The Waiting Game

The time span between a preorder being announced by your publisher and the actual launch date is filled with angst and self-doubt. Waiting for advance reader copies, waiting for the data to be disseminated to libraries and bookstores, waiting for reviews (for a star🌟🌠), waiting for your fingernails to grow back as your hair turns gray. With the winter weather that gripped most of the country last week, I reckon my ARCs are still somewhere between Portland and Michigan.

In the meantime, I have a Universal Book Link This is a truly remarkable invention, a link that will take a reader to their preferred digital store, from America to Australia and all points in between. Like magic, the digital age at your fingertips. Check it out. This is also a great tool if you are self publishing. 

I mentioned Shepherd before, the new site for discovering and sharing books. My page just went live today! I chose the template for my three favorites of the past year. If you want to give your three favs a shout-out (with a spot for your own published or soon-to-be-published book if applicable), they are taking submissions until July of 2024. As a Goodreads Author, I'll be doing a giveaway to celebrate the book's launch, and if you follow me or have added my novel to your Want-To-Read List you'll automatically be notified about the offer. These actually work. I received a free book in the mail last week. speaking of free, if you are in a book club and you choose my novel, you will receive a free autographed copy, bookmarks for everyone, and a box of my homemade truffles. 

Finally, I have an interview online here  by the Awesome Gang. I tried to amend an, ah, inappropriate word but didn't have the opportunity to do so before it went live. I still like the interview overall so decided to share it, but hope I don't offend anyone with my off-the-cuff comment.

Thanks for reading. I am deeply grateful.

A City, A Country, A Gift

dVerse (the pub where the poets hang out) has asked for a city-inspired verse. 

Turning Down The Linen

The lost sunrise, rare coin, I now lament.

So too, its flaming slide at end of day.

I can’t escape my farm girl sentience.

Unleash me over those fields of fresh mown hay,

Not here, where brick and steel climb up the sky,

Where wren and hawk have flown a quick retreat.

Gray smoke and stacks alike tarnish surprise,

Over a city that rumbles beneath my feet.

This busy beast that swallows every sound

With clotted breath. To water’s edge I’m drawn

Where stars appear from out the black surround.

Like fields of wheat, waves undulate in song.

 

And then there’s you with power to part the night.

You turn the linens down and dim the lights.

That's the only sonnet I've ever written. Now, living where I do, I have to say this cold country sky is on fire!🔥 Streaks of crimson flood the windows, coming in from all directions, a sky made more beautiful by the dark sentinel trees and the white ground beneath. How is such a thing possible on a dark winter morn in the northern hemisphere? Window to window, I draw back the curtains. A blue jay is rocking it in the bare branches of the maple tree, and the fleeting shadow of an owl escapes over the shed. A quiet house, a cup of coffee, jays for company, a rural morning.

To go with the gift of a new day, my novel is on Barnes and Nobel!! It's also now on Amazon but somehow the B&N makes me more excited. Maybe it's the brick and mortar? I feel like they've given me an early Valentine's gift. 💝💘💕  

I am also now officially a Goodreads Author.  Please consider signing up for my newsletter where I'm sharing what I've learned on this journey from idea to draft to an ISBN. I will have a drawing for signed copies from the subscriber list on April 2nd to celebrate the launch of

I'd also like to mention a new site for discovering and sharing books called Shepherd. They're awesome. I love his little staff and hat-you gotta check it out!

In looking back, I've been blogging here since 2008. I laugh at some of my first posts. (What's Under The Bed) It seems so long go. I've had some ups and downs but stuck with it. The writing has been an exercise in itself. I cringe at some of those old posts but am also proud of a few. 

In closing, I just want to say thank you to all old and new friends and followers who have been so kind and supportive. You who have been generous with sharing your own writing and expertise, especially those at dVerse and Poets and Storytellers.  I wish I could have you all over for a drink. The house is small but I'd make it work!

Over and Out,

Yvonne
Human

INDIAN HORSE A review

In awe of an expertly bound book, I ran my hand across the smooth surface of the Milkweed edition of Indian Horse, the feel of it a tactile pleasure. From front to back, I fanned the pages, intrigued by the page numbers elegantly printed in cursive on the bottom left, and the smell of print. I leafed through them—I couldn't seem to stop—the promise of a story captured between the covers of this book.

Indian Horse is the beautifully written story of the Ojibway youth, Saul Indian Horse, who is trapped at an early age in Canada's residential school system. The story is an affirmation of Saul's perseverance and resilience as he struggles to survive the horror of the school and the demeaning actions of those who felt compelled to subjugate and drive the savage out of the Indian. In testament to the endurance and spiritual wisdom of his people and the grandmother he remembers, Saul battles to reclaim the dignity he was endowed with. I loved him and cried with him.

I just realized there was a movie made and it's on Netflix. I recommend it. But read the book first, if you can. 

Gifted to me at Christmas, owning and reading this novel has made me realize how personal books are to me.  Books have been my best friends since I learned to tie my shoes. Stages of life bookended by the books I read.

Now we have eBooks, the epitome of inanimate. They aren't books—I would argue—but devices. They are screens that need battery power to light up. They need electricity to turn the pages. They smell like nothing. But they are cheaper than print (and friendlier to the environment), thus the way of the future. 

I gave up my eight tracks for cassettes and my cassettes for CDs. I confess to the convenience of Alexa sitting on a shelf, devoid of rizz even when she's plugged in, but she has her place, like an electronic reader on an airplane or in the dark of bedtime. But my bookshelves sag with that which I will never give up. Books that remain readable when the power goes off.

It's early in the year, but it will be difficult for any novel to unseat Indian Horse's number one position on my shelf.

Poets and Storytellers,  invited us to "de-retro" our vintage vocabulary with a post, including the Oxford word of the year for 2023 - Rizz,  an informal noun defined as style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner. 

I stuck it in above. Did you notice.

yvonneosborne.com

BEGINNINGS Newsletter Signups (what's in it for me?)

Everything must have a beginning … and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. – Mary Shelley.

This Friday's prompt from Poets and Storytellers is to let the idea of Beginnings inspire us in our responses. For me, 2024 marks the beginning of being a published novelist, the birthday year for LET EVENING COME 

This beginning is linked, as Shelly says it must, to all the years of reading that went before. From Island of the Blue Dolphins and Ramona to the latest novels on my nightstand, which somehow, somewhere along the line, gave me the impetus and courage to write a novel of my own. 

Now it's time to say, I’m proud of this thing! This is hard because, like most writers, I’m humbled by the process of putting my writing out there. Humbled that people would want to put down hard-earned money to read it. There are no words to express the gratitude I feel.

I started a newsletter to share the process, the bump and grind of a publishing journey in hopes readers would find it interesting and to help get the word out. I know it takes an extra step to signup for a newsletter, and there is so much noise out there, advertisers, bloggers, "influencers" (I hate that term). I get it. I've been there.  So it takes a leap of faith for which I may or may not be worthy of, to sign up for my newsletter. But I promise to focus on succinct, interesting content. I will not flood your inbox with drivel. Most importantly, there will be two drawings from the first fifty subscribers for a signed, first edition book, and, honestly, (alert: arm twisting) there are exactly 8 spots left.  

The sign up form for my mailing list is here . Thank you for your trust and support. 

Finally, I'd like to plug an author's two best friends. The library (this is me recently at the one in Rochester) and independent bookstores. Both form mutually beneficial relationships with authors, readers, and their communities. 

To new beginnings in 2024!  

Yvonne,
 Human

GOOD NIGHT IRENE (review)

Good Night Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea is the untold story of the Clubmobile women of  WWII.  Though their official assignment was to make coffee and donuts in their kitchen-outfitted clubmobile truck, they drove the front lines, from Normandy to Bastogne, Belgium (the Battle of the Bulge) to Germany itself. How did someplace so gorgeous come up with something as ugly as they did? They saw combat, brandished rifles and tommy guns, dodged bullets, and suffered injuries and loss like the men they stood beside, comforted and bandaged. Sometimes the dearest thing to a soldier is a hot cup of coffee  and a little friendly banter. 

These are your sisters and the GIs are your brothers and we expect you to treat them as such. Win this war with your decency. Because we are Americans. And this is what Americans do.

In contrast to the horrific scenes from Buchenwald when the allies first entered the town, (the stench was unrecognizable and visceral)  Urrea has composed the most beautifully written love scene between Irene and her pilot while in the south of France that I've ever read.  From here, can you  smell Africa? Spain?

Even if you've read accounts of the European theater and the brutality of the Nazi regime, Good Night Irene is a singular accomplishment that sings of the unsung female heroes who may not have received purple hearts but were as deeply wounded, physically and mentally, as any American GI.

This is my five-star read of 2023. On my bedside table now are INDIAN HORSE and THE HEAVEN AND EARTH GROCERY STORE, and in the works is  LET EVENING COME, my breakout novel. 😊 Which I hope will soon be on yours.

Over and out and into the New Year wherein the idea of peace and prosperity beckons like a steaming  cup of coffee and a donut, or as mother called hers, friedcakes!

WOULD IT MATTER?

When the nightly news is a barrage
Of bluster and bile, bombs and debris
Gutted out buildings and leafless trees
Where it never rains or it always rains
And children line up for water

With wary looks at their surroundings—

I wonder. 

If there were no religion

would it matter?

Would the flowers at sunrise

call to the butterfly

to come among the blooms

with downy stroke

and the bee to drink from

what was fermented in the night

while thrushes forage for seeds

and stay out of sight?

For Poets Here . . .  a prayer for peace

The Likeness

A Ghost Story   Molly grasped the railing for balance. In the dim of the hallway light, the family portraits that lined the stairwell hung curiously ajar. She straightened her grandmother and descended the stairs, realizing they'd all been moved.

Perplexed, she hung them back where they belonged. The next night it happened again—ancestors jostling for position. Only her baby picture remained unmoved, the curly-headed likeness gazing intently at the camera. Then, on the morning of the shortest day, they were stacked at the bottom of the stairs. Hand to her throat she stared at the only one still hanging by a nail.

__________

In keeping with an old British tradition of telling spooky stories right before Christmas, I wrote this 100-word story for Loren Eaton's Advent Ghosts storytelling event at I Saw Lightning Fall. 

__________

For Christmas present..... my novel, Let Evening Come is available for preorder.  (I actually have an ISBN which made me as giddy as old Scrooge on Christmas morning!) The description and bio is now up on the publisher's site.

Thanks to all and a happy winter solstice (the joyful return of the sun) and loving holiday season to all. Especially to all the poets and writers at The Storytellers. Now for a brandy ball, a snort, and a little fresh snow.

Yvonne

yvonneosborne.com

REMEMBER SNOW

 
I remember the year it snowed
on the drive home from Midnight Mass.
Walking to the car, snowflakes on our tongues
the slap slap of the  wipers
noses pressed against the window
dizzied by the storm swirling around us.
Will rain remember being snow?

This is a Quadrille (a poem of exactly 44 words) written for the challenge at dVerse to write one including the given word, snow. Twas easy to do. Even though we don't have any . . .  

I remember when it was otherwise. And the poets at What's Going On are asking us to share a poem about looking back.

Pet Peeve #3 December Rain

 

The Pet Peeve #3

December rains flood the bird feeders—how will they eat?—but doesn’t wash the blood off my porch, the carnage scattered from door to window; tuffs of fur, a chewed-off leg, entrails, a tail. My dear husband cleaned it up with his shop broom and what all. But what, you ask, does this have to do with the rain the rain, the rain?

It’s my opinion that if it were snow falling gently from these iron-gripped skies to pile up in fluffy banks around the porch, drifts swirling and forming barriers along the drive, then perhaps these nocturnal creatures, whatever they are, would eat their dinner in their riverbank burrows, cubbyholes, and woody enclaves, (I want no Invitation to the Party!) instead of spreading it across my front porch for the UPS and Fed Ex guys to look at askance, as at the scene of a murder, checking the soles of their boots before climbing back in their trucks.

So, call it what you want: global warming, climate change, or normal fluctuations in weather patterns, I want my winters back. I want the cardinals and the juncos to flit among snow-laden boughs instead of flapping their wings like ducks in the newly formed ponds where there was once a yard. And I don't want dead things on my doorstep.

For Poets and Storytellers and their Seasonal Writings, asking us to include the title of a book we're reading this December in a piece of poetry or prose. An Invitation to The Party  was a perfect fit!

A Path To Publication and Preorder

THE OFFER

As those of you who are familiar with my blog know, I have long been on the winding road to publication, ever since the Indie publisher, Unsolicited Press first notified me back in September of 2021 that out of thousands of submissions, my manuscript was selected as one of 40 projects to fill out their 2023/2024 list.

From that initial euphoria to signing a contract, to multiple angst-filled edits and settling on a cover, to the gally proof I now have in hand, it has been an arduous process. But, all of a sudden things are happening. Fast!  So I come back to you with an update and the big news that Let Evening Come  is now available for pre-order! 

A BRIEF SYNOPSIS

Let Evening Come is the love story between the son of an Indigenous family displaced from their ancestral home on the Tar Sands of Canada and a motherless farm girl from Michigan who struggles to overcome loss while navigating the pitfalls of young adulthood. Together they combat suspicion and bigotry on both sides of the border and the cultural differences that separate them.  

Pre-Order Here

PREORDERING

Preordering helps the author like this: When you preorder a book, it seeds excitement. It tells bookstores people want this book, which makes them typically stock more copies of the book, which of course means more people see it and buy it. Not only do publishers look at preorder numbers to determine their print run, but early sales are key. Experts say the first two weeks of a book's shelf life are the most important.

So, if there is a book coming out from one of your writerly friends 😊 via traditional publishing, or one that sounds interesting and you plan to purchase it anyway, the best way to support them is to preorder.

I never used to know any of this. I never knew anything. And yes, I'm shamelessly groveling. 

I appreciate all of you who make up this vibrant blogging community and, truthfully, I would have faltered on the path if not for the ongoing encouragement and generous sharing of time, support, and ideas.

Thank you,

Yvonne

Human

(Because in these times I think that needs to be said.)

P.S. I have a newsletter sign up form on my website and there will be a drawing from the first 50 subscribers for free signed copies!! 💖💖 

P.S.S. The Friday prompt from Poets and Writers is to be inspired by Don McLean singing Starry, Starry Night, his lovely song about artist Vincent Van Gogh. There might be a heavy cloud cover overhead but it's a starry, starry night for me and I hope for you, as well.

FOX & I - An Uncommon Friendship

I loved this book. The author, a former park ranger, earned a doctorate in biology and zoology then built a small cabin on an isolated piece of land in Montana and plotted her next move. 

As she accepts research projects and teaches field classes and leads groups of undergraduates through the Wilderness areas surrounding Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, we tag alone to learn things about the natural world that couldn't be taught inside a classroom.

But the main focus of this astounding book is her unlikely and inexplicable friendship with a red fox who visits her isolated mountain valley cottage at 4:15 every day. With traits that only humans should have, you will never view these small creatures the same again.

Fox & I is on my list of best reads of 2023.  My other top five to date (of course you're interested!😀) are: 

1. The Slow Horses Series (Mick Herron)

2. The Only Good Indians (Stephen Graham Jones)

3. Lessons In Chemistry (Bonnie Garmus)

4. Bear Town (Fredrik Backman)

5. An Invitation To The Party  (MJ Werthman White)

Tis the season for reading and writing and gift giving. I'd like to hear what some of your favorite books of the year are.

A Letter To My Mother

Dear Mom, 

I have finally learned to appreciate your favorite vegetable—sweet potatoes. I’m making a shepherd’s pie with a sweet potato topping for dinner tonight. Remember how you always asked us to check to make sure you had sweet potatoes in the cupboard where you kept your onions and potatoes while making out your grocery list? I regret rolling my eyes, wondering what the big deal was. On the list they went, price circled, so we wouldn’t mess up. Those were the only times I ever bought sweet potatoes. 

It must have been the sweet potato casseroles of old with marshmallows on top—though that was never your way—that charred fluffy topping cemented my revulsion to the lowly sweet potato. I’m not sure at what point I got over that, but I wanted you to know, the Irish in me has finally taken hold. 

I’m using lamb in the shepherd’s pie tonight instead of hamburger, and I know you loved lamb. (Those patties stuffed with feta, served with mint jelly on the side?) Finally, of course there’s dessert. Baked apples with whip cream. 

It’s cold and wet tonight, but there's an empty chair with a cushion on it by the heat register. I just wanted you to know how much I love sweet potatoes. I guess what I really want to say is I wish I had another chance to tell you I love you. 

Love,

Yvonne

   

The challenge today from Punam at d’Verse - For The Love of letters is to write one. "Before the onset of the digital age," she says, "letter writing was the only way to communicate long distance. (Long distance phone calls were expensive). Thus, learning how to properly write a letter was part of any young woman or man's education."

In the present age it is so easy to keep up with people. Yet, we lose something important. The personal touch! Letter writing delivers something more to the recipient than just the words on the page. The act itself shows how much we care about a person. It's the intimacy, the information we impart by way of our handwriting, our choice of pen and paper, that connects us with the recipient in a way that cold computer screens can't."

But when was the last time you wrote one or received one?  So, in the spirit of participating in this challenge (appropriate as we enter the holiday season), to rekindle and revive the dying art of letter writing in my own small way, I wrote this letter to my mother,

 

 

A STORY OF OPENING DAY

Back when pheasants were plentiful
Opening Day meant friedcakes hot out of the deep fryer—
Betty Crocker called them cake doughnuts
But mother called them friedcakes so friedcakes they were—
subtly spiced and dipped in glaze or sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar
and stacked in dripping pans to cool.

Opening day was hunters in camouflage jackets

and canvas vests lined with little pockets

to store bullets in. Traipsing in and out

the back door to sign in on dad’s clipboard

hung on a nail beside the dryer.

 

They would carry their birds back up the lane by the feet

stopping first to report in and get a friedcake.

A snapshot of one of the regulars

     Eddie in his bulging vest with his bird

     And a grinning preschooler full of indulgence in a fuzzy sweater.

What beautiful birds those ringnecks were.

 

1957

Gunshots echoed across the fields

The kicking up of leaves in galoshes and wool socks.

The warm kitchen smelling of hot oil and cinnamon

Friedcakes dripping frosting cooling in the pan.

A jostling around the counter to duck and grab

Mother in her apron and dad in his coveralls

Talking up the hunt and the camaraderie of neighbors.

 

 

2023

A Kindred Need

Chaff in the wind, grasshoppers on the fly,

the gathering up and the laying down.

Combines creep across the field

where sparrows hover and hide

in the dry rustle of the corn

storing up energy in their hollow bones

for fall portends winter,

when they’ll swoop over the land in concert of wing

for they need their kind come winter.

I heard a pheasant this past summer.
Never saw but heard the truncated chortle,

the two-note song. 

Was that a tail waving in the Queen Anne’s Lace?

I thought I heard a pheasant this past summer.

Can't resist linking this to Poets and Storytellers with their prompt in  favor of adjectives, reaffirming my belief that there are exceptions to every writing rule. And in answer to the prompt at What's Going On?  what do you love?, this post might only scratch the surface but Opening Day, then and now, are right near the top. 

The Sorrowful Mysteries

This is an old poem I wrote while my parents were alive, but given the world's current sorrowful state and d'Verse's tribute to Louise Gluck (recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize for literature) who was known for her insight into loneliness, family relationships, divorce, and death, I thought it an appropriate time to share.

My father and I say the rosary on the drive home

from the hospital.

I forget a line in the Our Father

and mumble my trespasses.

He finishes for me.

How could I forget

that which was memorized at the knee

of Sister Severe?

Swimming upstream in his wake,

I navigate the mysteries,

the joyful and the sorrowful mingling like water and salt—

Let it be known that no one who sought

thy intercession was left unaided.

He stumbles on the words,

they fall into his handkerchief.

I finish for him.

The miles pass unnoticed

and the mysteries come to an end

but the road continues and the day approaches

when there won’t be anyone left

to remember what is forgotten.

Vinegar and Newspaper

With the autumnal flocking of birds and rustling leaves whisking by my window, I try to wash one or two when the sun shows its fickle face. At least the ones I missed in spring with my scattershot approach. The window of opportunity is scant and fleeting (no pun intended). With a spray bottle of vinegar and water and several sections of newspaper—grandma’s mode of attack—I start. Drying with newspaper is how she did it, and the task always brings back memories of her. We’d be on the roof—one of my sisters or me—to wash the outside of the dormers, while grandma on the inside meticulously pointed out the spots we missed.

With grandma gone, I admit to the occasional bottle of store-bought window cleaner and a rag, but I always feel vaguely guilty about it, as if she were watching. For streak-free, squeaky-clean windows, vinegar and newspaper are not only cheaper than the dirt caught in the sills but will give you perfection beyond compare. 

Some things can only be done on a sunny day, but with a dearth of those, my flowerbeds are overgrown, the pear didn’t get trimmed, nor the strawberries weeded, and garlic is yet to be planted. What can be done on these dreary, rainy days?  Baking chocolate crinkles, walnut leek tarts, and canning pickled beets. Reading under a blanket and writing with laptop balanced on said lap as Hitchcockian flocks of birds fill the trees and flood the sky outside these freshly washed windows, for winter’s coming.

Uncommon Fruit

 

I need to see the sun’s first light

and flaming slide at the end of day.

I can’t escape my farmgirl sentience—

what it was to fall asleep

to the thrum of the hay dryer

with a pillow cooled at windows of sweet scent,

to hear the whistle of the freight train

on its rumble through the night

to pick up grain and carry it off.

 

With hay cut and drying in the sun,

I see those strong boys paid to help.

Heavy bales to lift, throw, and stack;

chaff in our hair, sweat down our backs.

We gathered at the hydrant,

close but not touching. Closer than touching.

 

Knee-deep in Queen Anne’s Lace

on a wend among the boulders,

glacial erratic that lined the fence—

worn pocket tops caught the rain

and made a seat for dreams of Oread

hawks and love and common things

 

and lent a view of the jagged line

of rogue apple trees

that grew along the creek

in unmannered ways,

withstood the winds of winter

and bore uncommon fruit

without the nod of a care from us.

 

Sharing an old poem about home at dVerse  (the poet's pub) and Poets and Storytellers, What conjures up home?  Nothing was ever sweeter than the smell of fresh cut hay and first love. 

Better Than Jumping Off A Bridge

A Mother’s Question To Her Daughter:

Did you come in while I was sleeping?
I thought my glass was empty
and you filled it.

So what have you been doing . . .

since you weren’t here.

 

What I’ve been doing—

    writing a novel you don’t understand

    and wouldn’t like,

    day drinking and dreaming—

you don’t want to know.

So, for you I’ve been

playing an out-of-tune piano,

and patting truffles into shape,

tending the chickens and chasing mice

out of the nesting boxes.

        Or was it a rat jumped past me en route to the door?

This cloak of guilt you’ve fitted

for me to wear like an apron

has bottomless pockets I'm working to fill.

So, don’t ask me what I’ve been doing

because you don’t want to know.

The poets at What's Going On Blog is calling on all poets who blog this week to explore the word Mother.  In all it's incantations, when a word is more than a word. 

 

Teeth Of The Beast - Monday's Musings

 

It’s official

Black Friday is now on the calendar

like an American holiday. 

Even Band-Aids are made in China.

My mother’s stainless-steel bowl

is stamped Made in USA. 

Hummingbird feeders hang untended and bereft

as summer sets sail in her wraparound skirt

throwing wet kisses from a vaporous cloud.

Can't say I'm sorry to say goodbye

because I have beets simmering in the pot

and an olive oil cake to whip up in that bowl, 

from a recipe I got at Dario Cecchini's kitchen 

the famous butcher of Panzano.

In between time I've hit send on my first  newsletter

composed by my lonely self with no help from the AI beast

that's been unleashed in our midst without so much

as a by-your-leave.

Send me a message here 

and I will share Dario's olive oil cake with you.

Over and out. Now to curl up with a good book

while the oven works.

What Summer Makes Us Do

 

The tavern’s dark interior is refuge from the heat

that blankets the city in a migraine aura.

The top-shelf bottles are lined up like dancers

in lusty green skirts and amber hues.

 

The bartender blows foam from a pour

and our eyes meet in the mirror behind the bar.

Chunks of frost slide off my mug

like a glacier sliding into the sea.

I catch some with my tongue

as he wipes the bar with his towel.

 

An aquarium sits in the center of the backbar

and piranha sweep the perimeter with empty eyes.

Condensation drips off the bottom of the tank

and I wonder what he feeds them.

 

Music spills out of the back corner

where a barefoot stranger with a guitar

sits in a pool of light in front of a fan.

 

The room is a turntable

and the ceiling fan whiffs the nape

of my neck with a reminiscent chill—

    wool scarves and galoshes

    snowmen with black button eyes.

 

The bartender flips a lock of hair off his brow

eyebrows etched in surprise, as if I’d spoken aloud.

A careless flip-flop dangles off my toe

like the towel he tosses to and fro.

 

The dancefloor is chalky with sawdust

and the musician strums a lick

that will repeat in my head

like circling piranhas in an endless loop.

 

The room is an ocean, salt on our lips,

piranha swimming free.

Joining the open link party at dVerse for beer and company along with the poets at What's  Going On?  who are asking "How's the Weather?" They are calling all poets who blog, so how could I stay home?