Dear Reader,

Not only did Word Raccoon manage two hours at the cafe yesterday, she also managed to go to the gym for a short workout. I told the guys when I got there, “Hey, I’m not staying long, but I’m here.” They were fine with that.

I gave her a Coke Zero as a reward after and let her go to the thrift shop. She found so many darling things in such vibrant colors that when she took them home and washed them she wished she had a clothesline just so she could hang them. Coral, flowered yellow, a J-Lo halter that she can’t wait to wear, and a pair of jean shorts, my loves, in my smaller size, new with tags. So for a ten spot I had a whole new wardrobe, including another blouse and two camis.

They’re so gorgeous hanging to dry in the house that I hate to put them away. Can we make hanging clothes another decorating option, please?

After all that yesterday, the storm blew boxes everywhere outdoors and I thought they were ours, so WR and I went out and picked them all up. Turns out they were all the one neighbor’s, but that’s ok.

WR has two bits of good writing news to share today. One is that she has two poems now out over at Amaranth Journal, “Staying Steady” and “Well Fed,” in their Summer 2026 issue.
Many thanks to the editors on their excellent work.

If you like food poetry, grab a napkin. You will have to BYOB, though. White preferred over red.

Her other good news is that Half and One has accepted some of our work. More on that later, but we are so pleased.

We are working from our own porch today because after everything WR and I did yesterday, we also went to the specialty market and that took the very last ounce of our energy. We are better, but not completely. We are tired again.

Because the evening takes the rest of our pep right now, we will be figuring out dinner early so that California Kitchen doesn’t have to do all the work tonight.

The library book sale is happening, and Stanley says he would like a word with me before I set WR loose over there.

Actually, I have a box of children’s books I’d like to donate, Stanley.

Reading The Thursday Murder Club, light, enjoyable fare suggested by several podcasts. It’s a fast burn. I just started it yesterday and I’m already three quarters of the way through. I’m rooting for these senior citizens to solve the murders!

I am irked that the one detective is playing food monitor to her superior officer. Did he ask for her to tell him he didn’t need a candy bar? Did he ask to be tricked into climbing the stairs instead of taking the lift?

Mind your beeswax, Donna. And don’t be so shallow. Chris is a good guy.

WR says that speaking of food, she wants to figure out dinner ASAP, and that she really doesn’t want anything except a piece of fruit and a string cheese for lunch.

WR, you mind your beeswax, too, and maybe drink some water.

I’m not a writing prompt person. I’m just not.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m creative, so I can make myself write something, but it won’t be satisfying.

I read today’s poem of the day and the prompts and…nothing.

This month, I’ve more often written something completely unrelated to the prompts, or even against them. I hate being such a rebel writer, but that’s me. Don’t tell me what to write is Word Raccoon’s battle cry.

This morning, I tricked Word Raccoon into going to the café earlier than usual. I threw on some clothes, grabbed my laptop, and just left the house, knowing the nosy girl would follow to get in a good writing session.

Did I forget a few things? Sure.

Did WR jump into the car? Of course. I think she thought we were going to the thrift shop. I blame it on her bleariness. 

Her brain would not shut up last night. I gave her a book, and she was enjoying it, but her mind kept bouncing. I offered videos, and that quieted her for a bit, but she asked me how long she was supposed to be happy with the same same.

She wanted to just think, and I told her absolutely not. Not late at night, not into the early morning hours. Nothing good ever comes of that. Unless she wanted to write.

She did not want to write.

I gave her my next-to-last melatonin, knowing she’d wake up groggy, but better she get some sleep.

This morning she whispered her biggest fear: What if I have nothing else to say?

I don’t permit writer’s block in myself. I sympathize with those who have had it, but I will write anything, any number of nothings, rather than let that become a habit or take over my life. No, no, no.

“Fine, then write about that,” I told her.

And she did.

I found myself down a well with her a few minutes ago, pointing out that even an empty well isn’t empty. There are bricks and mud and insects that buzz in and out. We wrote a poem about it, and I told her, see, you’ve just not had a good writing session for a couple of weeks. You’ve been ill. 

Just let the poems come. Jot a line. Don’t demand. Notice again. Just notice.

Is it ridiculous how much I enjoy, have always enjoyed, noticing?

I feel like the most beautiful things in life are experienced that way, by noticing, by witnessing. Maybe sometimes not even saying that you have. 

What can be noticed is neverending. You just adjust the lens. There is always color, movement, shape, sound, scents. And the things that don’t change are the stage for the rest. 

While Word Raccoon likes being noticed, I prefer doing the noticing.  Okay, fine; she’s human, and I get it. 

But also, WR, you know you find most of your poems by letting the world whirl toward you, picking up one image and then another, tasting them as you record them and then letting them go.

Funny how some sources are still our favorite meaning-makers. What is that all about, WR? Maybe we’ll never truly understand, but what is, is. We all have our favorite lens. 

In other news, I’m happy to report that my poem “Any Color,” written last summer, has been accepted for May publication by whimperbang.

I have much more to say about it, but I think I’ll wait until the poem comes out.

In the meantime, I’m giving WR Cake. The music, I mean. It’s her most reliable writing fuel if she needs words to drown her fears. I think it’s their emo earnestness. A contradiction that is not. 

This morning I asked Word Raccoon to write a poem before reading anything much. I appealed to her intellect, which is often the antidote. To what, I’m not sure.

She wrote a decent draft. But honestly, she’d like to feel inspired. She reminded me that asking her to write a poem a day (or submit, or revise) is a lot. Like, remember that 26 for 26 list we created for 2026? We literally do not know where it is right now.

Art does not keep a schedule. It does not lift on its hind legs for a treat, she says with disdain.

It does sometimes respond, however, to structure, I remind her.

We read The Recovering Academic’s newsletter after that, and though I don’t watch The Pitt, (the subject of the newsletter) parts of the essay made me go quiet.

What stuck with me wasn’t even the part about work, exactly. It was this idea underneath it: that what you’re good at isn’t actually you.

He says “prodigious gifts” can become your whole identity, which he says isn’t a good idea, and Word Raccoon and I both paused mid-scroll.

Excuse me?

Because we like being good at things (we’re not thinking our gifts are prodigious, but we do know people who have those level gifts who we believe think that, too). We like the little gold stars, the “oh wow,” the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this is the thing that explains us.

And then along comes this sentence, gently suggesting that your talent might just be… a thing you do. Not who you are. Not your worth. Not your core self in a little outfit performing for snacks.

We didn’t love that.

We also couldn’t shake it.

I mean, we believe it about others, especially those who seem to judge their whole lives by what they didn’t do rather than what they did. That makes us both sad and a little defensive and we want to do a little cheer for them. 

But us? We are more than our…

So anyway, WR and I just sat there for a minute, letting it be true-ish without trying to argue it down or turn it into a productivity tip. No moral of the story. No “and therefore we must…”

Just the uncomfortable possibility that the thing we’ve been polishing all this time isn’t the same thing as the person holding the cloth.

Word Raccoon would like it noted she is still excellent, regardless.

And, unrelated, I just fed her chocolate-covered almonds. But she wasn’t standing on her hind legs. 

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon has reached peak poetry fatigue.

It is, of course, National Poetry Month.

TBH, I think it’s that she doesn’t like the bossiness of the month.

Sure, fine she has signed up for ONE challenge! She has agreed to do something towards poetry every day this month. Which she probably would do, challenge or no. 

But today there was the email with a poem and prompts.

Then another newsletter with same that also promoted a book of “fun” poetry forms to try.

WR begs to differ. Form is never fun.

Another dang newsletter had another challenge. By then WR was rolling her eyes. I clicked to continue reading. It was behind a wall that asked us to sign in.

WR refused.

“We probably already have an account. A free one.”

“No! Let’s write our damn poem of the day and be done.”

The attitude! The reduction of her heart’s delight to an obligation! Who even is she?

She is drinking coffee, wearing leggings (the “not it” outfit that declares you will not be the one running errands) and glaring at the inbox like it personally offended her.

Then…oh reader, she wrote a poem where she sold poetry to a circus and fed it nothing but peanuts.

I think that says it all.

Maybe tomorrow I should suggest she work on her (our) novel instead.

Dear Reader,

How is it after six p.m. already? Other than a few chores, cooking lunch and supper, and one tiny notebook poem, Word Raccoon has been doing nothing. 

Okay, fine, not nothing: she was binge watching The Miniature Wife. What, it was fun, she says. 

And, she’d like to point out that in the one poem she wrote today, she invented a word, so that’s not nothing. I’m not sure that’s a flex, WR. More like, why couldn’t you find the word you were looking for?

Why can’t you find any more of those brownies? she snapped.

DO NOT tell her I have the ingredients to make another pan. She doesn’t need more right now, and I have her eating real food again. Finally. 

I did make Crispy Chicken Bowls today, something that feels like a cross between a Southern dish and midwestern fare, based on bowls I’ve had elsewhere. No amounts needed because you just think of how much you might eat of each and multiple by the number of people eating. (Should I call my recipes “some math needed” recipes? LOL.)

Crispy Chicken Bowls 

baked breaded chicken tenders

canned whole-kernel corn

cheddar cheese, shredded

mashed potatoes 

barbecue sauce

Layer everything in microwave-safe individual bowls and microwave until warm except the barbecue sauce, then add as much as you like.

Hey, this is not gourmet but just coming off an illness, this is highly comforting. And easy, if I’m being honest. WR did not complain. 

The real reason I’m writing is to share how honored and happy I am that “Renewal” and “Grieving Does Nothing for the Dead” are online now in aesterion’s excellent Spring 2026 issue. Many thanks to them for including my poems. 

Maybe you remember that “Renewal” is one of my favorite poems, an early one, written just about a year ago. 

“Grieving” is one I wrote during those foggy October/November days on the porch in 2025. I just remember it was gray and cold when I wrote it, that I just kept writing. 

I can only hope these poems will come to mean something to those who read them, too. Especially “Renewal.” Some day we’ll talk about just how many times I sent that one out. 

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon is moping. She sat down to record in her spreadsheet recent responses to some poetry submissions, and all of them were no’s. 

She knows this is how the game is played. 

She knows we did not/do write just to be published. That’s not our main reason at all. But it gives us some tangible manifestation that maybe, maybe, our words mean something to someone other than us, and when the rejections roll in with their arms joined, marching together, well, damn.

That micro-chapbook we so lovingly put together? It’s ALREADY been refused. 

The day is gray. We forgot to charge our laptop so we are on the porch but plugged in and for some reason we can’t explain that bothers us.

We are still listening to that audiobook and hoping the literary ghost becomes a little more pronounced because is that even a ghost or did we miss it while submitting. 

About the submitting: we vetted a certain journal, we did. We’ve been thinking about it for a couple of weeks. It seemed okay. Last night, the flashing lights on a submission platform reminded us it was closing in four hours. So we assembled a packet. We were excited, because some of the poems we are sending out this week are ones that have not been seen otherwise. It’s always kind of exciting to see which ones are asked to dance immediately, and which ones need a trip to the powder room to put on some lipgloss. 

Then today, we received a newsletter that mentioned this journal by name and said what their sneaky practices allegedly are: publishing work without notification and changing it substantially. That’s a no for me, so I raced over to the submission platform and was happy to see that they had not read my work yet. I withdrew it. 

Am I still out the (small) submission fee? 

Of course. 

But that’s okay. WR will just have to do without that new bottle of jelly nail polish she’s been eyeing in Riviera Rush. (Calm down, raccoon! I’m not serious.) 

This same writer-saving newsletter (Lit Mag News!) also mentioned a new upgrade to Chill Subs that will include a “red flag” system for sniffing out troubling lit journals. I’m not sure if it will be included with the free package or not, but I’m going to look into it, because it seems pretty nuanced. 

Oh, well, at least there were leftover brownies for breakfast. 

And lunch, if we so choose. 

    

Dear Reader,

Today (Friday; hello from the past) I made brownies and spaghetti.

The brownies were from a box, but I added walnuts. Plenty of them, at Word Raccoon’s insistence. She said that made them “high protein,” and so demanded a couple for breakfast. 

The spaghetti sauce was semi-homemade, which feels like the right level of ambition for easing back into things. I browned the meat, opened a jar but also roasted some cherry tomatoes and garlic, sprinkled in spices, and Word Raccoon called it collaboration. 

While cooking, I began a mental list of things to carry outside for the upcoming spring cleanup: those chairs I found during spring cleanup two years ago and have never used, a box of hangers that maybe no one wants but maybe they do and I hate to put them in a landfill just in case. 

There are things lurking in the garage, surely, though I couldn’t say what just now. Here’s hoping I can get things out before the deadline. 

Besides cooking, I meant to read today. Lonesome Dove was right there. Waiting, politely. I made a connection and did a bit of research, eager to write about it. But lunch took it out of me. 

Instead, I fell into an audiobook set near Nashville because a podcast, What to Read Next, told me to: Grown Women, by Sarai Johnson, and because the description promised a literary ghost who scribbles in an author’s manuscript.

(I almost want to apologize for listening to an audiobook, but it just felt right while I slowly submit poetry. In general, not so much, especially not fiction. This narrator is really good.)

Word Raccoon is beside me as we wait for it. “We’re not leaving,” she said, “until she shows up.” Obviously not, WR!

So now I am moving through my day with the sense that something is approaching. Not here yet. Not visible. It’s a strange feeling, to wait for a ghost, even of the book variety.

I haven’t met her yet.

But I did write a crappy poem this morning, to stay in the stream.

I left it sitting out longer than usual, because it couldn’t turn, not as bad as it already was. Should I be concerned that something/someone might take a red pen to my poem that has cough drops in it? (Yeah, not a great writing day. LOL.) 

Word Raccoon says not to worry. She says if anything gets added in the margins, we’ll know.

I don’t remember writing that last line.

Now Playing: “How Deep is Your Love,” Bee Gees. Because I heard a track of their isolated vocals last night on YouTube and could not stop listening to it. They rule. 

Dear Reader,

Yesterday morning, this poem stopped in to say hello in response to something Word Raccoon read:

Someone talked about her

Marketing plan for

Her poetry book

On Substack.

My poetry giggled

And said

That’s like hiring 

Lightning for

All

Your lighting needs.

Good luck, Babe. 

Let’s dive in, shall we? First of all, maybe this needs to be a bit more particular to be universal? 

How about this: 

Emily gushed about her 

marketing plan for her 

newest chapbook,

Endless Breadsticks 

and Breakups

at the Olive Garden.

A poem giggled and said

That’s like hiring

lightning for

all your 

lighting needs.

Good luck and pass that 

pasta. 

Okay, I do not like what I have done here. At all. Who’s Emily? And why are you taking your love to the Olive Garden? You are asking to be broken up with over terrible tiramisu. 

That salad, though…WR is currently imagining picking pepperoncini peppers out with her tail and munching on them. (I just violated my “do not use munch” rule. I must not be entirely well yet. No reason why I don’t like the word. I just don’t.)

I think this version of the poem got a little too particular. Let’s see if we can calm it down. IDK…I think I need someone to write that chapbook for me, though, set at the Olive Garden. (My god, how long has it been since I’ve been to one??)

This version?

On Insta, someone bragging about her

marketing plan for her 

poetry chapbook.

One of my poems overheard and giggled,

That’s like hiring

lightning for

all your 

lighting needs.

That’s it. It’s just a notebook poem. Am I completely happy with it? 

Nope. 

Am I happy enough for the moment?

Yup.

Actually, if I had to choose, I like the first best just now.

Some time I might pull it out and stretch it like taffy and see what I can make of it. But it’s almost sunset, and for some reason, I’m craving breadsticks. (#NotReally)

P.S. It took me forever, but I put together a micro-chapbook for a competition that ends today. Naturally, I forgot about it until I saw it on my calendar. I had been debating whether or not to enter it, but then I ran across a cozy little “envelope” of poems on my laptop. (Why don’t we call them envelopes instead of folders? Folders sound ugly and corporate. Envelopes sound intimate and full of so much more potential.)

At any rate, I sent the poems out, though I did have to walk one up and down the porch as I tried to set its bones. (The collection is called Still in the Bones. Do we like the title? Do we get the ambiguity? Do we want to?)

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

Dear Reader,

I am not fooled by the momentary glimpse of the sun I am enjoying. A nearby tree’s leaves are folded inward, so we are not finished with this rain.

I did see a squirrel enjoying a long drink of water from a puddle in the middle of the street. As I was studying it, I caught a glimpse of my favorite birb in the distance. How nice.

This morning, I came to the porch with two books because my eyes have mutinied against most screens. It’s not that they can’t watch anymore, it’s that they don’t want to. “Give me words to read. On paper,” said Word Raccoon, holding out her hand.

Gladly.

Except the books were The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, which requires something stronger than tea to make sense of, and Lonesome Dove. A first read. I have a whole post plotted for Larry McMurtry, but not today. This is a dispatch from the “I’m better, wait maybe not” department. Getting there.

I will say: not a strip of white space to be seen in Lonesome Dove. I suspect WR would paste some into my drafts if I tried that. I’m not sure I have that tool yet, or how long it might take me to develop it. Still deciding whether to try.

I was going to share this morning’s notebook poem, a quick, sharp little beast that needs pruning and also definitely has a poem giggling inside it, but am I up to it?

Signs point to no. Another day.

There’s a new squirrel in town, dark brown, muscular, squat. Limber. Not sure where he (she?) came from, but he’s making himself at home in the front yard. I’m watching to see if he causes trouble or fits right in.

Another squirrel’s coat by the tree is rubbed rough, likely caught in the rain earlier. Adorable.

Even as I wrote that, I watched the little fellow climb the utility pole and heard him make sharp noises. Then all I saw was his tail, flicking back and forth. I was scared to go check on him, scared not to.

Glad to report he eventually revealed himself, scuttled across the power line, and down the roof.

WR says whew. 

While she’s fond of the squirrels, she really likes it when the birbs flutter by, too. 

Dear Reader,

While I was sick, spring donned (will any other word do?) her frilly skirts. She has braided a crown of violets and dandelions, festooned the redbuds, and called for a dance.

The grass still has its youthful bounce, not yet touched by time or mower.

I don’t care if this is gushy and overblown. Word Raccoon and I have forgotten just how lovely the world is.

“Look, light,” WR said as we made our way out on a short errand.

The poetry virtual reading happened earlier, and while I was graciously once again offered time to read, I was only there to listen and support. The porch was the perfect place to listen until my feet decided to listen closer to the neighbor’s patch of violets. Then WR had her shoes on and was there, pacing along the treelawn. WR wants to know why they have so many flowers and we have so few, since they’re wildflowers.

I told her what does it matter whose they are, as long as they are there to be enjoyed, whiny varmint.

She said fine. She was really trying to keep to herself just how happy she is to see this profusion of color, as if someone had decorated for her.

But the poetry reading was wonderful. So many voices, so many topics, so many reading styles. Both familiar faces and new.

Ideas stirred in WR as she listened to others, ideas seemingly unrelated to their work entirely, which I find happens. I can’t explain it, but it’s true for me.

It’s not quite five yet, and WR and I are trying some porch time still. I have challenged her to stay upright and maybe do more than write little jags of poetry. Or maybe, I don’t know, submit something soon.

She says shush. Sometimes it’s just listening time.

That kid may be onto something.