Although I’ve been published as a freelance journalist, and recently featured as a playwright in Pink Banana Theatre’s “Sex, Drugs, & the American Way”, my poetry, short stories, and other fanciful writing has rarely seen the light of day. I think that body of my work deserves some sunshine!

I’ll be posting a poem a week on topics grouped in the following (for now) categories: friends and family, natural beauty, relationships, and backstage antics. Short stories and essays not published elsewhere will also appear. Here’s the first installment.  All rights reserved.

block pattern  9-25-02

I can’t wake up these days, the quilts weigh me down, 
stitch upon stitch in old clothes
cast off and abandoned to color and fold. 
They smell like women,  and many tender fingers
Prick me to perfection while I doze.

My aunt didn’t want them anymore; she lives in Napa,
And I think of her guest bedroom, and the high stars,
Roseville swarming the walls,
my first chance.

It didn’t occur to me that my passions were inadvisable;
I would not have guessed that I could not withstand them. 
I was plums, and fall, and throated like a thrush.
The days were long.

I can’t give them away;  they are heavy with labor,
begotten in the weft of a woman’s touch.
One is stained in splotches of white,
bleached when it should have been left a little dirty.
They are fading and sighing and spread like butter.

I see a walnut tree black against a brilliant winter sky,
A neighbor, long dead, gathering into buckets,
We are numb, and cold and focused on our task,
Even though most of the nuts are rotten.

She’s holding out for the good ones, the ones the squirrels missed,
Because she’s the kind of woman who doesn’t waste anything.
A woman with a basement full of unfinished business.