I recently watched a documentary about Charles Bukowski. Bukowski is a respected writer. He was also known for being an asshole and a misogynist. The documentary did not contradict these ideas, but it did humanize him a bit for me. It also made me want to read some of his work. I checked out Absence of…

“Gathering the Bones Together” by Gregory Orr. I love when a poem is dark and beautiful. And haunting. “Each night, I knelt on a marble slab/and scrubbed at the blood/I scrubbed for years and still it was there.” So there is haunting and haunted. Orr haunted my dreams last night. He walked into my head and…

I am taking a poetry class at The Loft Literary Center. This last week we have been working with margins. We were asked to deviate from the left margin. I struggle between loving and abhorring structure. This was an exercise (so structure), but it felt so freeing (abhorring structure) to leave that margin behind. Sometimes,…

And it feels excellent. I know it is a strong piece, perhaps my best writing to date. Though this past year has had some particularly devastating moments, I suddenly find myself less afraid. I guess when your world has been upended, it makes you take stock. And I have realized that to get the things…

When my family first bought an answering machine, my dad recorded the message as “Yes. We finally got one of those.” I have been writing since I was nine. And yes, I have finally gotten one of those- a blog. Writing is about sharing. Although it goes against all my wallflower tendencies, I realized a…