Shut Up and Write

Outside the dark tormented her without saying a word. That was a terrible metaphor, actually, and she knew it even as she thought it. Cliche, Celeste, you’re drowning in it. She hated thinking in clichés. She hated small talk. She hated things that felt reheated and lukewarm. She would rather burn her tongue than bore it.

Daily OM strikes again

It can be scary to have what we want. We get caught up in the chase and forget to enjoy the beauty right in front of us--like a child who never wants the toy she has in her hand but always the one just out of her reach. Take a moment today to consider the many things you are holding in the palm of your hand and how you might best play with them.

Working on my proposal

Damn. Can we talk Memory Lane for a minute? I mean, this book spans 20 years. That's a lot of lane to traverse.

Little Farm

Marie Howe, "One Day"

One Day

Marie Howe

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• 
• 
• 
• 

One day the patterned carpet, the folding chairs,

the woman in the blue suit by the door examining her split ends,

all of it will go on without me. I’ll have disappeared,

as easily as a coin under lake water, and few to notice the difference

—a coin dropping into the darkening—

and West 4th Street, the sesame noodles that taste like too much peanut butter

lowered into the small white paper carton—all of it will go on and on—

and the I that caused me so much trouble? Nowhere

or grit thrown into the garden

or into the sticky bodies of several worms,

or just gone, stopped—like the Middle Ages,

like the coin Whitman carried in his pocket all the way to that basement

bar on Broadway that isn’t there anymore.

Oh to be in Whitman’s pocket, on a cold winter day,

to feel his large warm hand slide in and out, and in again.

To be taken hold of by Walt Whitman! To be exchanged!

To be spent for something somebody wanted and drank and found delicious.

News

I am thrilled to announce that I have signed an author agreement with Marisa Zeppieri of Strachan Literary Agency. Marisa will be representing the memoir version of BEARDED LADY. I also want to take the opportunity to thank Miriam Altshuler, who represented me for four years and whose wisdom and grace I cannot properly acknowledge in words. I am so happy!

Somehow

Somehow we made it to spring,
the light lingering, lasting
until your bike squeaked you home.

Sweet season, this --
the rounding-off of the tough one
the dark, the chill --
a year until repeat.

A month
until the clock rambles,
pushing forward.

Upward, upward from here.