Category: creative writing

  • I was very excited when I saw the latest edition of Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment–which includes a story of mine which won an honorable mention in their annual “Sweet Corn Prize in Fiction.” I’m happy this short but mighty story found such a beautiful home. Lots of other great work at Flyway, check it…

  • I came across this pencil drawing titled “the news scares me” that I did several years ago. (Seems it’s not a new trend, the news, being scary…) This is a reminder to anyone who’s feeling overwhelmed by the state of things not to despair, but to keep doing whatever you can do to make the…

  • dear iphone

    Dear iphone, We are not so different, you and I, aside from the blood pumping in my veins and our obvious size difference, me so large and pillowy soft compared to your flat hard rectangular slipperiness. Oh, you go everywhere with me, like a shadow or a best friend (but maybe you are more shadow…

  • born into twilight

    Today is my birthday. So much has happened since I exited my mother’s womb those many years ago. The story of my birth and my mother’s labor are lost forever. All I have are a few hazy details. “Oh I had twilight sleep,” my mother told me. “No memory of any of it,” she said,…

  • (short fiction) Heartshaped Vaguely heartshaped, that’s how you described her face, and I always imagined her—with my child’s-eye, literal imagining—as having a face the color of a pink valentine’s candy heart, a face with a pointy chin and also big eyes made of chocolate, because you said hers were brown and melty. That’s how I…

  • I am from

    I, too, am from a sift of lost faces from patterns I can’t untangle from an endless string of cats purring

  • back through time

    back through time I lumber back through time unrooted over boulders gap-eyed water glinting pink sunset unrooted I slide through mud into sand into lake stone wash hillsides caving in I am caving in all I have to hold onto all I can carry this basket, sweet-grass woven Inside is my pacifer rubbery round I…

  • Never lose hope, my heart, miracles dwell in the invisible. —Rumi   love poem to the world, #16 The way my brain flares as I dream of you, electric while purple finches sleep hidden in dark branches how egg met sperm in warm depths and became you while the soul of my mother sang in…

  • Dear Senator Portman

    Dear Senator Portman, Can you tap into that part of your soul that unlocks and opens up with compassion for your neighbor? You did once. Part of me, that hopeful, naïve girl raised in a suburb that was “nice” and had “good schools” believes you can. That’s the sliver of me that tenaciously refuses to…

  • some random notes on fear

    Fear-based attachments are physically addictive, states the psychiatrist in the book I’m reading. (Is that why this nightmare isn’t over yet?) Explains things: why ugly hazing rituals cement bonds why that friend of a friend won’t leave her abuser (Oh, and she may also know he’ll kill her, if she tries, but people will still…