SAGE Sightings! Add Yours!

You know how once you get a thing in your head, you start to see it everywhere?

So I was playing Scrabble with my mom, looked down and there was SAGE. I swear I did not even re-arrange them. They just appeared.

There's someone in South Philly who tags SAGE on buildings. Keep an eye out and send a picture if you see it. And any other cool SAGE sightings! Email your photo here.

Which reminds me that it is not too late to pre-order SAGE which should be out in March. Just email me here to get your order in.

How (Not) to Write a Poem...

There is a reason I like to work in sets of poems tied together with a theme.

My day-to-day life is really not poem worthy.

But in between projects, like I am now, I do try to keep the poetic mojo going which is mostly an exercise in frustration. But I am part of this writing group that meets once a month so I have to come up with something, anything... unless I want to feel like a big, fat, poetry loser.

Take last month. I had finally made the first fire of the season since we have had a really warm winter here. And it looked nothing like the fire in the picture. The wood was too wet. I was too impatient to clean out all the ashes from last winter. And try as I did to channel my father's 'how to build a fire' lessons, it was pretty much a dud.

Maybe this could be a metaphor for something or I could write about my father or write about some other fire that was hot and sexy. So I tried to write something -- tried in different forms and from different points of view. And it was all bad.

But there was one line I did like along with the idea of things that come and go. So I wound up with this poem instead. Which maybe is not so bad.

kerf

name the space

left by the groove

of the saw

wood to dust

line defined

by emptiness

name what

exists only

as absence

singed kindling

curled into fire

then air

words inhaled

understand

quiet

empty place

at the dinner table

bed

the name

that escapes me

late at night

still holds

the image

of a face

what exists

in the cut

of the blade

disappears

when the pieces

fall apart

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt