Poet Reporter
A different kind of reporting, through the eyes of a poet.
These Silhouettes
We all have those crazy weeks where we’re stressed and we don’t get enough sleep and one thing seems to upset the entire applecart and suddenly everything is falling apart. Even as it feels like time is rushing by, we can still see in slow motion how we’re riding a landslide that’s taking us further from where (or whom) we want to be.
Let’s face it: We’re people…
Words on Napkins
When I lived out of state, I had a little house on a quiet street, and I worked hard de-cluttering this little house room by room until the entire place looked lovely and inviting. I bought a chair, I added a TV, I had tile installed in the bathroom, I framed my favorite pictures with friends and family and my travels and I put them up all over the place…
Night Life
A little over halfway through my book, Stories From the Road, my travel buddy Brent and I arrive in Nebraska. And even though our tourist scenes take place entirely in the dark, our discoveries and flashes of insight can light up a night sky. You’ll see…
Everyday Heroes
Heroes are made in the trenches, in the moments where extreme conditions meet bravery, decisiveness, and sacrifice by amazing people who likely wouldn’t consider themselves heroic. Throughout our nation’s history, everyday people have taken it upon themselves to do extraordinary things, for love of home, country, and way of life, and their heroic actions have benefitted us all…
The Spatula
I lived with engineers in college. Actually, I lived with sorority girls who kept sending me out of the dorm room because I was this disastrous thing called Independent and they were all pledging the same sorority. So, mostly, I just crashed down the hallway with the engineering students…
World-Building
If you’ve been reading me for a while you know I wrote my first who-dunnit in Fifth Grade. “Midnight… Murder?” was destined to be a hit. And as soon as I find it--likely in an attic somewhere--it still might be.
But that first story wasn’t all sunshine and roses. (Murder rarely is.) When my babysitter (today she would be considered my first beta reader) read the story and immediately knew who the killer was, I realized I needed to do a rewrite…
Yesterday’s Socks
I’ve waited tables in at least five U.S. States. In one of them, a restaurant owner told me his secret to getting through a split shift: Clean socks. A split is where you work lunch, go home for an hour, then return to work dinner. (A double, by contrast, is two eight-hour shifts with no break in between.)…
The Doorkeeper
When life gets overwhelming, and even when it seems a bit pointless, one of the best things you can do is surround yourself with art. Art rejuvenates the soul. It awakens a place of light and warmth within you and helps you begin to believe again…
Root Ball
We had a tree in our front yard that neighbors said looked like the Tree of Life. It was a honey locust, tall, old, and beautiful. In the winter when all of its greenery was gone, it simply stood tall. In the spring, it would produce these little seedpods that looked like ribbons that would spiral to the ground…
Better on Paper
My family got together a few weeks ago to make ravioli for Easter. We gathered on a Friday night, ate pizza, and then rolled up our sleeves to get to work with flour and eggs, rolling and filling…
Inner Motives
When I was working for lobbyists in D.C. and also waiting tables in the suburbs of that great city in the evenings, there was a man who came in to the coffee shop one night and sat in my section. I’d seen him in there before. He’d been working his way through all of the sections and it was only a matter of time until he found his way to mine…
The Blue Binder
I have a few manuscripts piling up. Some projects aren’t quite finished yet; others need one last piece in order for their stories to come together.
Today I had an epiphany about one of these projects as I washed dishes. This particular manuscript (that I printed and placed in a blue binder so it can stare at me every time I enter my office)…
Where We Are Drawn
A few years ago, my sister and her husband bought a house in the countryside that had been vacant for a while and whose well had gone dry. Rather than pay to tap into the county water line that was two miles away, they decided to dig another well. The question was where. The neighbors down the road told them to contact the Water Witch…
Drawing That Line
Did you ever sign up for something and almost instantly regret it? Like, maybe at the time you were thinking, “Well, my initial answer is no, but this might be a good learning experience for me…” Then you get roped in to a little more, and a little more, and before long it snowballs out of control. Suddenly everyone is telling you what you should do, and just because you don’t want to, what does that matter?
Emergence
Ah, emergence. This is my favorite word. I love it because it’s a bubbling up to the surface, a process of revealing something once concealed.
Not to be confused with emergency—no one likes those. But emergence and emergency come from the same Latin root. Emergence went the way of rising up, and coming to light, while emergency took the short, quick road to a sudden, unforeseen event…