The weather forecast calls for a break in the heat (accompanied by thunderstorms, of course.) I’m looking forward to a few days of relief.
It seems the cats are eager for a change, as well. Perhaps I have been a bit too aggressive with the thermostat, these last few days.
Publication note: My poem “Custody” appears in the Spring/Summer 2012 issue of Melusine, or Woman in the 21st Century.
Publication Note: My poem After the Birthday is posted on the poemblog at vox poetica, which is currently running Contributor Series 11: On Birthdays.
The robin family has moved on, as families tend to do, and the yard feels empty and quiet. Almost eerie, after such a whirlwind of exploration and clamor.
Maybe I’ll fill my empty hours with the manuscript that has been molting in my office, shedding pages all over the floor, sprouting new subplots and dialogue as it matures…
She worried about the camera, at first.
But quickly gained confidence.
Publication note: My poem “Dragonfly” appears in Issue 11 of Victorian Violet Journal, which launched yesterday.
Two mated cardinals
Muted mother and masked father
Alarmed and flashed around the corner
Through crepe myrtle, plum, and iris
Their single nestling, un-nested
Precocious and half-fledged
Quavering in the awful sun
Exposed, expelled, exploring
The perilous yard
An infant still shaped to shell
Convex and vexed
Voraciously alive
Irresistibly ugly kernel
Of what might be lovely
Clad in summer plume
Though now all hungry gape
Begging nourishment
Little family of fear on the lawn
Watched by the brooding housewife
Who sits her own reluctant nest
Of amniotic memory
Hatching into phrase
And eager to mature
Like the cardinal chick
Which disappeared next morning
Gone from the woodpile and irises
From the bright wing of father
From the red-headed husband
Whose pajama-clad wife
Frets barefoot in the dew
Rae Spencer 