I’m having another morning in which I’m stalled out and convinced that I don’t know how to write or what to write about. I tried to work on a poem about breaking a plate and the connection to feeling sorry for my elderly neighbor below. Earlier, while putting things away, I had dropped a plate…
Category: Writing
It’s Late and I Should Have Been Taking Notes
This morning, I gave up. Sure, there was the darkened sky and the rain streaked windows. I wrote about those things, but I had nowhere to go with them. They didn’t remind me of a childhood memory. They didn’t call about some magical imagery. Dark clouds, rain streaks, both pitter and patter. “Attention without feeling…
Slow Plane Leaving
This morning, my poem “November Sky, Slow Plane Leaving” appeared in Stone Circle Review. Someone on Bluesky shared the poem and wrote, “Good morning to this expansive ache of a poem!” Briefly, the validation made me want to write, or edit, or submit other poems to other journals. Instead, unsure of where or how to…
Maybe I’ll Try Again Later
By 8am, I had all but given up on myself. The few lines I had written felt uninspired and the old poems I revisited with the thought of revising were boring and unpalatable. This was clear proof that wanting something doesn’t make it so. Looking for inspiration from other writers, I finished a series of…
I Don’t Know How to Do This
The alarm went off at 5:05am. I was having none of it. I slept, fitfully, for two more hours. I had wanted to get up early and read or write or both. I broke from my waffle routine – oatmeal with a little homemade granola that a friend had given to me. I read a…
Maybe Tomorrow
It feels like I’ve been staring at this screen for the entire day. My brain has been trying to settle on something and failing miserably at doing so. I tried reading, but it didn’t take. I tried writing and editing poems, but I didn’t have the patience. I did some work but felt distracted. In…
These Last Few Mornings…
Monday morning. After a fitful night of sleep in which I dreamed about being given two abandoned, tamed, and not yet fully grown lions to care for and trying to get someone from animal control to help… a night in which I woke in a tangle of sheets and quilt, I had a quick breakfast…
October 1: Writing Season
It’s October. The morning sky is gray. There was a crow squawking up a ruckus from a neighboring rooftop and a hummingbird nosed the flowers on the magnolia tree outside of my apartment window. I wrote a poem to start the month – it’s about naming things as a way of saying thank you, as…
Bigness, Smallness
Ooof! Today, the contradictions within are doing a do-si-do. My square dance brain is on the wobble. I can’t get my thinking straight on anything. The monkey mind has gone berserk. In one hand it’s eating a banana. The other is flinging shit at the walls. In the cartoon version of this, I look like…
Story Fest
On Saturday night, I went to a reading of sorts. Story Fest brought together a handful of Bay Area journalists on a stage occasionally accompanied by a trio (or was it quartet) of musicians. The stories were touching and funny, shocking and earnest. One told of coming to San Francisco chasing her dream of being…
A More Productive April than I Thought
Today I was going to go to an open studio event (local artists opening up their studios to the public), but I feel a sickness coming on. It’s that scratchy nasal feeling. I feel like I’ve gotten sick more often in my year-and-a-half out here in San Francisco than I have in other places and…
A Grateful Pause to Start the Day
From the corner of my charcoal gray sofa in the not yet nine am sunlight, I pause my reading and writing to answer a text. We’ll meet at the Polk thing at 1. The we being one of my friends and I and the Polk thing being a street fair with music and beer and…