For over a week I passed the cherry blossoms on my way to the office with a thought of stopping to walk among them, lie under them, sit on a nearby bench, maybe take photographs. I wanted to be part of them and part of spring before it passed. But I had no time–not to…

Two weekends ago it snowed here in Virginia, and the winter landscape made me nostalgic for Kyrgyzstan. Though I grew up near Chicago with plenty of snow, when the white stuff falls it takes me to Central Asia instead. I think it must be because my experience of winter there was more visceral and the…

Mondays get a bad rap, but when I start a new work week, I often find myself entertaining an attitude of openness that speeds my morning commute.  After a weekend knocking around the apartment and walking around town, it feels good to be in the car again, taking in the views afforded by the hills…

This month, selections from a collaborative manuscript of hybrid correspondence between me and my creative partner Rebecca Hart Olander appeared in the August spotlight of Duende and in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing from Black Lawrence Press.  It’s an exciting co-incidence. It’s been a summer for collaboration and other things “co-“. …

I wonder who first described lawns as manicured.  It’s an expression hard to resist–it’s so on target yet out of the box in its connecting herbage to finger nails.  My guess is we like how the surprising association adds a touch of irreverence to the description of something so controlled, precious, and planned.  The expression…

1. wild NOoN Now we live lOud Now we uNveil uNwOven wild life we wolf we fOol we wield unwed lOve vow 2. Noon ClOud we unwiNd wouNd we unfiNd fouNd New Nil NOw 3. wiNd wove CoOl veil iN vOile of dew wiNd wouNd COld eNd iN ice wiNd would diN CoO iN COwled…

This is my love letter to my commute, to the stoplight at Graham that makes me wait and notice, that teaches me the beauty of the particular.

Although I’ve been a grad student and/or teacher for the last five years, this is the first winter in all that time that I’ve had a proper winter break.  I realize most people don’t get these breaks.  It’s a great aspect of being a teacher, though I suspect most teachers I’m in the middle of…

One of my favorite blog posts has been Balance, in which I made erasure poems from my students’ final projects at the end of last spring semester.  I found myself thinking about it a lot last week, at the end of a rigorous fall semester and in the thick of grading final papers.  I was itching…