HERBERT! I’M AWARE! 

Which is why we are planning now. 

As I said at the top of the post, only two days left until Christmas music listening time. I think I need it more than usual. I am going to play it on repeat, wear that shit out. 

Maybe the latter part of this post seems frivolous, but WR says tough shit. And would you like a Coke Zero, shaken, not stirred?  

Now Playing: The Great Remember by Steep Canyon Rangers 

Word Raccoon and I have been flirting with a cold. She insists we’ve dodged it, though I still sense some passive-aggressive sniffling. Last night, while we were curled up and theoretically resting, she sprang up from her seat and demanded we record “You Know, You’ve Been to Rome.”

Yes, the poem we shared months ago, but apparently she needed to hear it in our voice, with our porch-night rasp, the leaves blowing outside, and everything we were carrying in our chest at 9:44 p.m. or whenever the hell it was.

So we did.
And you can listen to it here, if you like:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/325601/episodes/18097359 

I want to say this: I kept this version of the poem because it’s the first, hot-dashed version.
Now I see it as the tent, not the tabernacle.
It’s housing the expanded poem I feel will come someday.
It’s not here yet, but even as I read it, I felt the pull to revise.
More sensory details. More clarity. More truth. More Raphael. 

(Art that is buried doesn’t have to stay that way, that sort of thing.) 

But that’s in the emotional poetry queue, tucked in the “not yet, not yet” zone, if that makes sense.

It will come.

Also, I’m too new a poet to know whether I’m supposed to explain choices like job instead of jobs, in my poem when I KNOW which is technically correct, or my waffling over like versus as.

I talk about it in the recording.

But it reminds me of something else: when someone asks how I’ve been, I always want to say good, even though I know it should be well.

When I say well, I hear a whisper: “Are you ashamed of your upbringing? Of your people? You know good is what we say.”

Reader, no one ever actually said that to me. It’s my own hesitation.

But still, good is what I say. Most days. If I say it in front of you and I know you know better, take it as a compliment, WR says. 

That’s another poem, another time.

Anyway, Rome is part of my Look, I Built a Cathedral collection, which is in search of a home, although this poem is a relative newcomer to the collection. Once I wrote it, it was obvious to me (and WR) that it belonged in it, Dear Reader.

This morning, still high on our dramatic recording session and low on actual cold symptoms (sorry, friends I rescheduled with. I was being overly cautious because I didn’t want to infect you), Word Raccoon got dressed in her rust-colored bib overalls and a pink sweatshirt.
I raised one eyebrow and said, “You sure, love?”
She hissed, threw on a multicolored scarf like a whole thesis defense, and strutted to the café.

Reader: she did, in fact, make it work.

She also forgot the book of poetry essays we meant to bring.
But no matter. An idea arrived anyway, shimmered like steam above the rim of our teacup, like a polite little ghost.

The work always finds us, if we dress to meet it.

Today, I’m two poems in.
More content than titles.
The introspective kind.

Unrelated: Three days until official Christmas music season begins.

And before I forget, we also saw an ad for Christmas trees at the local thrift shop.
Now we want every single one.
There’s a white one.
There’s a flocked one.
There’s probably a broken one that smells like forgotten pine dreams.
We want them all.
Someone should stop us.

So this is a post about resisting colds, rereading yourself out loud, and letting your raccoon heart get dressed for meaning, even when it’s mismatched.

Even when it’s a Tuesday.

Except wait. It’s Wednesday. Word Raccoon just giggled and said like it matters, Babe.
It’s always Art O’Clock in here.

Word Raccoon, my writing persona, has news. The good kind.

My poem “So Much Depended” will be published in Moonstone Arts Center’s upcoming anthology Remembering Ezra Pound. We’re so excited!

I’ve been, like many others, transfixed by William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow,” that Imagist gem of a poem that you can’t unsee. That wheelbarrow. Those chickens.

I found myself thinking not just about the poem, but about the relationships that shaped it, the complicated, formative bond between Williams, Ezra Pound, and Marianne Moore. How literary friendships shape a writer’s voice.

(I know writing friendships have shaped mine.)

So I wrote my poem with all of that in mind and more.
And then I saw the notice to submit to this anthology just before it closed. I figured it was a long shot, but WR lives for long shots, so we submitted it.

Word Raccoon and I are so happy it found such a good home. A little poem that depended on wheelbarrows, literary friendships, and comparing doctoring to being a mechanic, if you will. (I want so badly to make that parallel, but what would I say, mechanicing??) 

(I have written two poems about WCW, but we only submitted one.)

There’s a virtual launch reading next Sunday (Nov. 2 at 2 PM ET), and I may or may not be reading at it, waiting to hear, but I’ll be there either way, cheering and sipping something cozy from a ceramic mug.

Here’s the Zoom link if you’d like to join us:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/okGox05rQ6eQlDzzh1GYtQ

Word Raccoon will be on her best behavior. Probably.
She will definitely be wearing earrings. You know the ones. (Unless she wears…well, you’ll see. Or not.) 

Now back to yesterday. (Were we there? Who cares!) 

We were asked to review a company’s pajamas. We said yes. They arrived yesterday, and we thought it would be lovely to throw on the pink and black comfies giving Doris Day.

I opened the package.

GREEN pajamas?

I would NEVER have ordered green pajamas. No freakin’ way. The bottoms were buffalo check black and green. The top, solid green. Like evergreen green. I don’t mind that for the holidays, but this was a random fall evening. 

Wait, though. They’re shorts, so winter colors? Would have to be a warm winter.

I should pack them up and send them back with a complaint, not saying Que Sera, Sera to this trickery, but I just don’t think I have it in me. I assume it was a mistake, but whatever. #FirstWorldProblems

Besides, the holidays are coming. So fine, I guess. 

Speaking of…I have twice ALMOST listened to Christmas music this week, but I made myself stop. No, not a note, not until AT LEAST November 1. 

The coffee I had for breakfast today (I know I said I don’t like coffee, but reasons) was apple flavored and full of promise, but it feels like the most uncaffeinated coffee ever made. 

A giant mug and a half in, and I’m still fighting sleep like a toddler. I think I’m catching the same cold Barry’s been nursing. Great…because that’s what we need right now.

Preventative Zicam taken (WR REFUSES to acknowledge that she does, indeed, have a congested nose), heater humming, we’re wrapped in blankets on the porch while listening to John Green talk about his current trip to the Philippines (I think?).

(Word Raccoon, hands on her hips, wants to know why people we know IRL don’t have video channels. Can I request that for the holidays, People I Love Reading and Riffing on Things, audio and/or video versions, Dear Reader?…Would it kill you to volunteer to read a classic for LibriVox?) 

Last night I sat out here too, breaking my own rule by watching stupid YouTube videos instead of writing. This porch is supposed to be my productive space, but honestly, I was in the active grieving stage again and couldn’t make myself do anything but surf and watch and wondering how poor Charlotte Bronte felt when she lost her siblings. (I am incredibly thankful not to have lost all of mine, but two is two too many!) 

And yes, HERBERT, I KNOW Bronte is supposed to have a diaeresis over it, but ask me if I care enough to do it right now?? Who’s going to go find that on my keyboard, HERBERT, you?? 

WR reminds me that we DID get our hair done yesterday after reading and writing several hours, so that was something.

So what that we can’t currently remember what we wrote? We do remember learning from the Ruefle book of essays that linguists do not know the origin of the word “fear”? Can that be right? We wrote about that, as well as other things that we do know.

We wrote in a journal for the first time in a while. Paper one. Big letters. My god, this medicine for my fingers better take effect soon. I think it’s supposed to take six to eight weeks. It’s been two. My handwriting looks like a kindergartener’s. (Insert laugh-cry or scream with frustration emoji, depending on the day.) 

WR still wants to show the hair off, but the only runway I’m walking today is the one between the porch swing and a nap.

And maybe, MAYBE we will submit some poetry after lunch. I wish I could persuade her to eat something besides carbs. Maybe a nice salad?

Anyway, I’ll have to keep you posted on whether or not I’ll be reading on Sunday. 

Now, can anyone tell me how to pronounce Passaic River, just in case? 

Eh, Word Raccoon says we’ll wing it. 

Word Raccoon says she wants a “Start Over, But Make It All Hank Green” button on YouTube.
Actually, no. 

She wants a “Make It All Green Brothers” button.

Because YouTube is starving us. As if insomnia isn’t bad enough, it’s trying to cure it with:

• Seventeen faux science videos a day and we know they’re faux because none of them feature Hank Green OR Neil deGrasse Tyson. (We don’t trust anyone else with the science. Kidding. Maybe.)
• Family vloggers from that one particular state so dry on all fronts that I don’t know how they smile so damn much. Aren’t they dehydrated en masse? Also, why are they so creepy? 
• A creator who used to be thick and now thinks that gives her license to verbally slap cookies out of the hands of anyone over a size 8. Rude!
• “Alarming New Ways You’re Failing at Skin Care” (I will never buy twenty products for my face, y’all. That’s BS.) 
• Ten dessert recipes to make with cottage cheese and none of them cheesecake, which would at least be closer than brownies. No! Just…no!

What we want in our YouTube feed is:

Hank Green explaining the microbiome like it’s sacred scripture, and John Green weeping over a gas station because it represents everything broken and still beautiful about America. 

Why isn’t there a YouTube button labeled:

“Please Replace This Trash with the Green Brothers’ Tenderness, Curiosity, Intelligence, and Sometimes Juvenile Humor”

One press, and suddenly my feed would be full of:

Smart People Feeling Things 

Hank Green vs. the Chaos of the Internet (and knitters. Oh, Hank…)

John Green Staring Into the Middle Distance While Holding a Copy of Leaves of Grass while his wife approaches him with a glass of water and his meds that he admits are sometimes difficult to take. Take the damn meds, John! Just do it.

No more YouTube videos like:

• “Alpha Male tells you What Women Should Wear” (Rigggghhhttt.)
  
• “How to Fix Your Life with a Daily Placenta Smoothie and 500 Squats” (If you don’t get how disgusting this is, I can’t help you.)
• “Thrift Shop Finds” (I’m onboard for those. Especially blazed and glazed’s channel, but that highlights another issue: YouTube forgets to show me things I like. DID I SAY STOP SHOWING ME THOSE??)

Give us something like this (these do not exist, dear reader, just should):

• “Let’s Talk About Death. But First: Turtles” (John.)

• “Why that Viral Video is Wrong and I’m Sorry to Point this Out but not Really but Hey, They Were Asking to be Debunked” (Hank. And thank you!)
  
• “The Thing About Infinite Jest and Mortality” (John. And BTW, why didn’t we all get it – it’s in the title, y’all…it’s in the effing title, g-d it!)
  
• “Why Crying in Target Is Scientifically Justified” (Probably Hank. With either a flow chart or maybe Hank filming John wiping his eyes with a soft flannel shirt on a hanger and contemplating the beginning of fall as a metaphor for the end of youth.)
  
• “This Gas Station Made Me Rethink Hope” (Definitely John. Partially covered above. If John ever shifts from writing to painting, a gas station is definitely on his list to paint. One he saw on a childhood road trip through Arizona that sold clay, unpainted turtles. His painting will probably eventually hang next to Nighthawks in the Art Institute.)
  

I’m really not asking for much, just:

A compendium of Hank’s complete footnotes whispered for sleeping purposes and atoms and bees and unhinged Wikipedia corrections and how he turned his cancer diagnosis and treatment into the opportunity to educate.

Although sorry, Hank, but your voice has too many peaks and valleys. Great for your excited videos, but I think John’s calmer tone is gonna have to do the reading.

John’s melancholic metaphors, his oddly specific obsessions with plague history and AFC Wimbledon. And both his love of Crown Hill Cemetery (me, too) and his gentle negging of Indiana. Which I will try not to resent him for.

Dear YouTube,

Please give us the Greenified Algorithm.

Let us start over. Give us videos we will actually enjoy. 

Serve us a feed curated by the emotional range of two brothers who would absolutely return their shopping carts and then make a video about why that matters, though John would talk about how it’s the thoughtfulness to others and Hank would speak on the economics of returning them vs. not.

Please more: 

“Hank Green Explains Why Your Emotions Are Scientifically Measurable and Also, Slime Mold Is Awesome. Here, Smell.”
“John Green Reads a Poem While Crying Into a Mug of Tea, Then Auctions the Mug to Fund Tuberculosis Treatment in Five Countries.”

Let me learn something and feel something. Let me be entertained and inspired.
Let me be…

Green-pilled. (Too much?) 

Okay, there are other types of videos I’d enjoy too, not just the Brothers Wim, but WR is not in the mood to see her post shape shift further and oh yeah, that hair appointment has been rescheduled to today, so no time.

But if the Green brothers were to take up ASMR hair brushing, and IF the algorithm gods are listening, I mean….

Word Raccoon shuffled into the room this morning wearing yesterday’s eyeliner and carrying a mug of tea she didn’t make. She sat at the table like she was in a chapel and whispered, “It’s today.”

She meant this:

My poem, “Mutual Mass” appears today in The Dew Drop.  Many thanks to them. https://thedewdrop.org/2025/10/26/drema-drudge-mutual-mass/

(The original link was being a little shy, but it’s fixed now. Thank you to anyone who tried to visit the poem earlier.)

It’s one of those poems I wrote months ago and then forgot how much I needed. But rereading it now, in the quiet aftermath of my sister’s death, I feel it in my bones. 

The god in this poem is not booming or dazzling or demanding. She’s tired. She sits beside you, eyes closed. She offers a drink and asks for your witness.

And that’s the whole thing.

When I wrote it, I was thinking about how exhausting it must be to be seen as divine. How even god must ache beneath all that expectation. How maybe what sanctifies a moment isn’t strength, but stillness. Not thunder, but shared silence.

“Mutual Mass” is part of my poetry collection-in-progress, Look, I Built a Cathedral, which is currently seeking a home.

This one’s special to me. Not dramatic, not flashy. Just the holiness of quietness. The miracle of sitting beside someone without needing them to fix anything. Just… being.

You can read it.

You can sit beside it if you’d like.

No need to say anything.

You were

made for this.