Wow, I did a lousy job providing updates this month.  Things may have looked quiet around here, but I wrote some poems, did some story editing, completed a new flash draft (thanks to a workshop from one of the masters, Tina Connolly), and have a couple of exciting announcements coming next month. 

As for this year’s National Poetry Month, I kicked things off by attending a virtual reading by Kim Stafford, in which he called poems “implements of connection.”  I love that. 

I went through some old files and found letters from my late maternal grandmother, complete with some of the light verse she used to compose.  On one of her poem cards, she’d attached a sticky note with the dictionary definition of an ode and wrote, “Don’t you think this qualifies?”  I do, Grandma, I do. 

I know I made reference last month to a lighter, poetry counterpart to my story “Hell-ium Balloon” coming out soon, but first up I’ll have two darker poems in the next issue of Coffin Bell.