Once every nine weeks or so, I share Sunday breakfast with my friend, Tureeda. Poet, teacher, storyteller, medicine woman as she'd describe herself. I forgot how our ritual started two years ago, but my heart has relaxed into them for their consistency and the warmth generated at our cell-phone free table and our eye to …
Museum Piece
Months before it opened, I was asked to participate in a poetry reading as part of a museum exhibit. When I finally went to the gallery, Generation to Generation at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, it was as reporter with a notebook slipped in my pocket. It wasn't until walking through the gallery and being present …
First Poetry Reading of The New Year
The Lyft driver pulled up and I jumped into the more inviting front seat for a change, asking first if he minded. He didn't. A vibrant youngster in a backwards baseball cap, his car smelling like chocolate cookies vaped, not baked. He immediately asked where I was going-- to a poetry reading at a bookstore …
New Poems Up at Eleven-Eleven Journal
The continuously awesome journal Eleven Eleven has published three familiar poems which are up and available for your critique. Its a consistently gorgeous journal and website I've admired for long time. Its an honor to get in with so many other strong artists. I went to an open mic last week, and an old friend …
A Stranger’s Dream (A Halloween Story)
HE awoke screaming again. His head steaming and raw. He coughed to near seizure while some slow moving slime thawed, dripping the length of his throat like mis-swallowed gum. His breath was reticent to move and once it did unobstructed he angrily pounded the bedding with his fist until flurries of sweat rose in swarms …
My Name is James… I Am A Poet
How many years ago was it when my friend told me: You know, poetry readings are like AA Meetings... Turns out he found as much value in one as the other. The two rooms were companions and shook hands in his mind. I am not a member of The Program, but I attended one with …
BBQ Ribs For the Dead (on Writing, Loneliness and Repurposing Poems)
In two days time, there will be an office memorial for a coworker who died the weekend of my birthday. I came back from my personal 3 day weekend and a secretary passed my desk, stopped and told me how over the weekend Linda had died suddenly. I'd worked with her about seven years and …
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Mother Stands For Comfort
I was the first to arrive at the venue Saturday night for the reading. The venue is a nurturing writing space for women in East Oakland, where my friend A_____ volunteers. If you hadn't been to the place before nor had the facebook invite, there's no way even the next door neighbors would know anything …
A Poetry Reading @ Poetry Express
The restaurant was quiet and church-like. The wait staff and cooks outnumbered the guests. I walked towards the back and found a banquet room where a half dozen people sat quietly eating. They sat at one of the two long banquet tables in a kind of solemn thanksgiving. The woman hosting who'd emailed me sometime …
The Security Guard
At least three times a week, I leave work and walk two blocks over to the library. I go to write and if writing doesn't happen, I hang out with and gently molest the books and dvd's. Three good poems came out of my library visits the last few weeks. Like some expectant fisherman, I …
The Dirty Rat 