Cold Mountain Review Selects “Speech Therapy”

I’m extremely pleased that Cold Mountain Review has selected my essay, Speech Therapy for publication in its 2022 Spring/Summer issue. It is the first essay from my work-in-progress memoir, currently titled The Historical Heart. Speech Therapy explores the psychological and emotional ramifications of being born with a cleft palate. I thank the editors of Cold […]

K’in Selects “Opportunities for Stillness”

My poem, “Opportunities for Stillness” was selected by the editors at K’in to be included in their fall issue #8. I was thrilled as this is a poem centered on my recovery from triple bypass surgery and is part of a broader chapbook called “The Historical Heart.” Check it out here! https://kinliteraryjournal.com/poetry-schabarum-issue-8

All You Who Sleep Tonight

1 year ago this weekend, I had triple bypass surgery. It’s been a very difficult year save for the brightness of my marriage to my husband, John, last summer and the continuing love he brings. I wrote a cycle of poems that I thought I was finished with, which I presented at the Rainier Valley Lit Crawl […]

Poetry at Spinnaker Bay, Hillman City

This weekend marks the first time I’ll be reading in public for a year. It also marks the anniversary, of sorts, of my journey with heart disease, triple bypass and recovery. I’ll be reading The Heart Cycle, a series of poems about the experience. It has been an extraordinary year, which culminated in pancreatitis and […]

Published Poems from See America

I’m very happy to report that two poems from my 16 poem suite, See America, have been published very recently. The Final Drive, Seattle 2015 was published in the Fall/Winter issue of Crab Creek Review. Check our their website here: http://www.crabcreekreview.org West Hollywood to Pasadena, CA, 1998 was published in the Pontoon section of Floating Bridge […]

Hubris

I never want to know the many things they did when they flayed open my chest, my arm, cracked my sternum and stopped my heart. Blissful ignorance is what I needed, and some drugs, buckets of them. I was reminded too much of salmon, gutted torsos, lungs, heart, parts. But that’s how they do, these magicians, these […]

Star

We bring home, from far off places, things to remind us of where we’ve been, and who was there. This tin star from New Mexico is hung in our home after waiting two years for a light to brighten it. The light is found on the day my fiancé’s grandson is born, on a day […]

Appliances

When in life do you fall in love with appliances? When knobs and lights, heat and the proper lines of cool refrigerant expose the underbelly of age?  When exactly does the idea of them take hold? Is it when building a home with someone you love steals you against the outside world? When the years […]

Sledgehammer

Destruction feels good, knocking away detritus, cobwebbed shingles, rotted wood. We understand now how the house got away from her. Neglect tells stories, reveals pain. So we slam the iron fist hammer to clear hurt, loss, and damage to rebuild a  porch, a place to enter our new home that is being torn asunder bit […]

Neighbors

In the hush of morning, our neighbor is lost. Gone are hanging baskets, a throaty laugh, smiles. Gone are watchful eyes, keeping our corner safe. Gone, too, is Sunday church, those days she was so beautiful in her best dress. Gone will be the name Olevia from our lips, except as memory instead of a […]