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.

Just pull a knob,
out flops a serving, 

RDA of bass, 

blurred guitars, 

and bouncing drumsticks.

I’ll take it. 

Drink that poetry fuel, Word Raccoon.

Espresso yourself to the express ramp 

For writing.

Chug, chug, chug!

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.

Link to follow in October.

Now Playing: “Cake by the Ocean,” DNCE 

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. 

How ever will I keep you still then? 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

 With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run

From “To Autumn,” – John Keats

More on Keats another time…

Word Raccoon has seen students waiting at the bus stop the past few days. She noticed when I forgot (again) my sweater at home and shivered on the cafe porch this morning. (It warmed up pretty quickly.) 

In short, she knows fall is coming. 

After all this heat, she’s not sorry. But she asked me what this means for our writing.

First of all, WR, don’t take credit for my writing. Ok, fine, you may take some. 

This fall, let’s call my writing life a garden I can (I hope) grow, since I don’t have a green thumb. 

Not the tidy kind where every weed is pulled (because uh, that’s not my style. At all.), but the real kind: lush, a little overgrown, and forever surprising me with volunteer plants. 

Dormant bulbs begin to make their way upwards, eagerly awaiting spring, at last. (That’s probably not how it works, but give me a break, I just said I don’t have a green thumb. LOL. It’s a crooked metaphor, Herbert.)

I did plant some crocuses, finally, around the lamppost. I kept missing them since I couldn’t take the long walks to drink them in that I used to, so I planted some and crossed my fingers. 

They came up. It took a year, but they showed up just when I was feeling mopey about them. John Gardner had mentioned them in a book and I wanted to study them to see what he meant by his comment, because I hadn’t observed them that way.

When I spotted some on a walk just after reading his comments, the family who had them in the front yard must have thought I was strange, the way I stared at them, took pictures, not seeing them the way he did but trying desperately to.

I decided at last that maybe his were a different variety, or were somehow taller. Or, this is just occurring to me, being a novelist, maybe he took creative license.  

Better to have my own to peer into, and at.

There are worse reasons to grow flowers, I suppose. And now I have another small spring delight just outside the window.

But we were talking about fall, weren’t we? 

Here’s how I’m plotting my autumn (and early winter) “writing garden.”

---

🌱 Poems = Perennials

They pop up nearly daily, sometimes uninvited, persistently, often inconveniently. 

Occasionally I will force one because I worry if I haven’t written one, afraid they will go away, but those seldom have much to offer more than the reinforcing of the discipline of writing. 

Some will be cut for the vase (literary journals), some will be gathered into chapbooks (here’s hoping), and some will just delight me when I read them. 

Even the funny, misshapen ones. (Because it’s always me trying to get at the truth of something, no matter the outcome. Plenty of photos come out blurry; why shouldn’t some poems? And sometimes they capture something you weren’t even aiming for.) 

Fall practice: write poems as they come to me; revise or submit a few each week. Hmm.. “few” is vague. Let’s say 2 packets? Packets, as you may know, vary in size. Some journals want 3 poems, some 5, some no more than ten pages…

I have a solid 30 poems that are ready, in my estimation, anyway. Several have been moved to the “published” category, which is gratifying on several levels, none of which is outstripped by the fire, joy, and release of writing them to begin with. 

There are two, maybe three, poems that I feel like will find their home. I hope soon, because they are super special to me. If they don’t find a home soon enough to suit, I will just share them here. Win/win.

---

🌻 Journals = Flower Market

The poems that travel out into the world are in this planter. Sending them to journals feels like handing bouquets to strangers and friends; Word Raccoon has volunteered to be the one to hand them out. Please do, WR!

Fall practice: keep 8–12 polished poems circulating. Replace with others that have been revised by then. Repeat. (Is this the way to do it? Just guessing.) 

---

🌿 Chapbooks = Test Gardens

Smaller clusters of themed poems, my experiments will likely land in chapbooks. Love, grief, and other “Drema things” that I don’t know how to classify. 

Thoughts/fears/questions/philosophical musings fall in this category. (Of which I have MANY.) 

Fall practice: submit Waxing the Parasitical Muse to fall competitions/ select publishers. Definitely needs some revising. Those two a.m. poems are face melters! I don’t know how many of those we need. 

And while I’m at it, I’m thinking those little stubs need to be either further developed or put away. No one wants amuse-bouche instead of poems. Though wait, mini-poems are a thing. So??

---

🍎 Full-Length Collection = Legacy Orchard

This is where the trees grow: Look, I Built a Cathedral and, eventually, other full-length manuscripts. These will take patience, pruning, and vision.

Fall practice: shape the manuscript, consider weaving in newer poems. (Actually, I’m pretty happy with Cathedral as it is. But I might plant a new one behind it.)

---

🌾 The Novel = Grain Field

The big crop of the year. I have 80K+ words drafted, but the field needs re-seeding and reshaping. It’s my primary harvest for fall: revising and preparing a first real draft for winter rest.

(Word Raccoon just peeked at the novel and says it actually stands at 85K, thank you very much. But so many miles to go…)

Fall practice: novel blocks 2–3 times a week; aim for a revised roadmap  and draft by year’s end.

Novels want fall, don’t they? They want quiet and a hint of cool. They want leaves turning color but still clinging. They want chili with saltines and the sound of outdoor sports. They want sweaters and long novels to read, too.

They want nostalgia: for the past and for the things that aren’t fully here yet. They want intrigue and drama, but also peace and just sitting in silence. 

They want trays displaying the prettiest leaves on the dining room table and mugs of tea for puzzling over passages.

They do not want pumpkin spice, dearest. (Pumpkin? Yes. NOTHING CLOVE. EVER. LOL.)

They want to watch the dapper dans and dressy bessies parading in their fall best. 

They want their eyes and ears so full of all of the things they love the most so that, first of all, they can feast. Secondly, so they can share that feast with others by creating art from it.  

---

♻️ Compost = Rest & Craft

Abandoned drafts, fragments, and the books I’m reading (Nine Gates, Gilead, all the rest) all go into the compost pile. They’ll feed next season’s growth. If I can keep Word Raccoon out of it, that trash panda. 

Fall practice: let things sit until I need some fertilizer.

Maybe it sounds a little much to write all this out, but I needed to see it. To know that all of this matters, and that I don’t have to do it all at once.

If you have any suggestions, you know I value your advice. 

I long for eyes to see, heart to read, some of these things. I know that’s the opposite of what I once felt for my writing, but it is what it is. 

Creating is its own reward, foremost. I haven’t lost sight of that. But I must admit, when I write something and blush, it makes me wonder what others would think of it. 

Word Raccoon says she wants to read the novel, see where we’re at. I warned her it’s probably not her kind of story. She raised one eyebrow and said, “Sure, Jan.”

She’s so damn sassy. 

I finished reading Gilead today. Exquisitely written. Dear Reader, I think you’d adore it. 

Psst…this is not a poem. This is a mosaic of thoughts designed to make me feel as if I’ve earned creative writing points today, good for cash and prizes. 

The poems I attempted are mostly fragments. A couplet struts around in its ruffled underwear, convinced it’s a full poem. It won’t let me wash its face or put a dress on it. It insists it WILL kiss someone in the town square. 

Gorl, please. I would tell Word Raccoon to go fetch her, but WR is on her side. 

I started out with reading Nine Gates for half an hour. Still good, so good, and I made notes like crazy, but also? Sometimes Hirshfield sprouts a sentence and I can’t help but think either I am not reading carefully, or this sentence is impenetrable. Maybe that’s where the trouble started this morning. (It’s me, not her. I swear.) 

And so much talk of form. Fine for everyone else, admirable, even, but form is not for me. 

Well, stanzas. We need those, right? (But that’s not form. Or is it?)

People at the café are talking too loudly, flinging their hands like conductors.

Speaking of…

Schubert keeps time to my mind at first, until I wonder why I didn’t choose Mozart. 

Mozart, now. Better. Still busy, but better.

I’m trying to write about La Sagrada Familia.
I’m trying to write a poem.
I’m trying to write something.

I’m bouncing between phone calls, texts, and the grocery app where I’m attempting to remember Super Glue. 

I received a business email I’ve been waiting on.
Checked it.
Skimmed it.
Saved it for “later,” whatever that means.

I’ve tried to write four poems today.
One because I was frustrated.
Three because I couldn’t not try.
And still: nothing landed.

I have had paragraphs of conversations in my head with various folks who walked by. I have had actual conversations with patrons, some I know, some I don’t. 

I wish I had the ability to call squirrels to me.
I watch them far too often when I should be writing.

Do you suppose they are hoping I will write about them?

I scare the neighborhood cats away from them like I’m a squirrel bodyguard.

Not on my watch, cats. Not on my watch. 

The only thing about Mozart:
His music can sound melancholy, if you let it.
(Don’t let it.)

I can’t write to the other, fun stuff today. My brain will not stay still as it is. Pop would be disastrous for my writing ambitions. 

The leaves on the Japanese maple tree in front of the cafe are browning in several spots and I’m feeling it. 

Transience. That’s what I was reading about in Nine Gates. 

I don’t believe in the apocalypse, except the soft kind. (My thanks to Emma Swift for the phrase.) 

Calm down, Word Raccoon, they’re only leaves. They’ll come back again.

I haven’t seen the sun yet today.
My brain is solar powered, I swear.

By extension…

Though I’ve been told it looks as if I’m wearing it. (I’m wearing a very bright netted coverup. Because apparently Word Raccoon thought we were going to the beach.)

(She throws color at a gray day.)

And I did see a good facsimile of the sun, if I’m not mistaken. Which is always welcome. More than.  

So many beautiful moments, really.
But I’ve poked a hole in my bag somewhere, 

and they keep slipping through. 

Let’s see if I can sew it up.

There’s always this evening. 

Also, I miss cheese. And butter. My god. 

Be patient, WR. Be patient. 

I think she just needs to be scooped up and rocked and for someone to say, “I know.” 

Near the gym this afternoon, Word Raccoon made a beeline for a glorious pine cone. Now my hands smell like sap and the holidays. 

I’m not complaining.

The pine cone is sitting with me on the porch, and I’m trying not to go back for the rest. 

The white stuff on it is just resin.

Don’t tell me what happens to those that remain behind. I’d rather not know, unless it’s something nice.

It’s later now and LOOK! The sun came out after all! 

I ended up submitting two batches of poems, and I have bookmarked a couple of places to send my collection out to. 

I really want to write my poems on cocktail napkins and slide them down the bar and say HERE, LOL.

WR insisted I record that poem I mentioned yesterday on video, so I did, and it didn’t kill me. 

WR is now flipping through our photo albums, looking at our favorite ones, one of her after-writing pastimes. 

“This is a good one, isn’t it?” 

Well, which one isn’t? 

Word Raccoon finds a photo where one of her bestest squirrels looks soft, relaxed, unguarded. She’s jealous. Of course she is.

What did you expect, WR? Your whole vibe is wired. Chill.

Go to bed, WR. Get some sleep. 

That’s where the dreams are. 

And you know what they say about the sun and tomorrow.

WR just left the porch shaking her head in disgust.

I don’t blame her. I deserved that.

(Shh…we’ve almost forgotten that the “t” word from above, from Nine Gates, spooked us. That’s no small word.)

“One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read – in such a moment, anything can happen.”
― Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

I sorted the magazine basket over the weekend. There’s that glamorous “writer’s life.”  Who even has a magazine basket anymore? Apparently I do, and it’s been slowly overfilling itself, whispering, “Hello?” every time I walk by.

Toni Morrison, my beloved author (see what I did there?), stared out from the front of a recent P & W, so I definitely wasn’t getting rid of that one.

The rest, I went through and pulled out articles I want to read or pass along.

I found a copy of a Poets & Writers with the paid ad for my second novel, Southern-Fried Woolf lurking in the basket. It’s still exciting to see it there. (A reader wrote me a sweet message about that novel just today.) 

Nowadays, I’m actually paying attention to the poetry section of the, get this P & W, magazine. For the longest time I didn’t even consider the “Poets” in the title. 

I discovered a piece in one by Jane Hirshfield, whose book Nine Gates I’ve been reading lately. The overlap made me smile, because to be honest, I wouldn’t have recognized her name before this. 

Though I’ve subscribed to it for years now, initially I found the magazine intimidating. I was still figuring out what it meant to be a writer, to be in an MFA program. 

At one point someone mentioned in passing that I was earning a terminal degree, and I froze. Terminal? It sounded like an illness. But that was followed by relief. Why had no one told me this at the beginning? That was incredibly reassuring, that I was on THE PATH for writing, yet it took someone not in my program to tell me. Hmmm…

And here’s the truth: I didn’t even want to publish, not at first. I just wanted to write. I even went to school thinking I was simply going to learn how to be a better writer, period. 

When my first story was accepted, I cried the night I agreed to let it be published. My apologies to those I contacted that night, freaking out, wondering if I’d just sold my soul, if I was going to end up with a portrait of myself in some attic that aged while I did not. 

And yet I also knew it was an honor, and people around me kept saying This is the writing circle completing itself. You write, someone reads.

It wasn’t so much others reading it as the feeling that I was asking art to have an audience, as if it weren’t enough by itself.

It felt like asking my bestie to hand wash my dishes when I hadn’t seen them in months. (Too vivid? Dear Reader, I should give you the password to my blog so you can edit it to taste. LOL.)

WR is peering over her sunglasses, reminding me that’s the opposite of what we do with our writing. She’s about to begin yelling at Herbert when he’s not even here.

Wait, is she calling me Herbert, our very own literary curmudgeon? Oh god.

When I began really paying attention to the literary magazines, I was shocked by the depth of thought in these articles. I was mesmerized by this contemporary reckoning with language: people who revere it as much as I do while also teasing apart, on the page, how the magic happens, and somehow not diluting it. That’s a minor miracle.

But the question that surfaced most as I sorted those magazines on Sunday: Do I keep subscribing? 

In the past, I’ve tossed them in a bag and read them at the beach to circle and dissect. This has not been a very “beachy” summer, what with the heat and everything that happened at the beginning of the season, hence the piling up. 

(Christ! What a summer. In bad ways, yes, but also good, very good.) 

Now, I’m able to read most of the magazines I’m interested in for free through our library’s Libby app. That makes it harder to justify subscribing when you’re on a budget. (Writers are always on a budget, Love, am I right?)

Word Raccoon, of course, had opinions about the whole thing. She perched on the rim of the basket like a judgmental aunt, paws crossed, muttering about how even she can’t keep up with all the contest deadlines and fees. 

She squeaked at me until I tore out the Hirshfield article as well as all the writing prompts. Since when, WR? We HATE being told what to write, but I listened to her, and then she tried to drag the entire basket under the couch like it was a shiny treasure hoard.

(Side note: poetry prompts are different. They carry a higher charge and I think because the time investment is so minimal, I’ll sometimes give them a whirl. Or, more likely, I’ll get an idea from their idea which springs an idea and off I go.) 

But sorting forced me to decide. What to keep. What to pass along. Isn’t that the writer’s job in miniature? To curate. To revise. To make peace with what remains.

The magazines I kept are stacked neatly now, waiting. They’re the ones I can’t let go of, the pieces that feel less like issues and more like treasures. The rest I can release, but these? These stay, because some things are too woven into me. 

Word Raccoon says it’s just paper. She knows she’s wrong. Some paper hums.

And every so often, I think that maybe I’ve only been sorting words the way I sorted that basket, keeping what sings, letting go of the rest. The things that stay? They don’t just stay. They belong.

And if you’re very lucky, they look back at you as if to say: you belong too.

Today’s writerly activities (as of lunchtime): When the storms cleared, I sat on the porch wrapped in my flowered robe and wrote three poems: “Spoiling Squirrels,” “OK, Flowers,” and “Patchwork,” the last written while I watched men patch the neighbor’s roof. One of them slipped but caught himself. Whew. That was a scary moment.

I also submitted two sets of poems to journals.

Update: I have now written three poems, one inspired by Hirshfield. That book!

Not that the poem is about this, but who knew “pillow words” were a thing! Not me. Now there’s a ready-made writing prompt. I’ll prepare my red pencil for any drafts sent my way. (Who are we kidding, Word Raccoon has a glitter pen and she puts hearts around everything instead of underlining it.)

I wasn’t feeling the video poem submission today (rough start to the morning, but the porch, the robe, and a surprise gift certificate for coffee slipped into the mail slot by a friend all brightened the day; WR is, after all, affected by the weather). 

Tomorrow will bring another chance, and I think she’ll drag me to the mic whether I like it or not.

A breeze brought me the most gawky, adorably dorky poem. It landed in my lap all crooked and earnest, and I’ve been smiling ever since I wrote it down.

I want to sit beside it on a pillow and pluck at its sleeve as it reads so I can watch it crane its neck when it’s thinking so I can quit imitating it. I’m definitely enamored of the poem.

And tonight (Monday), dinner was a bowl of the most stunning red and brown new potatoes and chicken thighs all seasoned and baked together. No elaborate sauces, no big gestures, just the simplest food made between poem making. 

What I really want right now is to sit on my porch swing and read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, a book I started almost by accident. 

It plunges right into important terrain, and it does so with openness, tenderness and with such precision I was pulled in from the get-go. 

Like A Death in the Family but first person, epistolary style. It’s truly gorgeous. (I’m only a few pages in, but still.) 

Word Raccoon doesn’t care that my heart is set on soft, she is bossing me around again. This time she says I have to record a video for a poetry submission. Me. On camera. Reading.

I told her no. She said she wrote the poem to be performed, and besides, the ants will be disappointed if I don’t. The ants in the poem. She’s threatening me with insect guilt. I suppose I’ll give it a chance. But I am not thrilled. 

And I’ll keep Nine Gates by Jane Hirshfield close at hand, the craft book whose essay on, of all things, translation, has me entranced.

Word Raccoon, for her part, is still running amok. She made the Amazon delivery guy burst out laughing earlier with an offhand remark. I scolded her, but too late. She thrives on an audience. 

We wrote two more poems last night. One called Lost Amid Translation, after reading that mind-melting essay on translation in Hirshfield’s book. Another called The One With the Interview, but that one is still staggering around the page. 

An update on the town siren: it’s broken, not decommissioned. Sources say it will be fixed. Sometime. I’m choosing to believe it.

And this week, WR and I are setting our writing goals for fall. Among them? Finishing novel number three. 

Pardon me, though. I have a poem I wrote this morning to obsess over.