We WantYour 300 Words--NOW!

June 22 is International Flash Fiction Day, and to celebrate all stories short and stupendous, a few of us are hosting FLASHMOB2013, a blog carnival and contest. What you need to do to do:


1) Write a story 300 words or less (send us something that pushes boundaries;

2) Then send the following to flashmobjune22@gmail.com:

--the link to your story
--the story in the Text of the email WITHOUT your name at the top
--a brief bio
--a funky pic

3) Send us your best by JUNE 10.

Of course, there's prizes. And the judges are spectacular writers from all over the world. Read more about it at the official website: FLASHMOB2013.

So get writing. The clock is ticking.

Peace...

Gray Days

Seems every day starts out gray, either veiled in fog (liked this morning) or spattering the earth with a fine mist. If I did not know better, I would swear I was in London or Seattle.

I would like Mother nature to make up her damn mind--really rain, or push the clouds east, over the ocean. The precip is not enough to do our garden much good, just enough to slicken surfaces.

The sun did break through late yesterday afternoon. I managed to find some time after dinner to suspend myself in the hammock. Closed my eyes. Listened to the birds chatter, cars drive by, lawn mower sing, children laugh, basketball thump asphalt, bull frog sing, cicadas chant. A meditation.

I had not yet seen the news, nor heard it. I did not know tornados had leveled a town in Oklahoma.

I will keep my gray days, and be grateful for a natural ferocity no greater than annoyance.

Peace...

PICKING RHUBARB -- For My Mother

Cutting rhubarb in the rain,
the mottled leaves thick with mud
and slugs, I wonder if these plants,
robust now, will stand another
season in this shaded corner.

If not, next spring my husband

will surprise me bearing rhizomes,
and plant them so my garden
will be as my mother’s, and
her mother’s and, perhaps, all
our mothers’ before.

I’ll slice the stalks into chunks

for pie, mine has strawberries,
though she says berries ruins
the rhubarb; she makes sauce
and eats from the pot, still warm,
spoon clanking against the sides,
a smile trespassing her face.

Tendering these stalks, making the pie,

heralds me a holder of apron
strings, honoring our history
unmarked with words or trophies, and
thus, all the more important.

I wonder how my daughter

will grow her rhubarb.



My mother loves many things, but in the food world one of the things she loves most is rhubarb. I also love the tart fruit, as does my daughter (in the form of pie). Every spring I look for the leaves to emerge from the black, rotten-looking stump of a stem. When they finally pop through the earth, I think of my mom, both of us celebrating spring's arrival.

Happy Mother's Day Mom! And to all the mothers in the world.

Peace...

AFTER THE TSUNAMI

Very pleased to have my story AFTER THE TSUNAMI featured at Every Day Fiction. Please take a look. A huge thanks to Gay Degani and the rest of the good folks at Flash Fiction Chronicles for hosting the String-of-10 Contest, and Kathy Fish for selecting my story and taking time to chat with me about the story.

Peace...

ROW HOUSE Up @ Blue Fifth Review

Very pleased to have ROW HOUSE, a story of creation out of detritus, featured as a broadside at Blue Fifth Review. Thank you Michelle Elvy for your gentle guidance of writers' words from everywhere. Peace...

Birth Day

Celebrate!

Promises of cake

& candles

light this morn

flush with spring rain & lilac;

a lone tree frog sings.

(a shadorma to celebrate--why not?)

Peace...

Chit-Chat at Flash Fiction Chronicles

Thrilled to be Interviewed by Queen of Flash Kathy Fish over at Flash Fiction Chronicles. We chat about writing small stories and the genesis of my story AFTER THE TSUNAMI, upcoming at Every Day Fiction.

Thank you Kathy for the provocative questions! Peace...

Life Comes at You Like a Wave

I am trying hard not to let what happened in Boston sink me deeper, sink me to the point where I give up on the goodness of the world. On the inherent goodness of people. This latest attack on people (I won’t call them innocents—aren’t all of us innocent to some degree?) makes me want to flee. But to where? Is there a safer place to live? A saner place?

I know that the horror I felt on Monday night, watching the news unfold, will fade. The images will blur around the edges, the facts become murky, the way a pond darkens as autumn leaves fall on its surface, then sink, rotting, to the bottom.

After all, what can I recall of Newtown?

I have hardened. I don’t like this quality, but I think it is part of human hardwiring, part of the armor which lets us survive. It is how we humans are evolving. In 100 years, or sooner, we will be a species with dexterous thumbs and a missing empathy gene.

After living half a decade I can discern good from evil, hopeful from hopefulness. But my children cannot, or at least not so well, and I can only imagine how the continued onslaught of horrible and ugly and villainous and tragic affects them. It makes me wonder if the decrease in our mental health--and the increase of our drinking and drugging and gunning—is our Darwinian desire to not feel the pain. Peace...

Hmmm...

It has been awhile.

I have written my Daily Poem.

I traveled to North Carolina, to visit family during the kids' spring break, and then entertained more family who came to visit us.


I returned to work, the children back to school. Back to routine, which comforts.

I managed to enjoy the warm days and cool evenings, which lightens my mood.

I heard the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra play its wondrous score for Fantasia seen on the screen.

I found some peace and quiet in my heart, much needed.

I breathed.

What have you been up to these past 10 days?

Peace...

If It Is the First of April

Then it must be National Poetry Month.

No fooling.

My favorite month, for what brings more joy than to read and write poems every day for a month?

Here, one of my favorites from William Carlos Williams. It reminds me that spring is coming, the earth cracks from its cold and the green spears of life will soon poke through.


THE RED WHEELBARROW

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.



So spare, so elemental, our attention drawn to a single object. This is Willams' gift--to paint a still life from an every day item using fewest words.

And now time for me to contemplate my daily poem. Every year I join the April Poem-A-Day (PAD) group over at POETIC ASIDES, the brilliant poetry Writer's Digest blog moderated by Robert Brewer. The theme today: new arrivals.

Pull up a pen, and play along. Peace...

Randomities

Yesterday morning I ran into a friend, a woman of great wisdom whose last name I do not know. We see each other on the metro sometimes, and yesterday, as the snow dropped off branches and slid off roofs in great sloppy chunks, she recounted a snowy day two years ago. She had just left her husband, an abusive man, and her youngest son had been diagnosed with a kidney cancer that would bloom into three different cell lines. She stood on the metro platform, despairing of her life, feeling the deep indigo of depression settle in her with an inky sigh, when she noticed the tall ornamental grasses bending under the weight of snow. Each long blade, thinner than a knitting needle, carried a few inches of snow. Occasionally more snow would fall on top, and the blade would bow deeper, the snow would tumble off, and the grass would spring back upright. She told me: God never gives us more than we can take. We bend but when we go as far as we can, God releases our load. I carried this image with me all day.

I am re-writing my third person narrative in first person because Maryam feels so distant to me. I want to bury myself into her, find her essential truth, the nugget of her. She is elusive, this character, and I think it is because she is too much like myself.

For class, we are reading The English Patient. A lyrical masterpiece. If I could manage one page of Ondaatje's genius, I will die a happy writer.

I have a sabbatical coming this summer. Six months to think. To experience. To read. To ponder. I am focusing on pain and opioid medications and the thin balance between medical use and abuse. An issue I have considered for almost twenty years, starting with my dissertation. It seems forever until July 1, yet I know it will be here in a blink, and the 6 months past sooner than that.

Time is the enemy these days. If you think about it. Which I try not to.

The Spring issue of JMWW is out. I am very proud of the three pieces of fiction, gorgeous words rendered by Tara Laskowski, Nate Pritts, and Emily Kiernan. As a writer, I always feel thrilled and humbled to see my word in their home. As an editor, I feel like a midwife of sorts. Please, read--you will be moved.

Peace...

Still Quiet...

Still quiet on the internet front. Mostly because of work, which has had a lot of activity, and because of my writing course, which requires a close reading of a novel a week, plus writing assignments. And because we had a slew of fantastic submissions to read through for JMWW.

I did go to AWP in Boston, which you can read about HERE.

And I have been writing, in slow spurts, but at least I am writing.

My heart still aches, though not so much. I have hope. I remind myself that every moment is just that--a moment. It too shall pass, to be replaced by another moment.

I  know, I know... I sound very Zen these days. Mindfulness has become an anchor for me. It is what keeps the butterflies of anxiety at bay.

Spring happened, which also brings hope. What a gray, dreary winter this has been.

Peace...