Tag Archives: magazine

I Never Gave Her a Name

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I’m a week late posting this piece in the gem of a journal that is Microfiction Monday Magazine. The micro form transforms one’s writing heart into a fluid and raw state. For me, writing micros frees my mind from the baggage it so often carries while trying to impress. I hope you stop by Microfiction Monday. And while you’re there, check out all the marvelous micros; Edition 116 boasts beautiful pieces by David Hensen and G.J. Williams!

Thank you, Microfiction Monday, for publishing and sharing I Never Gave Her a Name; sometimes words take me back to a doll-less time in my childhood.

micro monday

(image or highlighted text will transport you to Microfiction Monday Magazine)

New CNF in “Hippocampus Magazine”!

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Honored and thrilled to have my creative nonfiction piece, “Inside My Mother’s Mouth,” published in the elegant and smart, Hippocampus Magazine.
Always honored to share a glimpse into my beautiful mother’s world. I dearly miss the person she was for all those amazing decades.

Click the image (or highlighted text) to read onward. Visit, Hippocampus, and take in all the fantastic stories there…
This piece was written before the Covid-19 axe cut deep. It seems so long ago now that I visited Millie daily and helped her with the morning routine.
I hope you’re all continuing to manage during these difficult days. Stay safe.❤️
Thank you for stopping by.

Inaugural Issue of Ailment – Chronicles of Illness Narratives

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During these months of such uncertainty, creative expression is a beautiful release. It is an honor to have my poetry and art included in this gorgeous, thoughtful, inaugural issue of Ailment – Chronicles of Illness Narratives.(clicking here or on image also will take you to Ailment’s First Issue)
I hope you, your loved ones, and all people you know are managing the days and staying safe❤️

I sketched the three drawings that accompany my poems when visiting with my beautiful mother at the nursing home. These last few weeks have been difficult not visiting with her, but days when she manages to answer the phone we get to chat a little. The nursing home allows families to drop items off. I go once a week and drop off crullers, comics, and family photos with love notes. My mother is my touchstone. Since suffering her massive stroke, over two years now, she still never complains. She manages small smiles. I selfishly miss that glorious smile of hers, the one I so often brag about-her god-given movie star grin.❤️xo

thank you

if you want to check out Ailment’s website click here

New Nonfiction Published!

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Really excited about this piece in 5×5 Literary Magazine – a creative jewel!
It means so much to share this piece about my beautiful mother’s life on Valentine’s Day❤️
Please click image to arrive.

We’ll Always Have the High Chair

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honored to have my prose poem We’ll Always Have the High Chair
published in Free Lit Magazine
“Free Lit Magazine is free and published bi-monthly with a mandate to be committed
to the accessibility of literature for readers and the enrichment of writing for writers.” – Free Lit Magazine

We’ll Always Have the High Chair

 

We laughed. Chuckled while swimming in the YMCA pool. In my kitchen or yours. During our walks. Shopping and smiling. Over coffee.

Dad often asked, “How can you always have so much to talk about? What the hell is so funny all the time?”

Constant conversations. Endless phone calls when we lived only a few miles from one another. And now, I can’t remember much. What did we talk about, mom? What was always so funny all the time?

I’d give anything to hear you laugh again.

I remember when Caroline was five months old. You and I decided to try my first born in her new high chair. She was a tiny baby, and had what we called a minnow-head. We placed her in the chair. She tilted sideways and that bitty head slid to the far corner. There she sat grinning with those sweet bow lips. From that moment, whenever either of us said, Remember the high chair, we’d laugh.

This morning, you keep spitting out your meds. Don’t seem to remember why you need to swallow them. With a despondent voice I ask, Remember the high chair?

Your eyes crinkle as drool dribbles down your chin.

NO -ly, a featured poem!

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Incredibly honored to have my poem, NO -ly, as the featured poem, in the wonderful poetry magazine, Better Than Starbucks!

 

NO -ly

before touching the door
a kiss to my cheek
be safe leaping out my throat
drive safe
no -ly

off they go alone
maybe with friends   it will be dark later

            obvious-ly, mom

be safe
at the stadium, at school, at the mall, at the fair, on the street,
alone, with your friends, in the city, in the suburbs, in the building,
at the theater, on the road, at the beach, at his house, at her house,
at the airport, on the plane, on the bus, on the boat, in the Uber, in the lake, on the river . . .

be safe
drive safe
without -ly
SAFE
a magnificent bubble shielding their human flesh
a bulletproof amulet delivering them unscathed
be safe
drive safe

we know, you don’t have to tell us every time

yea, I do

Don’t Love Them Too Much

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I’ve been gone awhile. Spending many days in the nursing home with my beautiful mom. Hope you’re all well and excited for a colorful Autumn. I’m hard at work trying to pull together a labor-of-love; a poetry collection about care-giving, love, loss and family. I’ve been doing loads of writing offline. As you know, getting published is uphill all the way. So, my friends, onward and upward. ❤️

I’m thrilled to have this piece, Don’t Love Them Too Much, published in the Front Porch Review! Click anywhere here in this red copy and visit the Front Porch Review. Many talented writers visiting the charming home there!

drop foot

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Drop Foot  

rising up from the lobby traffic
dark robes shadow her dimming eyes
petrified ash covering her skin flicked off the devil’s cigarette
I now believe in failure
sallow cheekbones sunken above anchored form
where careless pay fingers multiply and nest
prodigal daughter turns painted toenails into broken shine
wheelchairs made of witch-bone wait along the cinderblock
she is tethered to the weight of memories and moments
while tongues speak antiseptic Latin
I neglect the headlights coming at me in the dark
latent images floating like sour candy
all is never the same, driving no escape route
her drop foot like cement on the brake

Apathetic Wrinkling – poem published

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thrilled to have a poem published in MAN IN THE STREET, a very cool magazine with sumptuous imagery – thank you

Apathetic Wrinkling

There are parts that work well rolling on the floor. Leave me be. I will find my footing. Unlike her. Don’t you hear the screaming. The window, open like the door but less welcoming. Endless sobs hitting the birds outside. What is she crying about this time?

Wrinkles.

How she just can’t do it anymore.

Hell, who can?

 

There are no places to hide when you know all the rooms in your home. I wonder if she’s dying while standing on her feet. My ears are chained to this self-inflicted malaise. Perhaps the plasma screen will extend its curving armature and whisper encouragement as she continues moaning. Wrinkles. Too many.

 

Forgotten in the dryer, shirts crinkled like a baby’s ass.
Cotton shits wrinkles.

I should be the one crying.

4:20 am

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My poem “4:20 am” published in the weekly Avocet – a magazine focusing on nature and all its breathtaking wonder.

Baby Elf

my poem “4:20 am” (attached below) is in the weekly Avocet – issue #262 –
 Avocet link if you’d like to submit writing to this important publication for Mother Earth

 

4:20AM

frost creeps into the holes of my old moccasins

the taffy-stretched shadow of a red sunset maple

reaches across the dark grass

as if she too

desires the moon’s infinite perfection

stars tuck away in their opaque shells

this is autumn’s whisper

 

I peek through my eyelashes

must commit to memory

must etch my soul with rehearsed minutes

before tomorrow’s living

rubs out this wonder

 

4:30AM

I remain frozen in my silent place

knowing the sun will wipe away

the beautiful moon

this pristine silent moment

don’t want to go back inside a walled house

 

wish I could honestly tell you

a love affair with nature

enticed me from my bed

 

at 4:15 AM

my Dachshund needed to pee

baby elf sketch created a few years back with pencil