These are wonderful journals and I never go anywhere without one.

When my grandfather passed, blade-thin, after months spent gasping for a teaspoon of air, my mother told me the truth “Dying is hard” she said. “Watching it happen is even harder to endure” Decades later, trailing a wisp of smoke I wasn’t ready to watch drift away, I understood

"and if next I wave down the car and kiss my boys’ palms, they won’t think Today we might come home to bad news— because I am always like this; every day, the same harried love. But also: in this poem, a woman unravels at night."

You can hear (and see) me read my story’93 as editor’s choice of the week. Thank you, Jeff and Tara. panoply, a literary zine | Join us here for a wide-ranging and impressive array of writing panoplyzine.com

"i believe you wanted to hurt me, the right way, to save me from the wrong pain. your pain. my mother loved me wrong, too... it is never the absence of love that lingers longest: i have wanted to hurt someone the right way, too."

Honored that my poem "What They Did" is featured on the Poets Against Racism and Hate website this week. poetsagainstracism-usa.org/featured-poem/

There is a loveliness to incompletion, the way a robin’s egg lying cracked on the sidewalk is always an aria... O bleed. O bless the wisdom of my body reminding me through pain, through color, through the haze of my own willful ignorance: my rebirth may look a lot like violence.

“If a person gave away your body to some passerby you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled. Have you no shame in that.” — Epictetus

"I was broken, which might seem like a cliché, but I tell you, man, my spirit was crushed & a tide of emptiness washed over me...where I’m standing ankle deep in the surf, looking out toward the horizon where a single freighter is lit up in the darkness like a Christmas tree."

Today on our Bending Genres LLC Blog, Tina Barry's new collaborative collection, I Tell Henrietta, is reviewed by Britta Stromeyer: bendinggenres.com/review-of-tina… #writing #art #WritingCommunity Robert Vaughan

My poem is up on Verse Daily. Thank you, editors. versedaily.org/2024/whenlovew…

"No means No, even if it bends like a willow in your wind It is a gift, this sweet underside, a woman’s flesh, a place babies come from & healing—like salicylic acid that lines willow branches, a headache cure, our grandmothers chewed the soft twigs—but a man isolated the acid"

"I never knew the river the whale the storm the sea. I needed a better word for linger. I kept trying to heal with one hand what the other injured; I keep trying to predict where Venus will rise."

What does it mean to find serenity? Sometimes it's finding another creature that needs saving in order to save yourself. Check out "Finding Serenity" by Micah Muldowney @micahmuldowney on Sunday. Who knows, you might just find some salvation of your own.

"Shoppers and store clerks notice her, stare, and I wonder if she’ll be kicked out by management or security... And so, I shadow her like a maternal umbrella... Don’t you dare judge her I say with my posture. If you un- zip her exterior, she will fill this whole store with light"

"I will fill out a questionnaire on the quality & sound of my thoughts... & score highly. Tomorrow, I will wake up & hear every version of “It Had to Be You” at once. A traveling tour of Les Misérables is coming to town. Soon after, the State Fair, with food trucks & pigs."

Today on FLASH BOULEVARD, the wonderful Tommy Dean (is open to queries). Enjoy. flashboulevard.wordpress.com

Thank you The Lascaux Review ! I’m so honored to have won this year’s Lascaux Prize for Flash Fiction with my story “Five Things” which originally appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly lascauxreview.com/five-things/

"Because I am now parent to my parent Because a brain is a machine that sometimes misfires and I see the sparking panic in my mother’s eyes Because I am an expert in hot crossed wires Because my song is sweet and wet the same melody she sang to me as a child"