Have you ever heard an orchestral melee as the players practice on their own before coordinated tuning? The instrumentalists are probably all playing portions of the same set of music, but at different tempos and times, just trying to hone in on their individual parts. It’s chaotic and nonsense and not particularly pleasant to listen…
Tag: Life
OBJECT THINGS STUFF
messy bits we carry around. In 10 days, my debut collection of poetry will be published & available for the world to see. But before that, some context. I have loved poetry since I was a child. My cousin, Lindsay, and I once produced a hand-illustrated, yarn-bound collection of poems based on the creek in…
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing
I love an end of the year reflection post. I also love a song lyric that feels so relevant to a moment in time it’s as if the lyricist wrote it just for me (thank you Jack Johnson, circa 2005). So, here I am at the end of 2024—sitting, waiting, wishing only good things for…
Book Review: Wintering
In mid-November, a friend of mine randomly said, “I have a book I think you’d like.” If you’ve ever been the recipient of that kind of statement, you may understand the slight bristling that I initially experienced. How does she know what kind of book I like to read? I thought, while also gamely writing…
Garden Party
Hosting is a skill that I feel I have tried to cultivate over the years after observing the masterful care that others have demonstrated in welcoming me to their spaces. To host someone well doesn’t mean that you meet every condition that Miss Manners expounded upon. A full set of silverware isn’t necessary, nor is…
Musing No. 2
When you lay under a treeAnd look up,What do you focus on?Is it the sky, the clouds, the branches, the leaves?Do you position yourselfIn such a wayTo see or to be hidden?Do the sun’s rays catch your faceOr do the shadows grace your cheek?Do you notice the air aboveOr the ground below?Are the bumps in…
Being alone doesn’t have to be lonely
Recently I found myself pitying a 60-something-year-old man who was eating ice cream by himself. Ohh, that must be hard, I assumed while I indulged in a latte in the coffee shop across the street. It’s sad to not have people around to share simple joys like a weekday afternoon frozen treat, I mused as…
Death of a Dream
Every opportunity in life has a unique season in which it flourishes, but the timeline of that season of maturity can vary greatly from one thing to the next. Sometimes we reap the rewards of a fruitful business or relationship for decades, but in other cases, the glory is short-lived. Try as we might, it…
Open call – closed to your submissions
“Open call for poetry,”the zines and mags announce emphatically.“We want you, we need you,trust us with your words.”They aren’t lying, they aren’t false,but the actual requirements tell a skewed story;dry prose in small print which dulls your dreamsand drags you back into the realitythat it is unlikely that you,the writer of poetry,will likely be a…
L.M.Beatty 