{my topography}

An impossibly possible project.

What do you believe?

I’m sitting outdoors with a bevy of chickens clucking at my elbow. Across from me the cat is licking himself, fur soaking up warmth. Next to me Bean digs a big hole in an empty flower bed. The grass is wet from rain, and the sun is warm on the black rubber of my boots. [...]

Sweet, sweet, bittersweet.

Morning Poem # 3

Swallows swoop in at the barn door and their feathers, bones filled with air, brush up against the corrugated metal roof. The air is rife with musk and hay and the hot piss of sheep pressing against each other in woolly urgent nearness. The sky bends down closer to the earth now; blue tucking the [...]

Morning Poem # 2

Because his small hand fits into my palm still, I hold my breath and feel the gills of my heart pummel inside my chest. There is no way for keeping this; like stacking bags of sand against the jetty, crumbling no way to keep back his tide of growing up. “I’m you’re a little bit [...]

Morning poem # 1

The sun falls in broken rectangles on the floor shards of yellow plates we gather in our pockets, for the winter ahead. Our skin bare to the wind, the grass tattoos our arms with zig zags and clover while the moments grow steady and the verdant humming of summer dwindles into the big-moon nights and [...]

September mornings

Sometimes there are other things. Mornings of sleeping in an extra half hour instead of getting up and dragging myself to the keyboard in the pre-dawn chill, because my days already feel like the fragile worn fabric of a quilt. The first flu of the season has me bleary eyed and achy. I’d whimper, but [...]

Enmeshed in forward motion

In the Pacific ocean, 1996. This afternoon I sat among boxes in my studio and dug through relics (an attempt at organizing, gone very far tangent.) I found pictures of high school boyfriends; letters; collages. All small fragments of who I was then, different, yet still me, in ridiculous cut-off shorts and too-large plaid shirts [...]

Pell-mell Tuesdays

Every minute of the day was allocated for something. Gah! Do you ever have days like that? I’m still getting the hang of it, and mostly I suck. If left to my own devices I’d be the haphazard, spontaneous, bohemian Aquarius that I am, to the core. I’d forget to eat, and then have pancakes [...]

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  • 33 before 33

    1) Launch & get funding for A Field Guide For Now. 2) Go to some local galleries. 3) Write some query letters. 4) Read/re-read every book on this list. 5) Plant the garden. 6) Learn CSS. 7). Finish A Field Guide To Now manuscript. 8 ) Hike Mt. Mansfield. 9) Go for a family bike ride. 10) Make a big deal out of friends & loved one's birthdays. 11) Attend a writer's conference. 12) Start the process of going back to school. 13) Make croissants from scratch. 14) Go to Montreal this summer. 15) Get a Polaroid camera. 16) Work on my abs. 17) Throw a garden party with pretty lights and fun drinks. 18.) Buy a vintage cake stand. 19) Wear dresses more. 20) Take risks with fashion. 21) Organize the basement. 22) Go biking this summer. 23) Multiple streams of income. 24) Ride a train with the boys. 25) Go camping with friends. 26) Go to the local farmer's market regularly. 27) Submit five short stories. 28.) Buy a new bikini. 29) Build a greenhouse with recycled windows. 30) Complete some new canvases. 31) Become adept at Photoshop. 32) Go to a museum. 33) Remember: "What if there is no emergency?"
    32 before 32 here.
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