I somehow missed yesterday’s poem and prompt email from the writing cohort. I checked for it a few times and when I didn’t see it, I freewheeled into poetry myself. I wrote down some lines that came to me. I may have drafted another poem too, though at the time I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d done.

As soon as I opened my email this morning, I saw today’s prompt. Later, when I went looking for it again, I couldn’t find it. Hunting for the sender’s name revealed not only today’s email but yesterday’s as well.

That’s what I get for having two main email addresses. Some people’s connection to me goes back to the old inbox, and I still send junk mail there, so yes, I maintain it. I also signed up to Submittable with it a jillion years ago, and just try changing your email over there. 

I dare you.

This morning, immediately upon reading the poem of the day and yesterday’s prompts, I started writing something based loosely on an unpleasant experience I had the other day, where I felt like I was being Judgey McJugerDrema. (It was all internal, but I knew what I was thinking.)

Word Raccoon fussed and told me that writers really can’t afford to prejudge. We’d lose all our best material. 

She’s not wrong. She learned that from a beautifully open-minded mentor. 

At any rate, I was ashamed of myself and was trying to write it out.

Turns out it was deeper.

Of course it was.
It always is.

I wrote the bones of a second poem, so skeletal it could double as a Halloween decoration. (Too much? It’s early.)

Then another came out, definitely needing a polish. WR put her hands on her waist and asked if we could possibly write about something, anything else? 

I told her we already had this morning, but she rolled her eyes and said I knew what she meant.

I did, but she can just…

Hey, I’m already wearing her pirate racoon shirt (HER fault I own it,entirely). What more does she want? 

Once at the café, an hour early because this holiday weekend is about to get busy, I triumphantly grabbed a Coke Zero, and Word Raccoon did a little dance of thanks for the amused barista.

We were already fueled by The Book Review Podcast which we listened to while getting ready, and we finished the last few minutes of it with breakfast. It was delightful, both witty and informative, had me scrambling for the Libby app to request books before they’ve even been released. 

They also had poet Ada Limón on, which was extra inspiring. She read a poem that she said a tree gave her that had Gilbert Cruz teared up.

Same, Gilbert. Same.

Though my writing time is likely to be nonexistent this weekend, at least today I did the admin: 

Proofread a poem for an anthology and gave the thumbs up 

Wrote to thank another journal for updating me on the issue’s publication date (April 21!), 

Recorded a rejection (wah)

Checked to see if I had even submitted to a contest I received the results of in an email. (I had not, but ya for those who won.)

I’m looking forward to a lovely Easter buffet at a restaurant in a nearby town. We discovered it last year and haven’t looked back. (Family dinner will be next week.) 

Reese’s peanut butter eggs and Peeps to you, Dear Readers.

I’d also offer my handmade chocolates, but not this year. Don’t tell Word Raccoon but I’m not making them. Maybe next Easter.  

If you’ve had more than enough candy this season already, here’s something a little different. I did make my dad’s traditional pickled eggs, though most children don’t want those in their Easter basket. (I wouldn’t have minded.) 

While I am VERY beet averse, mercifully they lend color more than taste in this situation. You want to make them a few days ahead so they have time to pickle and turn that cheerful shade of pink that says festive and not vegetable-forward.

This is my adaptation of his recipe. (Very Southern-flavored.)

Pickled Eggs (the pink kind):

• 6–12 hard-boiled eggs, peeled
• 1 can beets (which, TBH, taste like dirt to me, which is why I don’t eat them)
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar (he used white, but I prefer the milder apple cider vinegar )
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup sugar (maybe more if you’re not a fan of sour)
• 1 tsp salt

Warm the beet juice, vinegar, water, sugar, and salt just enough to dissolve everything. Let it cool slightly, then pour it over the eggs in a jar until everything’s covered. Refrigerate.

Note: you can taste the brine and adjust to taste, no harm, no foul. 

Wait at least 2–3 days before eating, though they get better (and pinker) as they sit.

You can salt and eat them plain, or slice them and add them to a salad. Some brave souls use them to make deviled eggs. I’ve never tried that. 

If you’re Drema, you throw the beets out when the eggs are pickled. Not that you have to.

You’re welcome.

Did you ever feel like life handed you an opportunity and then said, “Just kidding”? I half have a chance at taking a trip that would be ideal for me. A bucket list trip, actually. But then life calls and says, “Hey, but like… is this the time? And the cost…”

I’m negotiating. What’s the going price for kidneys these days? I have two. Who needs two? (Terrible joke, I know. And I did once volunteer to be tested to donate for someone who needed one, so maybe I get a pass on making a joke about something that is not really funny.)

Word Raccoon is offering to sell her treasure to fund the journey, but I’m thinking no one wants used earrings so much.

I’m dreaming, as always, today while trying to do pesky admin things, wondering why I don’t have an assistant for that, and also, why is today so gray?

I had committed earlier to going to the gym regardless of the weather, and did I want to? Absolutely not. I went anyway.

But gray days can brighten with writing and reading. 

Right?

Right?

Yesterday I attended a webinar about newsletters, in part because it has been suggested that Word Raccoon should have her own. She used to, but kinda stopped. During the call, several Substacks were mentioned, (though the call was not just about Substack newsletters,) and I subscribed to so many that my inbox is now crying, Ma’am. Enough.

I do like the Substack app. I’ve been keeping an eye on it from early on, reading others’ newsletters and interacting with artists. It’s for more than creatives, but you can curate your list pretty tightly, which I love. It’s like having a chorus of creatives surrounding you every morning.

But I’m unlikely to ever abandon this blog, even if I start a newsletter elsewhere. It’s been my beacon to the world since 2012, I think. It’s my space capsule of optimism, like the Voyager Golden Record, saying, “I hope you can hear this. I hope that you are reading, or that you might someday.”

It’s afternoon now, and a load of laundry is drying. I have to mail the title of the now-scrap van to the recycling company. I am guest lecturing in a friend’s university class Monday, so I should prep for that, too.

It promises to be an afternoon of misc. before the real writing begins. WR is getting insistent about doing something fun. Or at least eating something.

Her first impulse was to grab a protein bar. I replenished the supply yesterday and now the freezer is choking on them. Word Raccoon grabs them when she’s too engrossed to be arsed with cooking or even thinking about food. Or when she wants a cookie but knows just cookies will cause her to swoon with weakness later.

I told her she doesn’t need so many, but she does not listen. Right now she’s gone from “oh, look, cooking is so cool and adventurous” to “Just feed me, okay?”

I don’t fight her. I respect the raccoon’s mood, knowing at some point she’ll be making prime rib again (rarely, get it?) or even a fancypants croquembouche. She loves a challenge, but seldom makes something twice once she’s conquered it, unless it’s an everyday recipe. 

I’m already arguing with her about lunch. Lettuce, and cucumbers are lurking in the fridge, begging to be used. Grape tomatoes are on the counter, and hey, they’re beginning to be in season enough that they have taste! I even have some of her favorite salad mix-ins in the cabinet, but she is frowning and staring at the protein bars like she’s in love.

At the very least, she ought to do some reading today. I sat down to read with her yesterday and she yeeted two of the library books practically across the room, saying one was overly sentimental and the other too hard to define, and she wasn’t in the mood to play guess-the-genre.

We dumped them and a third one she refused to even open into the library drop box on our way to the gym. 

Yeah, that’s what I’m dealing with over here. But secretly, I’m kinda excited, because when she gets in this mood, she gets real productive, real fast.

Ok, since I have now talked her into the salad (whew) and the gym, after the post office I’ll set her loose with a blank page.

Let’s go.

My alma mater has a group of us who are banding together for April to achieve a writing goal during National Poetry Month, yay! I just read the first email complete with a poem and writing prompts.

As expected, a prompt led Word Raccoon WAY off topic, but the poems aren’t necessarily to be shared, anyway. At least not yet though it sounds like some virtual open mics might happen this month.

Anyway, I’m grateful for these lovely people. The program is so large now I don’t know everyone, but they are still my “writing family.” 

This morning, after reading the featured poem and the writing prompts, I wrote a poem called “Residue.” I revised it, just once, but pretty extensively. 

It’s not just a notebook poem or I’d share it here. This one wants to be something. It has a panther, a gun, moths, and dirty dishwater in it. 

I know, I know. 

I have the title for a second poem written down, too: “Self-Haunting Oven.”

Hey, you should never have tried to move me off the domestic dime, life. I’ve just doubled down on the importance of it, LOL. Half kidding. I think that will be a fun poem to write. 

I ended up submitting to a total of 15 places yesterday. Am I tired? 

Absolutely. 

I didn’t expect to have poem-writing energy this morning, but I’m grateful as it helped me reshape some memories. 

You know, you don’t have to be a part of a writing cohort to write something every day. Almost every day. Hell, try once a week. You just have to fire that G-D inner critic. Forgive me for interrupting the eating of your Wheaties, but when did Herbert ever do anything for you, anyway? He’s an asshat. 

Word Raccoon is just here for the Coke Zero this morning. She’s yawning like she doesn’t have places to be today. 

Gorl, plz. 

Word Raccoon keeps pouring Coke Zero and iced tea into me, begging me to submit to just a few more journals tonight.

“We have submitted to nine already. Hells bells, what else do you want from me??”

She’s determined as she perches on the after-storm porch at home. 

Herbert, that curmudgeon in my head that really ought to pay rent is asking why I always wait until the last minute to submit.

See, WR and I never think we’re waiting until the last minute. We start off the month hitting the easiest and ones that are the most “us,” and we decide some of them are not our vibe. 

But the later in the month it gets, the more journal curious we get and soon we’re like, “Hey, you look kinda cute.” 

Maybe we didn’t think we were ready to submit another chapbook just now. Maybe we really didn’t see the food-through-tech call for poems (how did we miss that one?) until now.

You want feminist poems? Here, hold this, I know we have some in here somewhere. 

Strange, weird finds? Yup, probably at the bottom of the poetry trunk. (Imagine the maid going through the trunk in Titian’s Venus of Urbino; I had to hunt all over the Uffizi to find the painting, but it’s there. WR would’ve used a map.) 

And WR and I know this makes us a cliché , but last minute gives us the impetus to submit now, now, now!

Speaking of Coke Zero (which we were above, so don’t accuse me of yet another breakneck topic shift), I walked by the cooler at the café  today and ran back to it, sure I had seen a familiar red-and-black label.

“Is that for me?” I asked the barista. 

I had been campaigning for them to stock Coke Zero for my Dirty Diet that has somehow become my default drink. (If you know me, you know the very last thing I need is coffee AND Coke Zero together.) 

Yes, they ordered it for me, but I guess I will let others buy it, too. LOL. I actually wore my Coke Zero earrings in there like billboards and literally asked if they would stock it.

Now I need to have the other café  carry it. I forgot to mention it to the owner. 

The temperature started out chilly, so I, rational woman that I am, started out indoors at the café while I ate my berry banana bowl. 

Just as it was warming up, I picked up my laptop to move outdoors and the most gorgeous bird flew by. I don’t think it was a bluejay, but I caught a glimpse of blue, so maybe? 

I really ought to learn my birds better, I suppose. 

Anyway, there are about five more markets WR would really like me to submit to before the evening is through. She hates seeing those countdowns. 

I may or may not get through them. She has me snorting Coke…Zero, that is. 

Oh, and guess what? JOHN GREEN HAS ANNOUNCED HIS NEWEST PROJECT – he has written a novel FOR ADULTS!!! Final-freakin’-ly! 

He’s calling it Hollywood, Ending, and apparently it debuts on Sept. 22. While I’m way too excited for it, also, Sir, I just submitted a poem today based on your last book. Don’t make my work obsolete just yet, please. 😂

Also, shhh…but I might have just pre-ordered a signed copy AND, since he says that The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) by Warhol was important to this book, I ordered a crusty old paperback of it for $2, too, before everyone else rushes for them.

Wait, is that just a me-thing?

Ok, WR is insisting I get no supper or no snacks (usually her thing, but whatever) until I make more headway on the submission front. 

The raccoon always gets her way. 

CW: cause of death 

Now Playing: Chasing Pavements by Adele

Today I feel like I’ve been chasing poems across pages,

shoving words rudely, cutting whole sections and only stopping to wonder later if I have a copy of the original. I mostly do.

One poem was trying to have three centers.

One was hyperfixating on Tupperware, a couple of prose sentences trying to say what I still have to figure out how to compress. I’m mulling…

One was in pretty good shape, but did benefit from pruning and a slight expansion. 

One made me want to go through a drive-thru for fries and dipping sauce.

One features a writer that I said if he’s ever canceled, it will take me down. He seems avuncular, but you never know.

Another poem I was finding my way through, doing brief tweaks to make it more immediate, when I received news I’d been waiting for and yet made me decide today is not the day for revising that particular poem.

The news? We finally know the cause of death for my youngest sister: basically, her poor heart just gave out due to all it had been through. 

It has not been an easy day. 

The poem I was working on when I found out was “Driftwood,” which mentions a tragedy I witnessed the aftermath of. 

As I said, this is not the day for that poem.

Funny how life can swing between “Oh my god, I love that there are bookstores” to this.

The internet is out at the café, still. I am using my phone as a fitful hotspot.

I am grateful for language, even when it proves inadequate. 

I am grateful for answers, for results that, no matter how tragic, are not what I had feared. 

Another poem I was working on was “To Power the Human Heart.” It received a vein today that it hadn’t formerly had.

There’s a disconnect between who my heart thinks I am and the things I have to know. 

I’ve been listening to an audiobook, Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library, recommended, I think, by Kendra Adachi. The narrator keeps the voices, even during the tough stuff, upbeat and hopeful.

That’s who I am, at core. 

Maybe that’s all my writing is, is my brain and body rejecting anything that interferes with what I wish the world were. With the things I’ve had to face.

Gosh, that wasn’t very upbeat. 

I reckon that today, that’s ok. 

Tomorrow is and all…

Ah, being able to write on the porch of my favorite café on a MARCH morning! Even if I was distracted by construction equipment. My dad used to love watching that sort of thing, and I found myself taking photos as if I could show him. 

I did manage to write a couple of poems, the bones of them, anyway. 

It was wonderful, as always, to see the signs of spring out and about. Does a heart good. 

I also made a trip to the library today. This week I have read three short novels; spring is perfect for quick reads. But having finished one today (a little gem), I wanted more. 

There’s something about cruising the new reads shelves that is thrilling. You mean I can take as many books home as I like and keep them until I’ve read them? Best. Date. Ever. LOL.

Here’s a photo of my stack. Don’t judge – I take chances on books from the library that I might not otherwise read. There are a couple in this stack that I’m not sure about. Bet you can guess which ones. But we’ll see. 

As I left the library, a young woman was pruning the flowers and basil, and she handed me two yellow flowers of her own accord. Such a sweet gesture. 

Part of me feels guilty reading so much, but part of me is very aware that this is filling-the-well season. When I start reading deeply, it’s because my writing asks for it. As you can imagine, this also makes me want to get back to writing my novel. 

Reading a novel is like climbing inside of someone’s mind. While it’s a highly curated version, it’s also intimate. (That could be its own blogpost.) 

Right now, I’m thinking about novels and white space, an important topic that I’m grateful was brought to my attention. John Green just touched on this on his podcast this week as well as an aside, so I need to sit down and capture my thoughts on it. Not today, which was a vapor of a day.  

Word Raccoon says white space sounds boring as hell. What does she know? She’s too busy feasting her eyes on spring and all it brings to life. 

Can’t say I blame her. 

It’s threatening to be warmer out today, but right now it’s very much not, and both of my pairs of slippers are on the porch.

There is no strategic reason they are there. They ended up there, but to bring them in means introducing cold air into the house before 5 am. No, Herbert, I have no idea why I am up before 5 am. I just am. But if I get the slippers and bring them in, they will eventually warm up, yes?

These are the things that flummox me and shouldn’t, but they are throat-clearing before the writing.

Shoes in, WR says I chose the wrong pair and why did I put them on and take them off off off until they warm.

Word Raccoon and I woke later than usual on Monday morning but still somehow ended up at the café an hour early. I was grabbing my keys when I heard the neighbor’s garage door go up and she leaves at 7:39. I don’t know why I know that.

Then WR whispered that while I’d remembered my jewelry, I had totally forgotten makeup, so I obliged her, but we still arrived early.

The café was just the right amount of chaos and company. 

The internet was down, so at first I was puzzled as to what to do since my phone claims it can be used as a hotspot but is a total slow pain about it. A friend who was also working there offered to let me hop on his if I needed it, but I decided to make WR experience what life was like before internet.

It started with morning pages, something we haven’t done in so long, just to get us to wording.

Lighthearted, people coming in and out, nodding, making conversation with AirPods in so if you didn’t talk too much they wouldn’t be offended.

Meeting the writer daughter from NYC that you’ve heard about for years from a friend, commiserating about how long books on submission can take and agents and all things writing, admiring her Erewhon bag, regaling her with tales of Buc-ee’s, its opposite, though you’ve never been to one.

In between, finding a foothold in the day’s writing. We do not demand words do anything. But sometimes we long to see them bloom.

Speaking of blooms, the electric blue squill flowers are taking over the yard. It’s brave, the squill, coming out before the other flowers, like a scout, testing to see if it’s safe. 

I will miss them when they are gone. I feel like I’m not supposed to say that, because what right do I have to say it; they’re not my flowers. They’re just wild flowers.

But it’s true. I freaking miss them when they’re gone. Even just seeing them in the wild is comforting. Silly WR.

This poetry collection idea is either clever or obvious. The first part was fun, so I don’t really care. The second part took place in a second location yesterday. Which explains a lot. (Yes, true crime lovers, that was a bad pun.) 

Without further ado, here is the current TOC for this very rough chapbook I’m working on. (Many of these may get amended titles, obv.)

Optative Instructions

In the Subjunctive Mood

The Imperative Mood

The Indicative Mood

The Interrogative

The Declarative

The Passive Voice

The Future Perfect

The Future, Perfect

FRAGMENTS

The Vocative

The Optative

Present Continuous

Active Voice (Featuring Voiceless Fricatives)

The Negative

Ellipsis (Your Native Language)

The Conditional Wing

The Zero Conditional (Happens Every Time)

The First Conditional Future, Possible

The Second Conditional

Third Conditional (Imagined Past)

Mixed Conditional

At least it’s less “objectionable” than a poem I wrote over the weekend, “Necromancer Duties.” 

“You ain’t raising nothing tonight./You birthing it.” 

I know. The newest collection’s poem titles sound positively vanilla by comparison.

Here’s what the accidental framework is doing for me. It’s making me write more intentionally, slower, cooler, though come on, WR did sneak one F-bomb in. 

Naturally, she wants to share it:

“Ah, fuck it./I hate the subjunctive.”

I looked at a few of the poems yesterday, said no thank you to revision, not yet, and that’s when I wrote the conditional poems.

Will the collection turn into something? Will they behave? Will I regain my revision powers that are sadly slacking on all fronts?

Stay tuned.

Also, not to pivot wildly, but look at this owl mug I got in yesterday to review. I am not reviewing it here. I am simply saying it is both adorable and enormous, and that Frida finger puppet has bravely agreed to serve as a scale model. Makes me look forward to tea time. 

I am considering placing Word Raccoon into Creative Witness Protection.

This is not a decision I make lightly.

She has been a loyal, if unofficial, co-conspirator in my artistic life for some time now. She has assisted in poems, blog posts, chapbooks, and at least one emotional incident involving a grocery store parking lot and a line that refused to behave.

However.

Recent developments suggest escalation.

She is no longer content to sit quietly on the arm of the chair while I write like a reasonable person. She has begun insisting on… alternatives.

Songs, for example. (I’ve mentioned this before. But she persists.) 

I will sit down to write a poem, a nice, contained poem with edges and intentions, and she will kick open the door like a tiny creative sheriff and say, “No. This is a chorus now.”

She’s been rooting around under my bed for my guitar. I told her a. My hands so no. b. I have NO CLUE the last time those strings were changed. So also no.

She has also taken to hoarding creative energy.

I do not mean this metaphorically.

I mean I will wake up with a perfectly respectable plan for the day, and she will have already spent the best parts of my mind on something that did not exist yesterday and now refuses to be ignored.

There are, at this time, no forms for this.

I have checked.

Additional concerns include:

• A tendency to escalate emotional tone without prior authorization
• Rewriting priorities mid-sentence
• Unexpected kitchen singing with a whisk.

(We will not be elaborating on that last point at this time. The file is open. The file is… thick.)

Naturally, I have begun to explore options.

Witness Protection seems appropriate.

A new name. A quiet life. Something low-stakes. I would say I am sending her to an “exotic” pet rescue, but she would escalate that into something worse in her mind and cling to my shoulder like that parrot to Niles’s head on Frasier. 

Perhaps she could become an Ordinary Productivity Squirrel. (Hear me out.)

She could live in a beige office park of the soul, where the lighting is soft and nothing unexpected happens. She could process manageable thoughts. She could allow me to finish a task from beginning to end without introducing a bridge, a refrain, or an existential aside made of shredded cheese and shredded thoughts.

I presented this plan to her.

She declined.

She cited poor snack conditions and a general lack of “vibe.”

She also informed me that she is not, in fact, the problem.

This is inconvenient.

Because the truth, which I was hoping to avoid for at least another week, is that she is not wrong.

The problem is not that she is unruly.

The problem is that she keeps insisting on a life that is louder than the one I can neatly manage.

She does not believe in staying in one lane.

She does not respect genre.

She does not understand why something that could be a poem should not also be a song, or why something that could be said should be said quietly.

She has been asked (and not just by me) if EVERYTHING is really a ten for her and she says yes, yes, YES!

She does not see the point of behaving when there is something to make.

And I, unfortunately, am harboring her until decisions are made.

So for now, she remains “at large.”

If you encounter her, do not approach: she may bite your shoelaces.

She will offer you a poem when you meant to write an email.
She will hand you a song when you asked for silence.

She will be very convincing.

I am still deciding whether to send her to that program.

But between us,

I probably won’t. She’s a goodhearted beastie, even if she is a bit much.

Even for me.

You know what’s not too much? The fabulous news that one of my early poems, “All In” has found a home in an upcoming anthology, Indiana Bards Poetry Anthology 2026. Many thanks to IBPA! The poem is one of my special ones, and I’m grateful it will have a larger life now.