MY BROTHER AND I, ages 8 and 11, were shocked when our parents sat us down in the living room to let us know we had an older half-sister. And what's more, that she would be coming to visit us in our suburban tri-level home, smack dab in the middle… Read full post »

How I Became a Poet 

Originally posted February 26, 2009

Thanks in advance for reading. Extra points if you can tell who the Great Poet is.

The auditorium on the cold campus was full, but the Great Poet made us wait. When he finally made his entrance, he was wearing a black… Read full post »

Outside my bedroom window, someone whispers, laughs.

The moon, slant-shadowed, skims across the floor.

Waking, I reach the telephone, before it is a dream. 

Next morning, a man traces tracks on his open palm

to show the places that were leveled.

Here, across the h… Read full post »

God's Well, the sign along the highway says,

and in these times I'm glad to hear it.

But what if the sign is a lie, put up

by someone only hopeful, merely whistling

in the dark? Or worse, if it directs us,

sign by larger sign--10 Miles to God's… Read full post »

Here's a real empty nest syndrome move: I got a dog. Kids are pretty much out of the house, and I just really, really needed to have something to take care of and be responsible for.

Okay, I already have two cats, but they're CATS.

Rosie is a 3-year-old rescue… Read full post »

Read Part 1 of this post.  

Jane's expenses are next to nothing--she lives in a one-room apartment on the college campus--but even so, I know she’ll run out of money by the middle of next month, and I wonder what will happen then.  Her father and I divorced many years/… Read full post »

"crow," by my daughter 

I feel I should apologize to the receptionist, get up from my chair in the waiting room and say, “I’m sorry for the way she spoke to you.  She’s bipolar. " Unmedicated bipolar, I think to myself.

She’s gone off on the receptionist… Read full post »

Traveling west to east or east to west,
it doesn't matter, I might have guessed 

this recollection of opposite travel,
row upon row of trees that unravel 

in the same dull direction as road.
What to think of--nothing. I suppose 

the going matters, not the way to go.
The whis… Read full post »

After rain, the windows silver--

sunset draws couples out to sit in chairs

on porches, to watch the road curving

before their houses

like a long knife.

A man waves to me from the flower beds

that edge his lawn--zinnias, marigolds.

What was it that he recognized,

or… Read full post »

Sometimes you take a picture that just says it all . . . that's rare in my case, so I have to share this one.  

This is Otis, my friend Randy's dog--a boxer, and therefore a goofball by nature. Boxers have their problems. They they don't live very long, basically… Read full post »

  he's cute, but he's a rat

It's that time of year again. The time squirrels become so excited and confused by their nut gathering and burying and digging up and re-burying that they run out into the street, double back to the sidewalk, and then change their tiny minds a… Read full post »

Sitting across from him in the pickup,

she realized she was tired of him.

She decided he was stupid, really,

his grip on the gearshift, cruel. 

Day after day they fought,

and afterwards he drove the back roads

with his shotgun, watching the clouds roll in in

the… Read full post »

I sew. Or rather, I sewed. It's past tense these days because it's been taking all my energy to get my pants on the right way around in the morning and arrive at work on time.

When I was a teenager, all the girls sewed . . . it's… Read full post »

It's true.

After you've washed and conditioned your hair with Blago ("It's bleepin' golden"), you can download your very own Blagojevich ringtones.

On the "Off the Clock" blog at the Springfield Journal-Register, Brian Mackey has posted MP3 versions of the best of Rod Bl/… Read full post »

A woman in the road wails, "Help me!"
She carries a bundle of straw, has carried it far
without so much as a sip of water or a crust.

From the woods, Fox hears her cry:
"Tie up half the bundle with your rope.
I'm a fast runner and can carry it in… Read full post »

 Image: http://blagohair.com

Impeached Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's trial begins today in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune has all the news and scandal you could possibly want.

In case you missed it when it first came out, some opportunistic genius… Read full post »

IF YOU PLAY the video at the end of this post, you'll see Charles Collingwood interviewing the psychologist Harry Harlow for CBS. Harlow ran the primate lab at the University of Wisconsin in the 50s and 60s and conducted the famous wire monkey/terry-cloth mother monkey study we&… Read full post »

Let’s call her Jane. So my daughter Jane ripped the book in half. She said, “I’m not reading that book. And now you can’t even return it.”

This is too bad, because the book, Facing Bipolar: The Young Adult’s Guide to Dealing with Bipolar Disorder, is/… Read full post »

My mother walks

ahead of me--

I walk behind,

Indian file.

She points things out:

the pinkish buds

of the bay laurel,

the stones

worn smooth and flat,

the place

a deer has left

the half-moons

of its track.

Her fingers push

dry leaves away,

and fiddleheads… Read full post »

Away from camp, you bend beside the lake,

touch glassy bubbles, water rushing in circles

so cold they want to keep your hand. Alone,

you watch the sun rise in the glacial cirque, moon

white, still up in the west, steep rock

face all around. You stop to catch… Read full post »

I never knew what caused the raging fire--

Only, whoever started it was cloaked

By something more than blankness, like the kiss

Of gasoline on wood, on flesh, the spit

Of tiny, licking flame, thrust high then far.  

Dangle a challenge to write a poem involving five words, and a s… Read full post »

So, here you are. You’re on your own. You’re elated to be free, but you feel anxious, too. You do so many things alone. You’ll do many more things that way, and for a long time the/… Read full post »

One year, I sent the poet Howard Nemerov a valentine. He'd been to read and conference at the graduate writing program where I was a student, and I liked him. I liked the way he thought, and he seemed to like my work.

Here's what he sent me back:… Read full post »