Medusa's Head

I'm excited to say that some of my poems are up at Lingerpost with Todd Fredson as well! Check it out!

Yesterday Mississippi rejected the idea that a fertilized egg is a person. Today there are so many blogs and news articles talking about how the amendment was a terrible idea, outlawing many kinds of birth control, invitro fertilization, life-saving medical treatment for miscarrying women or women pregnant with tubal pregnancies in addition to the hot button abortion issue. But I'd like to look at how the whole idea that egg+sperm=baby is a hurtful lie. I know this, because since I was a teenager I've been interested in the abortion debate. I read lots on how one should treat egg+sperm, but not if egg+sperm is different from egg+sperm+uterine lining, and definitely not that egg+sperm does not equal baby A LOT of the time. That's why it's the miracle of life, folks. And it took a really sucky experience to teach me that the abortion debate had given me unrealistic expectations about what egg+sperm would mean in my life. In 2007, I was trying to get pregnant. I was peeing...

How You Became a Monster It happened slowly. Anger became a physical ailment, it blistered up in scales. You ran your tongue along your teeth in exasperation. They were sharper than you remembered; you slit your tongue in half with the things you wanted to say but did not. Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy! You hissed and coiled in on yourself. If you can't say something nice. You have a hard look you inherited from your mother. You have a hard mouth from keeping it shut. They say you didn't raise the moon-white child you gave birth to. Your hair tangling up from the strands you lose in clumps as months go past as you fatten the growing demigod. The matts grow teeth. Only one who also has sacrificed the daily exercises of attraction knows exactly how hard to comb your long tresses become. The statues will never know, they were not the kind to love like this. They were the ones whose mouths are open. But silent now, and so less unkind. This is the process wherein vision became fatal. You hav...

I have my prize copies of Fragrant Inferno in from Anabiosis Press, and if you'd like one, here's the link to my Etsy shop to purchase one.

Photo by Nicholas Bond.

Deciding which poetry books to take with me to Charleston for 6 months while I pack up the rest for storage. I think I'm going to skip at least a few 12x12 months, and those books I'd planned to read and give away are stored to donate another day. On the bright side I think I've got enough to read, and maybe I'll even write :) Trying to find one last book, a chapbook by my friend Charlie about distance between lovers, the physical kind, to read when I'm lonely.