Not really crazy — just busy as all get out. Having a full-time job sure gets in the way of all that other living you might like to do. Heh. I went to the Northern California Book Reviewers awards tonight in San Francisco and saw, chatted with or met so many writers. Like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kim Addonizio, Lynn Freed, Brenda Webster, and so on. So many. And movers and shakers in the SF lit world — Joyce Jenkins was there, and Richard Silberg, and Larsen and Pomada, and others who are just beginning to make their marks. It was fun, it was cool, it was entertaining in its own way.…

I have been contemplating the passing of Pope John Paul II, trying to make sense of it, and what it means to me, a lapsed Catholic – whatever that means. “Lapsed” sounds like I forgot to pay my dues – but oh, believe you me, I think I’ve paid them. When I was a practicing Catholic I never knew quite what to make of the pope. (“Practicing” sounds like I never quite got it right. In which case, am I still practicing?) I am not alone in this state of wonder. Many people I know who once went to Mass or parochial school or grew up in the culture of…

Got a couple of nice notes and comments back about the poetry posted here. Thanks — and glad you liked it. FYI, these are from the collection that’s due to be published by Scarlet Letter Press this year. It was set for spring, but another book jumped ahead in line, so wait for it in early fall (September). Amaryllis is the title poem. Haven’t posted in a while, been super busy with new job at Alameda Magazine and Oakland City Magazine — associate editor at both mags, with intention of taking editor position at AM by end of the year. That’s the plan, so I hope it all falls together…

The curious at Red Hills Review are asking for examples of poetry so I’m posting a few of my own here. Indulge me, please. Science All the time I sat and listened while youchalked the board and marked the tests,paced beneath deer heads and the bobcat skeleton,diagrams of creatures with six legs,thorax, abdomen, thighsglistening wet with the rainbowof sweat, saliva, tasting,kneeling, mounting, rearing,backing into you, animal, plantedfirmly inside me, memory, desire, learning. Train to Bath I dozed against the hard pane.The Welsh man and his wife talked low:rumble, murmur,words indistinct in their marriage cant.Elves, he said, I thought I heard,or was it Elvis?Elves in Maidenhead, Twyford, Reading.Elvis in Didcot, Swindon,…

…is what they call it. I used to read Adair Lara in the San Francisco Chronicle every day, and I particularly loved the images she created of her mother, pinning out the wet clothes to dry and thinking of each child as she hung their shirts and jeans. I loved the images of her mother’s orangey-pink lipstick pressed onto Kleenex, a hundred kisses littering the tabletop. I wonder what images my children will have of me. We were laughing and laughing on the Fourth of July — my three daughters, one of their friends, and my beau, who had volunteered to barbeque for us. My eldest, the beautiful Miss M,…