Inching: How I’ve Learned to Get Anywhere

I have been dreaming of a small-scope life like a paint peeling front porch hosting rocking chairs and suckle-sweet honey hues. I imagine writing stacks and stacks of essays and poems and stories of which I am pleasantly proud. Heaps of quiet fall into the atmosphere of my future life like snow. Not real snow, of course. The …

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Just Say Scrotum

Almost every writer has this history. We begin writing young, exercising power over our experiences and observations by organizing them and labeling them with language. As a part of this organization, many of us employed poetic language, applying florid descriptions to ordinary or ugly experiences. We masked pain, and hid messages. For some of us, …

What Murder, She Wrote Has to Say to the First Year MFA Student

After years of dreaming of joining an MFA program, painstakingly honing a packet of 15-20 poems, and spilling into tears at my first acceptance letter, I am here inside a verdant Virginia pocket. Chapbooks lean against a folding chair in my new living room. Drafts lie piled about my desk. The coffee pot huffs hourly …

Exercise in the Periphery

During a recent class workshop of one of my poems, my peers felt there were parts not contributing to the overall piece. As they identified each line in need of axing, I felt like I was losing something essential in my writing. I thought, these are the parts of the poem I labored over most. …