Discovering the cache of Kodak slides in the basement could have made me feel bad or guilty or filled with regret. Instead, I laughed. I threw back my head and laughed out loud, like l-a-u-g-h-i-n-g out loud, spelled out. Then I said to no one except the cobwebs, “Okay, Mom. You’re in.” I had noticed the honey-colored wooden box on my cluttered work bench, amongst the rusty channel locks, duct tape and socket wrenches, laying where they were dropped by careless kids … [Read more...]
He Gave Me Shelter
August 25, 2013 By
Social media being the thing we often love to hate, Facebook did serve a purpose in delivering news this week that a good friend of our family had passed away suddenly in Winston-Salem. My daughter in Memphis sent around the news to my now far flung brood and we took turns emailogizing our friend David. While their family begins the slow, unwelcome process of figuring out how life will be without a husband, father, grandfather, brother, I feel so blessed that I … [Read more...]
Twenty Seven
July 22, 2013 By
Taillights like domino dots, only red. The anticipation of what a summer night could yield as palpable as the humidity at the intersection of then and now, where I idle. At least there’s a breeze. Windows down, the heat backed off enough to coax me out of my air-conditioned, sensory deprivation pod, arm dangling out the window, hand air surfing, dipping and diving, ribbons of warmth weave through my fingers like batter. Moist. Night. Air. Motown streams from the … [Read more...]
Holes in Our Hearts and Maybe My Head
July 11, 2013 By
**Originally posted, July 2011, Revised July 2013** The sign in front of the Standard Artificial Limbs store always makes me think of my step father. On the day he died at the VA hospital in Albuquerque, after my mother and I summoned the rest of the family to tell them he’d passed, once everybody took turns patting him on his rapid cooling forehead, we all walked out into the broiling parking lot, the blacktop almost spongy under the August dessert sun, with my … [Read more...]
Peace and Love My Little Bird
July 5, 2013 By
Dinner guests gone, my out-of-town relatives tucked in for the night, I went outside last night to blow out the candles on the patio. I sat. The weather has been blessedly mild in St. Louis the past few days. Unheard of for it not to be hotter than a fire cracker on the 4th of July. The evening air was lovely, scent of gun powder notwithstanding. We'd had a good night. People I love, dotted my well worn deck, with the warped plank that's curled up on one end. I cover … [Read more...]
Lure of the mic, uh, I mean “road”
May 28, 2013 By
Well... okay, so most people are not tuned in to the radio on Memorial Day Morning, but me and ol' Charlie waxed poetic about the Art of Acceleration. Here's a link if you'd like to give a listen to Off the Leash Behind the Mic on the Charlie Brennan Show. … [Read more...]
In Observance of National Poetry Month
April 11, 2013 By
Sometimes I indulge in a little free verse. Sometimes I indulge in bars and shout "Free Bird!" Anyway, hope you like it. Desert Inn Lovers, like impressions in clay leave behind their sweetness. Blue eyes, brown, this one, that,a lifetime. How many kisses in the dark?Adoring, no hesitation, only love. I welcomed you like the sunpouring over me, a golden glazenever hardening. Wraps round me now, a whiskey spun cocoon,mere memories.No regret. I breathe. I live. I … [Read more...]
Warms the Cockles of This Writer’s Heart
March 26, 2013 By
Thanks to The Jupiter Girls Book Club for posing with my book! Will Skype for food. I'll just eat mine here. … [Read more...]
Celluloid Dreams
February 24, 2013 By
The journey continues. Amidst dreams fueled by my own shameless desire for fame (at least I'm honest) and those who lovingly feed those delusions (maybe, maybe not) that Off the Leash will eventually become a best seller, then a screenplay, and then of course an Oscar nominated film, where I’ll stride the red carpet confidently thinner and face lifted, somewhere amongst that fantasy lies the snow-turned-to-charcoal-slush mounds of the perilous here and now. The way … [Read more...]
No Ruts In Our Shoulders
January 14, 2013 By
My friend and I were laughing smugly the other night about being Kate Hudson-like when it comes to our endowment -- modest. That's okay with us, less gravitational pull you know and no disfigurement from overburdened bra straps. Then I read a comment this morning from Sioux, a reader who had commented on my Death By Girdle post. It reminded me of something I wrote three years ago, about the unblinking truth of the YMCA locker room, which seems particularly prescient … [Read more...]
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