“This is about my someday daughter, already stung stained with insecurity begging, ‘Mom, will I be pretty?’ I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap listick and answer, ‘No, the word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be and no child of mine will be contained in five letters. You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing, but, you will never be merely pretty."


Katie Makkai

head tipped back
hands wrapped around rope
falling dreams
and summer things
  sun/shade
  light/leaves
metaphorically-allegorically
and how I want eternity

the things I want to say are crowding hidden in the air
hitting nerves and drawing sounds out
like a tight-tuned tinker's toy piano
and the beauty lost as fumbling past edges you glint on by
and how the joy you feel is never more than the pain
pain as currency, Pain as more alive
living lies in lieu
a debt we pay for happiness
I will not shun the scythe

Things To Read

Though I am Young and Cannot Tell -Ben Jonson

Morning Song -Marcia F Brown


Storm -Sally Plumb Plumb

two days in
chin up, eyes down
blink your eyes and
     do not miss her
think of all the things you see
     when she gets back, we will take tea
i am wide and narrow
write to-do lists to stay slow

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

(an excellent way to start the first chapter)

On Fri-the-day in Physics
we spent all trying on movie scripts
cutting them down, wrapping them around our calves like
shin-guards, tight and vaguely reassuring
 And have I read it? just the first
You tell me juice instead of grey
I wish you best but do not say so
a woman makes a cup of her heart, and in that way I hear
how he came home to
a surprise celebration of Gerald
(tunes with mountains and bears)
the hell's bells man, what a sweet sound
they were
some kind
of astounding