I was going to just drop this link and run, but I can’t abandon a poem like that.
Remember I mentioned Reading Crush a while back? My thanks to Cathexis Northwest Press for publishing it. I’m honored and a little terrified to have this one out in the world, if I’m being honest.
I’m so honored to be among such good company. Please read all of the fantastic poems in the issue!
This poem was sparked by my memory of reading Richard Siken’s Crush in my late 30s. It hit me like a fever dream I didn’t know I’d been postponing. The poem that emerged years later isn’t just about that book, it’s about the life I was living when it found me. (IYKYK.)
Word Raccoon isn’t thrilled about this, but I do feel a content note is warranted. This one’s spicy but not gratuitous, not for shock, but it does deal frankly with themes of longing, constraint, and bodily hunger stirred by art.
Content Note: This poem contains themes of desire, constraint, and embodied response to literature. It includes sexual imagery, strong language, and reflections on motherhood and identity. Proceed if you’re okay with vulnerability, heat, and a few lines that burn on contact.
Oh, and always: please don’t entirely conflate me with my writing persona. That would be a mistake. Word Raccoon is hissing at the mere idea.
Although, of course there’s a seed of truth. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a poem. Just don’t get too literal, okay, loves? 😀
It’s Labor Day weekend, planned over here as a thrifty “staycation.” Word Raccoon insists we have done plenty of the staying but almost none of the “cationing.” She got her orchard trip, but the rest of the weekend has been all work. She is furious and says she might not even go along to the movies tomorrow. Which would be a shame, and makes no sense because she’d enjoy the movie.
Eleven submission packets one day, five or six hours wrangling a chapbook the next…I don’t blame her. The chapbook that began as Waxing the Parasitical Muse has now, through Word Raccoon’s mischief, become Intellectual Domme Energy, after one of my poems. She says she renamed it as payback. I believe her.
(Actually, the name was chosen for an “edgier” press submission and once I named it that, it kinda grew on me, even though I don’t wear heels anymore. But my poetry sometimes does.)
This morning she staged another coup. “It’s Monday,” she said, “and you know that on Mondays we write poetry at the café.” I argued: “It’s Labor Day, surely they are closed.”
She reminded me the owner lives across the street from us and that all I had to do was spy on his car or call. I called. They were open. She demanded we go. I demanded she change out of her pj’s.
So we packed up Nine Gates, read a heady, inspirational chapter once there, and took notes. We will not say copious, because that sounds stale, but okay, copious notes. (That’s another post, for sure. That chapter!)
Hirschfield’s essays are so universally focused that I honestly do not know a blessed thing about her personally. Usually I need to know something about a person to trust their craft advice. But with her, it works. They are full-bodied scripture for writers.
Still, every now and then she writes a sentence that stops me cold and I just think, No. Absolutely not. That surprises me, too. And obviously, it’s just my opinion, and a beginner’s opinion, at that. I admit it. And now I feel embarrassed for having said anything at all.
Word Raccoon does not. She rarely feels embarrassed about anything. Silly raccoon.
I cannot fully explain how Hirschfield’s essays affects me. But they do. One chapter to go.
WR and I drafted a couple of poem ideas, and were delighted by an unexpected coffee date, one who bought a t-shirt and never got to read his book at all, alas, for my Nine Gates jabbering.
Later, we visited the cemetery. My mom’s death date is now carved into the bench she shares with my dad. The graves are leveled, tidier, less raw, still sad. It felt so real, seeing that. So final.
But I saw a picture of her yesterday on my phone and smiled and my heart didn’t ache as much.
Word Raccoon said I deserved a Coke Zero after all that. I agreed. (What? It’s a holiday weekend. Hopeless, our fizzy lifting drink addiction, isn’t it? Well, she and I like what we like. And trust me, we like it, but not as much as we like our Muse. WR, stop flirting!! 😉)
And in the middle of it all today, an acceptance for my poem “Casting Spells on Scarecrows.” More info to follow. Proof that even when WR sulks, the work is worth it. We had only just tweaked and sent it yesterday. Yesterday! That thrill is double. Published or not, it is always worth it.
Someone called my poems metamodern, saying “You don’t ironize to escape feeling, and you don’t bare your feelings without irony. You let the two spin around each other, like a double helix.”
I hope that’s true. Do you think so? (Does it sound like I’m bragging? I’m questioning and delighting in it too. Because that sounds like me, I think?? Also, can I get that on a t-shirt?)
Either way, I’ll take it. Maybe I am a metamodernist with a raccoon for a sidekick? A hungry, demanding, funny, loving and lovable (most days) Word Raccoon. And right now, she’s reminding me that we skipped lunch.
Happy holiday, Word Raccoon, and everyone else. I hope you had a good one, even if you had to work. Which sucks.
I just accidentally submitted a poem with a typo in it to Harvard Review.
Harvard Review. Sob.
And how’s your day going, LOL?
It’s fine. It’s fine. The typo was not, say, the word “poetry” spelled wrong. It was Sisyphus. Which, to be honest, I’m still not sure I can spell correctly. I keep flipping the “i” and “y.” Sigh. WHY DIDN’T I RUN SPELL CHECK???
Obviously, Harvard Review was a long shot anyway. But smh!
In my defense, I was still a little fluttery from the day before, when Word Raccoon finally did the thing she’s been meaning to do for years: she went to an apple orchard.
Yes, she sat still in the little green wagon and let someone pull her past the sun-warmed bins of Galas and Honeycrisps and those weird knobbly ones that only old-timers know by name.
She didn’t quite sit still, of course; Word Raccoon isn’t known for stillness, but she managed to hold the bag for the apples and pointed out flowers and yelled, “Look at that sky!”
It was the perfect day: sunny, crisp, and scented with apples. Naturally.
AND they sold cider slushes and WR downed one and gave herself a brain freeze TWICE in the process!
Word Raccoon did not throw any rotten apples (this time), though she did pose beside a knobby apple tree and tried to make friends with a pumpkin. Both encounters went about as well as you’d expect.
(And there was no actual wagon. She only wished for one.)
Yesterday I also received a very kind rejection from one of the first places I submitted a chapbook to, back in May.
It was personalized, saying though it wasn’t a winner, they had received thousands of entries and that this collection (mine) was close. Almost ready. (Which reminded us of what that one journal said about our one poem. So it feels good to know we’re getting there.)
They said to submit again in the future.
Word Raccoon danced.
(I actually did revise that chapbook a couple of weeks ago. But I submitted it right out of the gate as soon as it was written because I wasn’t keeping that hot lava living in my laptop without an outlet. LOL. Also, I had no idea if it was any good.)
So what does a creature do when she’s full of orchard air and typo regret?
She realizes it’s the end of the month and so those journals she’s been meaning to submit to? They’re closing to submissions soon. How did that happen!!
She rushes to put together individualized packets of poetry, hand picked for journals. Which means she polishes poems she thought were already polished and now she’s like, this, now, here. NOW it’s right.
She turns that hybrid poem that was a song/poem into an actual poem and bundles it with another band of freaks (she means that affectionately) and packs them off to a journal that will treat them gently, she hopes.
She makes breakfast bagel sandwiches with leftover chicken and loses track of time as she encourages someone to “go, go” to his favorite music store so she won’t feel neglectful while she goes down the submission hole. She never means to be, but she can be so absorbed…
She hopes maybe you’ll go to your version of the orchard. Maybe you’ll submit the thing, typo and all. Maybe you’ll do something sublime of your own.
(Two neighborhood children are pulling weeds from the sidewalk in front of our house and placing them in a pot and one has a funnel. Help yourselves, friends. It’s so sweet and inexplicable; I’d love to ask what they’re doing but I wouldn’t dream of interrupting. Now they’ve found something fascinating in our brush pile, vines, and seem mesmerized by them, too.)
Anyway, that’s where Word Raccoon is today. There’s a fresh Sagittarius apple in her paws and a poem in her teeth.
Her tastebuds are overwhelmed with taste testing an abundance of apples.
She worried about the windfalls beneath the trees at the orchard yesterday. What will happen to them? She knows squirrels eat them, so maybe they won’t go to waste. Imagine letting those gorgeous beauties rot on the ground.
What would those neighbor children do at the orchard? They’d have a ball with those windfalls, I bet. (A third boy has joined them. Are they now officially a pack?)
Word Raccoon adores apple trees. The family homestead in West Virginia had a few apple trees and when she first visited it after moving there from NJ, she was told they were trees her great-grandfather had planted. It seemed wrong to sink her teeth into one of the sour crab apples as she walked up the hill to the graveyard later and contemplated his grave, trying to reconcile this apple from a tree he had planted and yet there he was, gone.
And she had never met him, but desperately wanted to know him. She was told he was stern, a preacher. His picture made him seem so, but grandpas always had a tender spot, if you looked for it. She was sure he’d have loved her, had she met him. Or she hoped he would have.
He had also played guitar. Most of the men in the family did.
Even a couple of the women, or so photos she found later told her.
WR wrote two poems last night, one of them that has no reason for being, and thus is only a vignette and it’s pretty but so what because it has no heart yet. It will keep.
Titles: “She Cleans Up,” “Banana Split Rowboat,” and she found one tucked into another last night from the day before: “Cruising.”
Good grief! Is that the time? I think Word Raccoon needs lunch. Will she notice if I give her (more) leftover chicken, this time in a salad?
Hey, I’ve submitted to five journals already today (counting HR and the typo, sigh) along with tweaking several poems.
Leftover chicken on a salad it is, WR! Or an apple and a caramel rice cake. Your choice.
(Footnote: it’s now back to two boys. One of the originals was called inside for lunch, I assume.)
I let Word Raccoon buy a hummingbird pin at the thrift shop yesterday to commemorate our outing, though she didn’t earn it.
She was supposed to sit quietly in the shopping cart while I hunted through the racks, but once she thought she spotted her favorite birb across the shop, she was impossible. Wriggling, squirming, pawing at the air. Decorum? What’s that? She wasn’t going to miss a sighting like this, she said.
I tried to hush her, tell her that not everyone is interested in your favorite guilty reading pleasure novel, WR, and who cares that you just discovered those fun heart-shaped sunglasses?
I’m afraid she made a pest of herself, as ever. To everyone in the shop, probably.
It took all I could do to get her to mind her own beeswax and leave others alone!
In fact, that’s how she ended up with the hummingbird pin. “See! It looks just like the hummingbirds out,” she said.
How could I say no after that? Also, it shut her up.
Mr. Frog carries his new friend, Hummingbird.
The pin looks vintage, though I didn’t spot any markings. I like it regardless.
WR nestled it into a pink depression glass mug and wheeled it around for a bit, considering. But we both agreed: the mug? Reproduction.
It’s always nice to get a second, valued, opinion.
Who wants a reproduction when you can have an original?
The thrift shop is a lovely place to find originals.
You can find used books and vinyl, or funky vintage clothing, if you know how to hunt.
And sometimes, you find a new-in-box kitchen gadget you’ve been quietly searching for for months: a potato ricer. Mashed potatoes are definitely in WR’s future. (Oh, but without butter. Sob. Still in the no-dairy experiment zone.)
Yesterday brought another happifying thing: I’m thrilled to share that one of my little darlings, Obligatory Cherry Flip, is being published by Macrame Literary Journal! The poem mentions my precious mother-in-law, my Mawgy, so this one feels special, though it’s not about her per se. It is about her “cherry flip.”
I miss her. She’s still with us but she’s not…with us. You understand.
Four poems yesterday, me and Word Raccoon, side by side, though it took some birthing:
I Looked Out For You
You Done?
a betrayal of the universe
Something in the Rumours (yes, spelled that way on purpose, love)
“Rumours” was especially fun to write. It explores the fascinating friendship-maybe-more between George Harrison and Stevie Nicks. I can’t tell you how obsessed I am with this now, because I didn’t know about it until yesterday, and now WR and I need the deets! All of them!
The others? One has a lighthouse in it. Because of course it does.
One is about how artists have a responsibility to use their gifts. Unless they don’t. My opinion, honestly, is divided on this. I think I need one good conversation to hash it out.
And one is… Let’s just put it in the freezer, shall we?
And mortified as I am at Word Raccoon’s behavior at the thrift shop, I’m still smiling at all the treasures she found.
What if I hadn’t kept her on such a tight leash? I’m afraid to trust her, but what if she’s not as incorrigible as I fear?
Maybe she would have charmed more than pestered and found (or given) even more treasure. She keeps handfuls of it in her pockets she delights in distributing.
But she kept complaining about her throat being dry.
My glasses. Oops. Maybe the rain blurred me enough to forget?
The book I’ve been reading, Nine Gates. That was on purpose, love. Rainy day + deep read? Pass. Cozy read? Yes, please.
Any expectation that the café porch will be habitable before mid-morning, if at all.
And, dammit, my computer cord.
Things I Did Not Leave at Home
Word Raccoon.
My regret at scheduling grocery delivery for the first time instead of pickup. I wasn’t thinking of rain yesterday, and now the delivery folks will have to.
My determination to create today. Not sure what.
My sweater. It will be needed.
My throw for when my legs get cold.
Things I Wish I Had Left at Home
Writing doubts. Doubts in general. Aimlessness.
The task list I can’t do anything about here.
The certainty that I need to sort my clothes again, which means trying things on, strategizing, forecasting, donating. (I am grateful to have clothes to share, for sure. But still.)
The things I wish I had said yesterday when someone was politically incorrect. I tried to redirect.
I should have let Word Raccoon at them.
Guess I need to sort my courage, too.
I’m listening to what Apple Music calls my “most loved” tracks.
Most loved, or most tortured by?
A rainy day calls for Sunshine Saturday instead, I suspect, or its ilk.
Word Raccoon is solar powered, light-seeking.
UNRELATED, BUT IN VIEW:
A poor young guy in a gray suit, long black hair, glasses, is being herded through a job interview,
coffee untouched. He’s nervous AF, doing fine, but my pity spills anyway.
Here’s what we’re not doing today, WR:
Not listening to this music. Not feeling sorry for a guy who might well get the job, or might hate it if he does.
Not apologizing for the window table. We got here first.
Not averting our eyes at passing traffic
As if it is a magnet that also burns.
(WR, I don’t think that makes sense.
She’s sticking her tongue out at me saying
DOES SO!) “If it doesn’t want to be seen, it shouldn’t pass. If we want to write about it, we will,” she says.
(We want to. We will.)
If we want the bacon we smell here, we’ll buy it.
We will not go gently into this gray day.
Go ahead, give us a do-over on last night’s conversation. This time, we’re ready.
Word Raccoon is gnawing bacon
in front of the unlit fireplace.
She’s full of herself because
someone stroked her pom pom earrings again
yesterday at the concert.
Maybe I’d better rethink where I let her wear them.
Or put an “ask first, please”
sticker on them.
(He is our friend, but hey!)
WR loves attention but forgets
she’s not a plush toy!
I flip over to Green Day instead.
That album with the ridiculous title.
I’m not in the mood to even write it.
WR is chanting it. She’s such a child. The music is perfect for rain: upbeat, cereal-bar music.
Some mornings, the Muse wakes you up before you’re ready. Sometimes it’s not the capital-M Muse, the one who brings poems and revelations, but a smaller muse. An impulse. A nudge. Or a spark.
I call those sparks musettes. They’re little sensory moments that might lead to writing, or might just make the day shimmer. Either way, they’re worth paying attention to.
This morning started early. Word Raccoon took an ibuprofen, put on The Office Ladies, and quietly turned off my alarm like I wouldn’t notice.
I woke up at 8:30. I knew it was payback. She didn’t get caffeine yesterday after breakfast. That wasn’t on purpose, I just forgot. By the time I remembered, it was too late to caffeinate further without ruining sleep. So we read until we drifted.
Or, she refused to settle, watched shorts, half-listened to podcasts, and drained my phone battery to 30 percent.
On Dear Hank and John today, John Green confessed he once ate an SD card because he thought it was a chip. He was awake. That makes me feel slightly better about once putting an AirPod in my mouth in my sleep.
They said something about poetry on that same podcast, but I had to skip a lawnmower segment. Too gruesome for WR. I might check the transcript later.
Anyway. Muses.
I’m still reading Nine Gates by Jane Hirshfield. Still beautiful. Still a little cryptic. I rarely know exactly what I’ve gotten from a chapter, but I can feel something shifting. I’ve been told that’s the way to read it. Open mind, open heart, no expectations.
After yesterday’s reading, I had a poetry block scheduled. That’s rare for me. Poetry still feels like something you’re supposed to catch out of the corner of your eye, not summon. But I sat down to see what would happen.
And within minutes, a poem came. I’m calling it Poems Everywhere for now, though it hasn’t told me its real name yet.
Then a memory surfaced. Riding a bus in Chicago as a teen. It stepped forward like it had something to say. That one might be Novel Chicago, though I’m still listening.
So yes. Apparently, you can schedule time with your muse. Which delights and disappointments me. If that makes sense.
I use “muse” in a few ways. There’s the Muse, the source. The one that you’re like, “Would you please slow down and let me get out my notebook?” when they’re talking, though they are just being them and that makes it even better and even more awe-inspiring.
Then there are the little everyday muses, the urges to make something that come from who knows where.
And then there are the musettes.
A musette is a tiny spark. The sentence that rings. The overheard phrase. The squirrel climbing the tree with a sunflower chunk. The taste that surprises you. The smell that pulls you backward through time.
(Trust me, I wanted to take us into a full Jane Austen 250th birthday sidebar and the entire Proustian quote re: Madeleines, but I’m trying to practice narrative restraint. When it suits me.)
Musettes don’t always become poems. Sometimes they just make life feel textured and good, if you’ll pay attention.
And you’ll know your Muse when you find them. They don’t even try. They just are.
Do you suppose Muses feel put upon?
So that’s what I’ve been thinking about. The Muse. The muses. The musettes. Sometimes they sneak in through a cracked window. Sometimes they arrive in your slippers, holding tea on a chilly morning.
They don’t always behave. But they’re always worth noticing.
There’s more I want to explore about the Muse and the smaller kin. Another morning. Another page.
Okay. Time to read, write, and do the life things before Barry’s gig tonight. Family and friends are coming. I’ve seen the setlist. Fun oldies ahead!
Now playing: “Doll Parts” by Hole. (See below. And also, what day do I NOT want to be the “girl” with the most cake? I mean, I’ll share, but cake is basically its own food group. Not those ridiculous cupcakes, either. They’re fine, but they’re NOT CAKE. Thus sayeth the raccoon.)
Fall temps have finally swept in (though ahead of fall), and just in time: Barry’s band will be playing down by the river tomorrow evening, a new venue our town is experimenting with. It could be one of those nights where the first set feels pleasant, the second requires a quilt. But honestly? I’ll take that over the sticky 90-degree gigs of summer.
This week has been a mosaic of small, surprising moments, the kind that pile together into something that feels like a story. Bear with.
There was the cat strutting along the ridge pole of the neighbor’s house, tightrope-walking against the sky. I was worried for the feller, but he found his way down.
There was Word Raccoon this morning, sulking because I didn’t serve her a warm breakfast. Still August, sweetheart! before handing me two mismatched earrings and daring me to wear them.
Of course I’m wearing them. If you’re going to challenge me, it takes more than that, WR!
We were supposed to head to the gym early, but she hissed no, too cold, so the afternoon it is. That means coffeehouse time shifts, if we keep that up on the daily, which may actually fix my reputation: a local regular told me I’ve been showing up an hour earlier than usual all summer. He’s right. I may course correct.
Besides, I’d rather work out early anyway. If I ever get back to endorphin speed (c’mon cortisone shot!), it keeps me jazzed for hours, no caffeine required.
There were even sweeter bits of the week, too. I got to play with a puppy for a couple of hours this weekend. My hands still smell faintly of fur and joy.
And I re-met a young cousin from Cleveland (he’s now four) who remembers me vividly from last year, he says, when I debuted my Elmo voice to coax his shoes on. His eyes grew so wide you’d think I’d conjured magic. He led me around the porch Sunday showing me things and, I think, being a bit jealous of the attention I was showing the puppy. Aw…
It’s so satisfying to have a child point to the poems hiding in corners and spiderwebs. Between him and the puppy, a little Yorkie named Rocky, I was in heaven.
And today, a highlight: Penny Zang’s debut novel Doll Parts officially releases into the world! 🎉 I cannot wait to sit down with it. Avaunt, world! I want to read.
Here’s the official description from Amazon:
The Virgin Suicides meets I Have Some Questions For You with a dash of the horrors of Nightbitch in this debut suspense following one woman as she begins to uncover the truth of the death of her estranged best friend and the Sylvia Plath adoring girls they attended college with decades ago.
For Nikki and Sadie, life at Loch Raven College was supposed to be filled with poetry and days spent trying on thrifted clothes. But there’s a dark story that plagues the school halls—that of the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the death of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring girls, all written off as suicides. Aspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the stories, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. To satiate her obsession, Nikki begins to dig into the deaths, and she soon suspects there’s more to the story than just a tragic group of sad girls—a suspicion that will lead to a tragedy of its own, one that will tear her and Sadie apart.
It’s been twenty years since Sadie saw her estranged friend. Now, Nikki is dead. And when Sadie ends up pregnant with Nikki’s grieving husband, she finds herself stepping into her seemingly perfect life. But Nikki’s eerily preserved home seems to hold clues for Sadie from beyond the grave, and soon, she’s spiraling into a deep obsession that will make her question her own reality. Because it seems Nikki never stopped looking for answers about what happened to the girls of the Sylvia Club, and she may have been its latest victim.
Go to Penny’s website for all the usual buy links. This is a promising novel and I am so excited for it!
She sent me some stickers and a book mark. My laptop is grateful and so am I! (She also interviewed me once upon a time. 😀)
In other news, I donated blood yesterday for the first time in a while. Ever since my dad became ineligible to donate, I have tried to go in his stead, even now. Alas, sometimes my iron is too low, but yesterday was a go!
Have you ever given blood in a portable bloodmobile? I don’t recommend it. I felt as if I were on an airplane, the vehicle swaying a bit the whole time, and the guy signing me in and I were sitting in a space barely larger than a plane bathroom AND THEN HE SHUT THE DOOR.
Word Raccoon looked at me like she wanted to take his blood pressure cuff from him and run, but I told her we were fine. At least they no longer have to prick your finger to see if you’re eligible to donate.
That whole scene was an essay waiting to happen, but I know they are good people trying to do good work and next time I will go back to my usual donation site. I was just trying to support the gym that sponsored it, since I used to go there and like the owner.
Through all of this disjunction (does that work here?), I keep circling back to a question that’s become my creative compass: Where’s the poem in this?
I used to pause on walks and ask myself where the painting was, or the photograph. Now I look for poems. Sometimes it’s in the jaunty pair of striped shoes spotted on a dapper someone in a crowd, or the way the morning light barges in like a child on Christmas morning and forces your eyes open, but you’re not mad about it.
This week I was also reminded of my time on the Great Wall of China, and there are definitely some poems to mine there. Someone asked if I remembered the unevenness of the steps. Oh yes, I do.
Truth be told, some mornings feel exactly like that climb: awkward, unsteady. Or just chilly. But you keep going, because ah, imagine the view.
If you’re lucky, you find the poem tucked somewhere between the stone and the sky.
Or hey, if we’re being honest, you’re just hunting between Wednesday and Friday.
And, if it’s still going to warm up you head out to the porch as soon as it warms up. I’ve promised WR that’s exactly what we will do today, and though she’s not happy, she’s agreed to this.
Happy holiday weekend coming up, y’all. If you do mosey on down by the river for Barry’s gig tomorrow evening, don’t forget a jacket, love.
Now Playing: Emma Swift – The Soft Apocalypse (2020).
Word Raccoon here. Drema does not trust herself to speak right now. Big news, loves: Drema’s had three poems accepted by The Write Launch for their October 2025 issue! Yes, three. That’s a full-on raccoon hat trick, and I am already shimmying across the coffee table.
The poems?
The Soft Apocalypse (tender, devastating, and very dear to Drema’s heart)
Alluding Perusing (mischievous and book-drunk)
Outré (a love letter to glorious weirdness; my outfit will make sense when you read it)
These poems carry (we hope) grief and grit, wit and strangeness. And The Write Launch, a journal Drema has long admired, said yes to all three, and Drema is grateful. Word Raccoon calls that a triple crown moment, complete with sparkly tiara.
Drema shared with me that she wrote “Alluding Perusing” on the porch of her favorite coffeehouse one morning this summer. She wrote “Outré” on a Saturday morning on her sunporch, just before breakfast. It arrived wearing boots.
Celebration Mode
So mark your October calendars: Drema will be quietly grateful, Emma Swift’s song will be echoing in the background, and Word Raccoon will be shouting from the roof with a Coke Zero in one paw and a tambourine in the other while handing Drema Kleenex whenever anyone mentions “The Soft Apocalypse.”
Thank you to The Write Launch for giving these poems a home, and to you, Dear Reader, for listening to Word Raccoon howl the news. I truly hope you like the poems.
Friday’s adventure: the hip doctor, DO. Word Raccoon came along curled up in the passenger seat, insisting I finally demand answers.
Diagnosis: Bursitis. (Which is actually good news and WHY DID IT TAKE THIS LONG? The specialist diagnosed it within two minutes, bless him.)
Treatment Plan: Do the prescribed hip exercises daily for a month. Next Step: Cortisone shot in exactly four weeks.
Yes, that means I might be back to normal within a month.
I may or may not have cried a little in the grocery store aisle afterward, imagining all the things I’ll be able to do again. I’m joyful. But also angry. I’ve been dealing with this on and off for nearly a decade, and it took Word Raccoon getting nearly rabid, baring her tiny literary teeth, for me to finally get answers.
I’ve tried deep tissue massages. Months of expensive PT. Steroids. Pushing through the pain. Trying to ignore it.
None of it worked.
To learn that there might’ve been a clear path forward all along? That’s a lot to sit with. Word Raccoon tried to make me feel better by shopping for new sneakers online before I finished my coffee. She thinks we’re training for something again. We’re not.
But I like her optimism.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But let’s do keep open to possibilities, Word Raccoon. We like possibilities.
Speaking of shots…
Later that night, we weren’t planning on doing shots, just hearing the husband’s bestie’s band play. But somehow, we ended up sitting beside a guy at the band’s table, nice, friendly, and maybe the unofficial shot evangelist of Milford.
“Do you know Drema?” someone asked as we joined the table.
“Only by reputation,” he said. “All good things,” he added quickly when I raised an eyebrow.
Apparently, Word Raccoon’s been making the rounds without me.
He and I talked about comic books (not that I have a lot of opinions there) and traded shot stories like it was a competitive sport. (Spoiler: I can hold my own if called to. I’m a lightweight, yes, but I’m also stubborn. I will not lose to a man in a plaid shirt named Chad. *Not this guy’s name.)
To be clear, there was no competition.
“You want to try a chocolate mini beer?” he asked.
I thought he meant a literal beer in this teeny tiny handled shotglass like the one I’d spotted at a nearby table. He came back with a shot. Not beer. And worse, it had cream in it. Dairy, and I had it down before it registered.
He also gave me some “boy math” about the shot my hubby brought me that had an energy drink in it that I was worried about drinking. He said it has a half-life of whatever and that it should wear off by six a.m.
I told him we could all go out for a group breakfast if that happened.
Thankfully, he was wrong. I think I was actually asleep by midnight.
The worst shot of the night was a Fireball. Oh, Fireball, we have a history. We won’t get into that just now. I hadn’t had one since, but I got it down without incident.
I kept WR on a short leash all night, though, and even leaned over and whispered to my husband after I’d hit my modest limit, “I’m done.”
Which is code for: Do not let me drink another drop even though we both know I could. He nodded like the seasoned handler he is.
Word Raccoon tried to rally for one more. I distracted her by dancing to “Cake by the Ocean.” (I will not out my dance partner, LOL, but we had fun.)
She settled down after that.
And the next morning, I was glad. She woke up no worse for wear, though she did demand caffeine as usual. And no, she still doesn’t know I walked right past the Coke Zero at the store this week. Please don’t tell her yet. I don’t want to have to deal with her drama.
She’s been cleaning and rearranging the porch all morning, making the windows sparkle so she can see out of them better while she writes. She likes a pretty stage almost as much as she likes an audience. And she does like an audience, even if it’s a drive-by.
Drink your coffee and be quiet, Word Raccoon. And let me write. We’ve got things to say.
Let’s count this as the quiet month before we do all the things after that shot.
Now Playing:The Game, Queen. The whole thing. (Not playing games. Just the album.)
Tonight I was going to rest. I already had a blog post lined up for tomorrow: neat, tidy, ready. You’ll see that one tomorrow, because it’s already scheduled.
But something happened tonight.
I sat at my computer, feeling aimless, and next thing I knew, I had written five poems. Just because something cracked open, and there they were, all waiting inside me.
As it sometimes does, it took absolutely drowning my thoughts in music. Tonight: Queen.
I wrote without asking what I was writing. No doubt, no censoring. Just out out out, winged snake, winged words.
Sometimes I need complete silence to write. But, as I said, not tonight.
Tonight the neighbors had a bonfire, lovely to watch, but so pungent I had to close the windows.
The streaked windows that I had attempted to clean earlier today to see the poems better. The lights came on earlier than I expected. Darkness fell in ten minutes.
One of the poems had such a hold on me I felt nauseous afterward, nauseous and tearful in the best/worst way.
I love and hate that feeling: when a poem wrings you out and hands you back to yourself slightly disassembled.
And you ask, how did that ever fit inside me?
It wasn’t as bad as Holy Floaties, but it surprised me. Discomfited me.
I grabbed my nearest comfort object, a little rock with a bluebird screened on it, because my other rocks were too far away. I squeezed it between stanzas.
I know that sounds dramatic, Herbert! But it’s true.
(Listening to STP now. At an unsuitable volume. But I don’t think anyone will complain. I don’t much care if they do.)
You know the drill. I only share the newly arrived poems’ titles:
First, a Fist
Boomerang
Except You
Sacred in Silence
Listening to Queen Together, Maybe
A couple of them are, forgive me, ars poetica. I didn’t mean for them to be, but it all gets tangled up. And there they are.
Sometimes I get scared when I think the muse has left me. I hadn’t written in a couple of days, and it felt like abandonment, even though I know better.
But I let that restlessness drive me to the page. And though I think I’m fine, like: it’s fine, I’m fine, really, but then it comes leaking out.
A night like this reminds me: the muse isn’t gone. It just steps out of view now and then.
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