Dang. Life keeps happening. And weather. After days and days of weirdly warm southwest weather, winter appears to have remembered this part of the map. She’d been drowsing in the memory of autumn's lush colors, no doubt. Remembering the heavy scent of the dying oak leaves, the heady fragrance of creosote in the breeze. All... Continue Reading →
Time for a little nostalgia, and I can't look back at one item, without reminiscing about the other. Thongs, the kind we used to wear on our feet, that evolved into something else, well, the word did anyway, and blood. Bleeding to be exact. Menses. Messy menses. And the whole bit. So here we go. When... Continue Reading →
This is the promised partner poem to "Glass in Our Tortillas." An old poem, that tells the story of food, friendship, and having daughters. Three Variations of Raspberry Jam for Julie Each afternoon we drank atole, Julie and I, in the shadows of the descending sun and laughed, at our lives, ourselves, at her intolerance... Continue Reading →
It made for a pretty sweet parenting pleasure to arrive home to a house where I could see the vacuum wheel tracks running across the carpet like directional signs saying 'This way to clean!' And to smell the fresh red chile pork in the kitchen. 'Are we at your mom's?' I asked the girls' dad.... Continue Reading →
Bad Breaks We’ve all suffered a broken heart of one sort or the other. Some that seem reparable and some, not so much. From the go-on-a-few-dates-with-a-hottie-who-dumps-you after the holidays kind of broken heart, to being dumped by the gem you dated for a few years who leaves you quite suddenly. And you find yourself withering... Continue Reading →
What a day it was shopping with my daughter Riana, not for anything in particular, just spending time together. Talking, laughing, and talking more. But in the course of the day she shared magic words. Words that mothers and fathers wait for all of their parenting lives, and when they finally hear them, they think,... Continue Reading →
With all that is going on in the world, thousands upon thousands slammed by earthquakes and volcanoes; forest fires and hurricanes; flooding and tornadoes, and literally slammed, the loss of my cat seems so minimal. My tears seem irrelevant. Each time I call her or miss or or feel the tug of her absence, I... Continue Reading →
Biscuits I am quite blessed to be gifted with guests who visit my life my soul and take me into their arms as warm as biscuits with sweet yellow butter a bit of honey and they say, "you’re okay, girl," and they mean it and I feel gentle again. I shall die some death some... Continue Reading →
"Move the shoes," Thom Sherratt told me. I was 25, newly married, and my husband and I were in counseling. We needed it. We used each other to argue with our own cast of demons, those that crept nightly into our dreams, born of one dysfunction or another, and most of them articulate, funny, and... Continue Reading →
I had a boss once who, when I knocked on her door to wish her well on her vacation, looked up, and said, "Anne Marie, unless you are dying, I do not have time for you." Well, what else could I do after that but write a poem? So I did. Unless You're Dying* for... Continue Reading →
pocket poet 