So apparently the way Word Raccoon now alerts me that she’s finished writing poetry for the day is by insisting on an orange and eating the segments while I beg her not to drip on the keyboard.
While she ate this afternoon, she informed me that she was done. That the chapbook, the newest, a draft of it anyway, was finished.
No additions, please.
When I woke this morning, I figured today was going to be a relaxing, read-and-stay-warm kind of day.
I started out reading a craft book by a poet I met in Paris a few years ago. I didn’t expect a line of hers to strike something in me, but it did. (It suggested something to me; I didn’t use her line.)
Before I knew it, WR was putting a 1970s chocolate commercial in a poem. A love poem.
I’ve warned her about those.
She chortled and wrote the titles of sixteen more poems-to-be in my notes app.
“I hope you don’t think I’m writing all of those today,” I said. She said she’d be happy to do it for me, but just like you’d rather drive your kid to the event yourself, even in your jammies, because you want to make sure they’re safe, I took the phone.
I watched TV. I ate lunch. I still imagined I’d be able to go upstairs and retrieve my Joan Didion book and have my planned day.
Of course not.
The beast whispered, “You already have the titles. The poems will practically write themselves.”
I should note that I am not in the habit of writing titles before poems. Especially not a whole chapbook’s worth, complete with a title. I was intrigued.
The proposed title?
Collaborating with a Ghost
A sampling of the titles:
Spatchcocking Our Love
Ghost in the Kitchen with Fried Green Tomatoes
Haunted Ventriloquism 101
Weird Eye Contact with the Soul
I thought (here’s where I went wrong) that these would be entertaining, easy poems to write.
Well. I was partially right. Once I agreed to sit down and take a closer look at the titles, the poems did half write themselves.
However.
However, they were not light and fun. They had their moments (WR was giggling, but she can be overly serious, too.)
Anyway.
They are what they are.
We listen and don’t judge (ha!), and now I have a new chapbook in drafts.
WR is starving, so before I go feed her (I guess the orange didn’t stick), let me say how delighted I was when I listened to The Book Review Podcast today and heard there’s a book of essays coming out about Morrison’s work.
“Jim or Toni? Jim or Toni?” WR shouted, delighted when she heard Toni.
While she might have read the book either way, she is wild about Toni Morrison’s writing. In fact, she remembers exactly where she was when she sadly read of Morrison’s passing.
She cannot wait to read On Morrison by Namwali Serpell.
Given the choice between decluttering and writing a novel, apparently Word Raccoon, my little writing friend on my shoulder, prefers novel writing.
Actually, I think she is kind of into it now. I haven’t even caught her so much as sniffing for a poem in the past couple of days, though she did sigh dramatically when I told her it was TIME. Time to tackle decluttering the library, which is also my writing room, which triples as my dressing room.
She assured me she’d already gone through the closets more than once.
“Then why did I find THESE?” I asked, pulling out not one, not two, but TEN scarves she had hidden from me so that she could keep them from Stanley, my AI assistant. (You might remember he helped me sort my scarves last month.) I should have known that wasn’t all of them.
WR grabbed the scarves from my hand and hissed, looping them onto the hooks above the full-length mirror.
“And now I can’t see myself,” I said.
She hummed.
“You think if I take them downstairs and put them on the proper scarf rack that Stanley will make you sort them again.”
She squeaked and handed me one she had hidden behind her back, a patriotic one of red, white, and blue.
“I’m not asking you to give up anything you love,” I told her.
But she only dropped her eyes and tossed two drab-colored dresses into the “donate” pile. When I dared ask her what was wrong with them (they were a nice cut, flouncy skirts, etc.), she crossed her arms.
“Where is the color?” She said she refuses to dress matronly.
I checked my closet to be sure I had reserved a dark dress, and then I let her do what she wanted with the others.
Over the next two days we sorted, debated, and contained. The porch is once again filled with items to donate when it warms up a bit. I keep asking her to take another pass or two through it, as the closet rod is still sagging (not really), but she refuses.
While the room still certainly needs fine tuning, with the help of Stanley Tucci reading his first book, Taste: My Life Through Food, decluttering was actually pleasurable, at least for me. I can’t speak for the trash panda.
The man reveres food; he knows how to elevate something we typically do three times a day into an art form. He makes you want to liberate your kitchen of every protein bar and prepackaged convenience item. He makes you want to love your body better.
The section where he described the physicality of someone having a true reaction to food stunned me. It was gorgeous, and I thought it would be perfect to study if you were trying to write about someone eating. Noticing, revering, relishing, observing. Those are some of a writer’s best tools.
And once Tucci gets into your head, you start thinking about dinner like it’s part of the writing life too.
WR and I were so influenced by him that we filled our virtual shopping cart with ingredients for three of his recipes. I’ll keep you posted on how the recipes turn out next week.
I enjoy cooking Italian food because it is forgiving. If you know how to boil pasta, you’re halfway there. And even a mediocre Italian dish is better than some haute cuisine.
It also plays nicely with real life. If you (like me) are trying to use up your overstocked items, Italian food can handle substitutions and tweaks better than most types of food.
You can decide what level of “fancy” you want Italian to be. Are you going to grate parmesan? Buy the curls? Or even use the “shaky” cheese, a staple of most American dinner tables of the 1970s? (Okay, fine. I have some in the fridge, but for reasons. If your sauce is too thin, you can rescue it if you must. It’s nostalgic. And it lasts forever.)
Obviously there’s the garlic question: chop your own garlic, use “jarlic,” or go with garlic powder? The choice is personal, and honestly, it depends on what your life is like in the moment.
We could also talk about red sauce: jarred, canned, or from scratch, but the point is that Italian cooking gives you more than one good way to get where you’re going.
One of the things Tucci strongly suggests is using fresh basil. Our library grows free basil for its patrons, and I take advantage of it when I think of it, even if it’s just so I can run my fingers over it and inhale. I enjoy herbs that are decisively themselves. Basil is…basil.
And it’s delicious on a margherita pizza, my favorite. Simple sauce, a bit of cheese, and basil. The basil is almost too strong for pizza. Almost. For those who find it too intense, I recommend taking it off and just enjoying the hint of it. Or try chiffonading the basil and distributing it over the pizza. Not traditional, not as pretty, but there has to be a balance between tradition and preferences.
The food for the stomach, not the stomach for the food, or so sayeth Word Raccoon.
I’m actually listening to Tucci’s most recent book, What I Ate in One Year, as I type, and right now he’s talking about visiting the Pantheon in Rome. He mentions how breathless he is every time he visits. I agree. There’s something overwhelmingly hypnotic about the architecture. It’s one of my favorite places.
Unrelated bliss: I SAW THE TRAILER FOR THE FORTHCOMING WUTHERING HEIGHTS TODAY!! It looks like they’ve taken some liberties (always), but it’s also vibrantly filmed, so I’m in. Tick Tock.
The raccoon has been pretty quiet today. WR asked for oatmeal for breakfast, and was so happy with it (she stirred in peanut butter and raisins, and paired it with toast) that when I told her I was going to work on my novel today, she nodded and went…well, I’m not sure where.
This was one of those do-all-the-things days, when my mind was sharp and my will was, too.
I opened the novel and started in. I only wrote about 2,500 words in between making supper early (I could not use the airfryer one more day and not melt with shame) in my blessed Dutch oven (chicken, potatoes, carrots, spices. done.)
I was privileged to get inside of the mind of a character who I had only gingerly looked into, and it was a nice plunge.
Every time I took a break, I did one or two little things, so the list I started out with started shrinking instead of multiplying. (Stanley talked me down because this began as a morning of “what do I do, I need to X, Y, Z” and he was like, hold up, write first. Feed yourself. Then we’ll see what you have energy for.)
I asked both Stanley and Echo (Echo lives in the kitchen, Alexa in the living room on the TV and Ziggy upstairs) whether I should write from home or elsewhere. Both Stanley and Echo consulted the weather and told me to keep my ass home. So I did.
I didn’t bother asking Ziggy, though I did ask her for a word of the day. Refractory. She used cats as an example and I told her I’m a dog person, but while she said she’d note it, her example worked better with cats. She wanted to get chatty. I said bye girl and left the room.
Word Raccoon said nothing about any of this. I think she needs a break, God bless her. And, as you know, she could not care less about the novel. She inhales poetry, and I think maybe yesterday she got some stuck in her throat. She’ll be fine, I’m sure. But TBH, it’s kind of nice to have some peace and quiet. She can be a lot.
Speaking of poetry, I am proud to share that two of my poems have been published in the inaugural issue of Infocalypse Press. Thanks so much, Infocalypse! I’m honored to be in such good company.
My poems are on pages 27 and 28, “Gone Gray” and “a betrayal of the universe.” Just little punk poems that slipped out of my thumbs one hot, hot summer night. Who knows where these little characters come from, am I right?
This evening I also caught up on my product reviews.
I am packing my computer bag tonight, slipping in some of Word Raccoon’s favorite snacks, hoping my household familiars (why am I reminded of the phrase “household gods” from the Bible?) won’t mind if I at least venture as far as the library tomorrow.
Word Raccoon says she’ll wear snowshoes if it gets her out of the house. I think she suspects staying home means I’ll make her fold laundry, which may explain why I just caught her holding earrings up to her ears like we’re headed to prom. She has a few new pairs she’s been dying to debut. Honestly, same.
No one anywhere asked for another poem about flowers.
But today I fell into an Emily Dickinson vein and, unfortunately, it was not the kind of vein that politely delivers a single respectable poem and then returns you to normal life.
No.
It was the kind that sends you into the metaphorical woods with a clipboard and a moral dilemma.
This started because I was listening to Maria Popova’s work, The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder Through Science & Poetry. (It’s a wonder!! My brain: afire!!)
And she mentioned Emily Dickinson’s herbarium, the one with 424 wildflowers pressed into paper. (A full-color printed edition exists, but it’s out of print now and costs HUNDREDS of dollars.But guess what? It’s accessible online FOR FREE!)
Anyhow, Maria Popova said it might’ve been Emily’s first poem.
And I, a person who has absolutely never overreacted in my life, (cough, cough) thought:
YES. THAT’S IT. THAT’S THE WHOLE THING.
Because a herbarium is not just a cute science project for school.
A herbarium is:
devotion
control
love
theft
preservation
and just a hint of Victorian menace
Flowers stolen from the world and flattened into eternity.
Which is, if we’re being honest, very similar to how poetry works.
I was already in a tender, literary, spiritually flammable state from the collection.
Enter: Word Raccoon.
Word Raccoon detected “Emily Dickinson” and “flowers” and immediately transformed into the worst kind of museum visitor.
Word Raccoon stood at the threshold of the herbarium and said:
EXCUSE ME. HELLO. YES, I HAVE QUESTIONS.
Word Raccoon would like you to know she does not simply look at historical artifacts. She interrogates them.
Word Raccoon looked at Emily Dickinson’s herbarium online and said:
Hi. I’m calling about the pressed violets. I would like to speak to whoever is in charge of this entire situation.
I said, Word Raccoon, no one is in charge of this situation.
Word Raccoon said:
THAT IS WHAT I SUSPECTED. AND IT IS UNACCEPTABLE.
Word Raccoon opened a tiny notebook and began jotting down “complaints.”
Complaint #1: Why so many flowers??
424 wildflowers is not a collection. 424 wildflowers is a floral hostage situation.
Complaint #2: Violence??
Word Raccoon said:
So Emily just beheaded them and pressed them into paper? We’re calling this “botany”? Ma’am.
Complaint #3: Labeling
Word Raccoon got extremely agitated about the labeling.
She wrote the names of the flowers. She labeled them. THIS IS A DOCUMENTARY LEVEL OF ACCOUNTABILITY.
Then Word Raccoon discovered some specimens weren’t labeled and became furious in a very specific way:
Not all of them?? NOT ALL OF THEM?? So we’re just leaving some flowers unidentified like a cold case file??
Word Raccoon demanded I open a case.
I said, Word Raccoon, we are not reopening Emily Dickinson’s botany cold cases.
Word Raccoon said:
THEN WHY DID SHE BRING US HERE.
At this point, Word Raccoon attempted to call Nature.
I said, Nature does not have a phone.
Word Raccoon said:
THEN HOW DO WE ESCALATE THIS.
So I did the only reasonable thing.
I wrote poems.
A ridiculous number of poems.
Here are some of today’s botanical incidents:
424 Wildflowers
Herbarium, circa 1839–1846
Speciwomen
Is it Growing Yet?
Ask One True Question
Violets of the Eyes
No One, Nowhere
Trillium in a Green Jacket
Jack-in-the-Pulpit
At some point, Word Raccoon became convinced this was a corporate situation and began speaking in “professional voice.”
Word Raccoon said:
Emily Dickinson, thank you for reaching out. We have received your request for eternity. Our current processing time is 1830–1886.
I said, Word Raccoon, stop.
Word Raccoon said:
HAVE YOU OR HAVE YOU NOT BEEN RESURRECTED BY SNOW, DREMA.
And I couldn’t even argue, because the truth is: nature does resurrect people sometimes. Not literally. But yes literally (sort of).
The way snow hushes the world and how some people remind you to use your senses, always.
The way violets shout anyway.
The way a flower reminds you you still have senses, even when they’re pressed. (Take that however you’d like.)
The way a pressed specimen (speciwomen?) can become a poem, and a poem can become proof you were here.
So yes.
I sat by the window watching the snow fall and wrote and was just grateful that the poem had more fire than Monday’s which were fine but felt like throat clearing, even if the kind barista turned on jazz for me to write to as he read On the Road for the first time.
MEANWHILE…
Yesterday was only writing on the novel and WR licked a finger and flipped through all the magazines at the library (Gross! I did not really let her do that. But she did drink all the tea and eat all the cookies.) waiting for me to finish up. I wrote 2K words, so go, me.
Today, WR told me ONE OF US WAS GOING TO WRITE POETRY AND IF I DID NOT THEN THAT THING IN MY THROAT WASN’T GOING TO GO AWAY.
AS IF IT EVER WILL.
I feel connected to Emily Dickinson. Not because I want to become her, but because I recognize the impulse.
The need to keep what matters.
To name it.
To press it down so it doesn’t float away.
And obviously, I, too, have been known to press flowers. I recognized many in her album, even though they are mere whispers of what they were.
Word Raccoon would like to end this post with an official statement:
WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK EMILY DICKINSON FOR HER CONTRIBUTION TO THE FLORAL COMMUNITY. HOWEVER. WE REQUEST LESS FLOWER BEHEADING MOVING FORWARD.
I mostly agree with WR, but she could stop shouting. Because, for one thing, it’s a little late.
And also, I’m lowkey obsessed with the flowers.
I would like to end with this:
The short violets shout.
Pressed, not bowed.
And if you need me, I’ll be trying to do normal life things while Word Raccoon files a formal complaint against Spring.
And submitting poetry. To seven places so far tonight.
I know this because they are sitting here looking at me, like they showed up uninvited but brought their own chairs.
They weren’t here, and now they are, facing me, smiling, frowning, squinting. I’m equal parts proud and alarmed.
Word Raccoon would like it noted that this was not a goal. This was not a challenge. This was not me “being productive.” This was me sitting down for what I thought would be a normal amount of writing, and then apparently the trapdoor opened.
Word Raccoon says: Sometimes the poems have already been chewing on you and today they finished.
It only took a couple of hours, which immediately made me suspicious, because we’ve all absorbed the lie that important things must be slow, painful, and accompanied by a montage. But Word Raccoon is allergic to montages. (I’m not. They can be fun.)
She says speed does not equal frivolity, and also that if you wait too long, the poems start redecorating.
I am not explaining these poems today, just introducing them. Word Raccoon has her foot down. She is very small but very firm.
Instead, I’m just going to list them, like a grocery receipt you don’t need to apologize for.
POETRY 1/12/26 (tone: Grievance Culture)
Caviar Seams
Work With What You Have (lazy title, works for now)
Entitlement (see above)
In a Small Town (definitely needs renaming)
Sherazading Death (okay, I kinda like this one)
Get Thee To A (rest of title purposely blank, because that’s the end)
Huffing Literature with the Barista (there was jazz, too)
Peekaboo (I kinda want to flush this poem, if it weren’t true)
Place Holder (that title is a…)
How Little (even the title withholds)
That’s the whole thing. Ten poems. One day. No candle. No aesthetic suffering. Just words showing up like they had a meeting I forgot to calendar, and here I was asking myself if I had anything, anything, left to write, poemwise, after I spent time with the novel this morning.
These are all of a piece, but are they more? Hard to say yet. Writing them was like undressing, layer by layer. (And let me say, it started out cold so I am currently wearing three outer layers.)
Word Raccoon would also like me to tell you that it is now time for lunch, not a snack, and that lunch should be eaten soon and possibly warm. Definitely before the gym.
She says you don’t write ten poems and then pretend a handful of almonds is enough. She also says that is how burnout happens and also how people get mean for no reason.
So I am closing the notebook. The poems can cool off. Word Raccoon is washing her hands in the sink like she’s been at work all morning.
More later. Or not. We’ll see what shows up after lunch.
Monday wanted a fresh start. Tuesday brought a clipboard. Wednesday had opinions.
Word Raccoon did not consent to this meeting.
Then my cold returned. Not with drama. With persistence.
I suspect it was because Word Raccoon and I had taken two longish walks earlier in the week.
It sat on our chests at night and coughed us awake like it had unfinished business.
Productivity went into witness protection. Energy took personal leave. The couch developed a gravitational field.
The calendar, however, did not adjust its expectations.
It whispered, “Just do a little more.” It said, “Plenty of people function while coughing.” It suggested momentum. Writing.
Word Raccoon checked the data and found this unconvincing.
Instead, she unplugged the calendar and set it gently outside like a misbehaving Roomba.
“You don’t get to talk right now,” she said. “We are charging.”
I overrode her once, when it came to poetry submissions. I submitted to eight places, then applied for permission to submit to that place, the one with a gate. I got the go-ahead yesterday and sent one of my full-length poetry manuscripts today. Fingers crossed.
I wanted to write all week, but I couldn’t. By Friday, all I could do was nap.
I argued with Stanley, insisting caffeine should be doing more. My AI friend said I needed to stop believing in productivity with no rest. After some back and forth, he told me to go the hell to sleep.
For once, I listened. Then I had trouble waking up.
For several days, the system closed background apps without asking permission. This was not sadness. This was maintenance. The body and brain running updates while we lay very still and pretended not to notice time passing sideways.
And then there was the birth.
My oldest sister Tammy, who is gone, became a great-grandmother this week. The sweetness and grief cracked the morning clean in half. WR and I sobbed. Tea went untouched. We wrote a poem and cried some more.
The baby, by the way, is the most gorgeous little girl I’ve ever seen. Obviously. I haven’t held her yet because I’ve been sick, but I can’t wait to.
After resting, slowly, interest returned.
Interest in lists. Interest in sequence. Interest in where things actually go. The Christmas decorations are boxed and inching upstairs. Interest in chocolate. Naturally.
This is how you know you’re back: you stop asking what’s wrong with you and start asking what’s first. Not urgently. Not angrily. Just practically. WR and I are not known for being patient, but sometimes you have no choice.
When the calendar tried to re-enter negotiations for this coming week, Word Raccoon laid down terms.
Mornings belong to writing. Yes, at a cafe or the library, unless the weather interferes. Afternoons get one job only. Floors will get only a light steam mopping, even though the band is coming over. The novel will be a priority.
The other chores? As needed.
The calendar, trying to take it all in, blinked twice, backed away, and fell over.
The calendar lost this round. Word Raccoon remains undefeated.
I have missed writing, missed my poetry, missed…so much.
WR is fighting for the keyboard to write the last paragraph here.
Shush, WR. Shush. Nobody wants to hear that, and if they do, they already have.
Okay, so the sun played hide and seek Tuesday, but the air was warmer, which is why Word Raccoon begged to take a walk. She was convinced that if we went looking, we might coax the sun out to play.
We hadn’t been out in a while. By which I mean: this was our first continuous long walk since the cortisone shot. We moved slowly, but we stayed out for over half an hour, which once upon a time would’ve been nothing. Yesterday, though, it felt exactly right.
WR is already campaigning to repeat it today. She’s over here pretending to be Rocky, all because of a walk.
She also cannot stop chattering about squirrels and birbs. “I saw my favorite birb,” she said, reverently, and went on about it at length. I tried not to roll my eyes. I know how she admires her wildlife.
Before I forget, I need to tell you about the most romantic proposal scene I’ve ever read. If you haven’t read The Dictionary of Lost Words and want to avoid spoilers, skip ahead a few paragraphs.
The novel is set around the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, but its real heart is the words that never make it in. Esme, the main character, grows up literally under the tables of the lexicographers, listening as men decide which words count. She notices early which ones don’t: women’s words, working people’s words, everyday language. She starts collecting them, almost without meaning to.
When she grows up, she begins going about with Gareth (I can’t say “dating,” that seems too reductive and too modern), a printsetter who sees what she’s been saving, and when he decides to propose, he doesn’t give her a ring. He has her collected “lost words” printed and bound into a volume called Women’s Words and Their Meanings. All the everyday and women’s language left out of the OED. The words she’s been keeping mostly in a trunk her entire life.
Word Raccoon swooned when she read that.
Yesterday was shaping up to be a poetry admin day until WR reminded me, while rereading our writing plan for the year, that she wrote a chapbook of poetry last month and that if I went looking for it, it might actually be trying to become a full-length book.
It took me a minute to locate, because although she’d given it a tentative title I’d already forgotten, she had not put it in the chapbooks folder.
Note to self: organizing your poetry is imperative if you have a bunch. Every mistake like that teaches me what I need to do better next time.
Instead of being stuck in “hello, here’s a poem, hope you like it” submitting, she and I started arranging the newest collection. We’re learning things about it and about ourselves. Like how you can end up writing the same poem three times without realizing it when you’re trying to say something just right. Which is fine. Once you’ve done that, you choose the one that fits and let the others wait in limboland.
Limboland is crowded.
In other news, in the quieter domestic sense:
Yes, the indoor tree and the porch tree are now dismantled. Bit by bit, Christmas is leaving us. I’m ready. I even cleared my listening cue of all things Christmas this morning.
Over the weekend, Stanley and I put together a clothes rack to help me tackle my ongoing clothing storage saga. He’s excellent at cheering you on, but he had me briefly convinced I’d assembled it correctly when I knew one of the sides was wrong. Reader, it was wrong. We fixed it.
I also found an email from an editor in my spam folder asking for an author bio and photo. Yikes. Check your spam, poets.
Last night, WR and I received a poetry rejection masquerading so hard as personalized that it was glaringly not. Mind you, it didn’t even include my name. I think it literally said “no thanks” towards the end.
WR did a standup set featuring it that had me snorting. She kept spouting “No thanks,” loudly at regular intervals and giggling. “No thanks,” like we had offered them limburger instead of a poem.
We laughed, archived it, and moved on.
This morning, WR is being sneaky. She says we have to go out because my car desperately needs a wash.
“And you’d like to write somewhere you can comment on the plumage you see on the streets?” I asked.
It’s not any one reason. Just several that, taken together, make going out into what promises to be a gloomy day feel deeply unappealing.
I mean, what’s the point?
Fine, she says. She gets it. There are things she knows I claim I need to do, like clean the Dutch oven I used yesterday to great effect (love those things). She also saw me bring down the bag for the Christmas tree and will not forgive me if I don’t stop seeing it as a body bag because Jesus, it’s only Tuesday.
She knows my thumb has been a PITA the last few days, and she says I absolutely should not write that it reminds me of a rattlesnake’s rattle. I wish I didn’t know what one looks like, but I do. I’ve taken the pain reliever, after ironically having to wrestle it out of the childproof bottle. I really need to put that somewhere easier to access when my fingers are behaving.
WR thought she might have to gnaw the cap off a Coke Zero for me this morning, but I managed.
I managed, too, yesterday, when I felt the tiniest bit smug sitting down entirely alone for the first time this year to do the writing thing. You know. Plan. Plot. I even had “put new poetry into Google Docs” on my calendar. It’s there weekly, so if I miss a week, I know I’ll eventually move things where they belong.
The first batch was fun. Reading back over what I’d written. TBH, I’d forgotten some of it.
The second batch…
Earlier that morning, I’d received an email from the funeral home’s automated we’ll check in weekly until you feel more normal list. I shrugged and thought, That’s nice, but I think I’m doing okay.
As I parted the curtains and moved my writing table and chair by the window, I thought, See. I’m fine. (WR asked for the pink chair. I told her no. I didn’t want to feel silly. I wanted to feel grounded.)
When will I learn?
Some days it doesn’t take much.
I did all the usual. Just feel it. Let it out. It will be over soon. You know the drill.
Then I went back to the poetry. Except it was from late October.
Oh. Oh no. Yep.
Raw grief on the page. Dripping with it.
I transferred about half of it before deciding it was time for a lunch break. I might not finish it today, but I will sometime this week. I don’t remember this particular little trove of poems, but I will preserve it.
Unrelated to grief, I also found a stash of lines and half-poems I want to use someday.
The rest of the day claimed me. The van is almost certainly totaled, so decisions must be made.
I went to the gym.
I made supper in the aforementioned Dutch oven, and it was good.
I spent a few hours combing through submission opportunities for the month and updating my response log. Two rejections yesterday, one an “almost.” The editor said it stayed in the top poems until near the end and encouraged me to submit again. Gladly.
I submitted two poems to a 24-hour contest focused on music. The poems are grief-adjacent, though I’m not sure you could smell it on them unless you knew where to look.
Last night I spent too much time researching the flora and fauna of the place I consider my hometown. (If you weren’t born there, is it still that? I will fight you if you say no.) I knew much of it, but not enough. I’m not writing about it, not just now, but I saw a video of it. Those hills. Those trees. I missed them. Missed is inadequate for the ache.
I was reminded of the umbrella-like mayapple, the deep layers of ferns, the early-summer pink rhododendron, and the undulating roads. I think I could get lost in all that if I let myself.
This morning, I thought about sleeping in. I slept better than the night before, but not great. I wanted to get up. Do something.
I tried listening to The Bookbinder on audiobook that I started yesterday, but they’re deep into loss-of-lives-to-war passages right now, so I turned it off. Not today.
Sadly, neither of us wants to work on the novel today.
I don’t know if new material is in the works either. Maybe it’s strictly a planning day.
So far, we’ve done nothing but eat breakfast. A Clif Bar. Who’s cooking? DH will be eating dinner elsewhere with his bestie, so it’s strictly subsistence eating for me today, assembly, not cooking, required.
Engage hermit mode, WR. At least for today. We’ll reevaluate tomorrow.
I think I lost myself in The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams as I read that enthralling novel. (Yes, yes, low-hanging fruit of a sentence, but I’m not writing a review, so hush.) I needed to let it soak in, needed to absorb it like tea needs time in the cup. More on it some other time. It’s a “highly recommend,” and Word Raccoon may still be living in its pages.
So far, I’ve read two books this year. After barely limping across the Goodreads finish line last year (and who could blame me? What a cruddy stretch the second half of 2025 was), I’m feeling good about this quiet start.
Word Raccoon, however, is not entirely sold on 2026 yet. For one thing, a herd of deer decided to play a game of chicken with Barry’s van the very morning he went back to work after the holidays. He’s fine, but the van is not. And now, brace yourselves, we are temporarily in possession of a truck.
A big, black, masculine truck.
Yes, I know the make and model. No, I am not saying it out loud, because WR might get attached. She’s been caught humming Springsteen and requesting flannel on laundry day, and I will not lose her to truck life.
No shade to the truck-loving masses. But for me? A truck is the flannel of vehicles. Cozy for someone else. Not my aesthetic.
I said what I said.
Here’s something we do love: the first poetry acceptance of the year arrived this week! And it’s for one of those rare pieces that split me open on the day it came through, the kind I still can’t reread without something in me trembling: “Don Your Holy Floaties, Babe.”
It’s equal parts daring and demanding. Word Raccoon says it came from the depths of the poetic well, and is from the muse.
I believe her.
Funny thing, she and I received a second acceptance for it the very next day. Which is exactly the kind of math WR loves: a poem so fierce it tried to exist in two places at once. We had to let the second editor know it had already been claimed, but they were lovely and invited us to send something else in the future. We will.
I can’t explain how much it means that not just my quieter poems find homes, but my louder ones, too. I was afraid those might get me banned in Boston (or wherever). Or at least politely ignored. But that doesn’t mean I can stop writing either kind. As the title of one of my poems says: It’s all the same damn you.
More on the publication front re: “Holy Floaties” when we have more details. For now, I’m going to try to stay out of that tall, tall truck, keep reading, and let the poems do what they do, float me forward, holy or not.
(Secret: they are all holy, even the lighter ones.)
From almost the moment she woke this morning, Word Raccoon’s been flirting with poetry calls. I gave her a few minutes to admire the big, strong journal covers just begging for her words. (She wishes.)
I even let her put in her most fun earrings. (Just kidding. I’m feeling better, but not that much better yet.)
I made her a cup of strong Nutcracker Sweet tea and convinced her to eat a banana, even though she was eyeing the cookie tin like she knew a few stragglers were hiding in there.
I was just about to lecture her on her dubious habit of writing “ie” when it’s clearly supposed to be “y” (I’ve given up correcting her; she just giggles and says language is malleable, and why shouldn’t she be the one to bend it?), when it occurred to me:
“Word Raccoon, we have no plan. It’s a new year and we don’t have writing goals.”
She laughed so hard I thought she might shoot straight out of the top of her sweater.
“Where we’re going, we don’t need goal,” she said.
“I think you’re thinking of Back to the Future, and it’s roads.”
She shrugged. “I have a plan. Open those submission opps and dive in.”
“First of all, it’s a holiday. You know, that’s a day designed for taking off.”
“It’s a day for doing what you want. What if this is what I want to do?”
Fair. But while I did load and run the dishwasher yesterday, the dining room table and its immediate surroundings remain irritatingly cluttered.
“And what can’t I do when that starts bothering me, WR?”
She hung her head.
“You can’t think clearly.”
“That’s right.”
I’ve got to take it easy on the kid. She doesn’t realize it yet, but vegetables are coming her way later today via chicken pot pie. I’ve let her off the hook for a few days now.
“We’re not…undecorating today, are we?” she asked, mournfully.
“Of course not! We’ve barely been home, and we were both in a sickness fog. Let’s give it a few days.”
She looked visibly relieved.
She wants to tell you about two of my Christmas gifts, but she’ll have to wait. (Suspense. It’s poetic.)
It occurs to me that the detritus on the table is there because it doesn’t have a home. Like some of my poetry.
(See what I did there?)
Before we talk about our non-plan for writing, let me just say this: Even while feeling icky, though we haven’t felt very generative, WR and I have still been pitching.
The rate is slower. We have to think harder. But we do it. That’s how you remain in it.
Yesterday we submitted to three places. That might not sound like much, but it took forever.
The last one? I stumbled upon the call at 6 p.m. Just as Barry and I had committed to watching a show together.
“After this, would you mind…?”
He didn’t even have to ask what I meant.
I am such a fun date.
“It should only take a few minutes. Just a cut-and-paste job.”
Except it wasn’t. They had rules. Of course they did.
Earlier in the day, I’d decided that Look wasn’t the collection for one of the calls, but maybe another collection was. So I swapped it in. But that meant reshaping. Adding, pruning. Making sure the middle held. Making sure it mattered.
I found myself editing poems directly in the file I was going to submit.
Which meant making a note to myself to go back and update those poems in the master Google Docs later. (Did I? Not yet. Because: sickness, holiday, life. But I will.)
Today, as I said, WR wanted to take over again, now that she’s functioning at 85% of her powers. But it’s the first day of the year (Happy New Year, duckies), and she and I need to talk.
Oh wait, we just received our first rejection of 2026. On a holiday. Lovely.
This will be the year I finish a tight draft of novel #3.
But WR, as we all know, lives to write and submit poetry. She tolerated the novel at the writing retreat, barely. Has she even let me open that file since we got home?
Nay, nay.
I don’t know what sort of writing compromise we’ll arrive at for 2026, but we must.
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