Just a quick post to say that I had the most magnificent day on Governor’s Island at the NYC Poetry Festival combining the three things I love the most: Family, Friends, and Writing.

I had the pleasure of reading some poems recently published in Newtown Literary Magazine and a new poem-in-progress—a currently crappily-titled poem for my husband (attached below after the pics).

I also got to hang with my boys, some of my closest friends and their kids, and I got to meet two new additions to our crew: sweet baby Rosa (pic below) and Charles, my friend Jen’s almost-husband. The consensus is that both are keepers. As if I needed MORE icing on my vanilla cupcake (a girl can dream), my awesome friend Nicole’s girls, Gabby and Nola, who came all the way up from DC, made some beautiful poetry of their own—also pictured below.

Thanks to the whole Newtown crew and to all my amazing people. Hearts, love, butterflies, and rainbows to you all!

 

An Ode to Husbands Everywhere (or maybe just mine)

Oh sweet you, my West Virginia baby

Trailer park-born gold

butt slapped with apprehensive belts

by your adoring Pageant Queen mama

 

I kiss your coal-coated mouth in the Upper East Side apartment of our youth

where I learn the proper pronunciation of things important to you like:

“Butthole Surfers” and “Appalachia” and “No, not Western Virginia”

When your dad gifts me a can

of ground possum at our first meeting,

I ask if he brought the white lightning,

And he chortles the kind of big-bellied laugh

my people make sails out of for epic journeys.

Hair: blonde midswept wheat

Jaw: wide-ranging like your hometown’s mountains

Smile: rare, but present in the face of sarcasm where it matters

Purpose: quiet, slow-moving, but gracious.

When your mom starts repeating herself,

you respond to every litany

as if it is her first iteration.

Then I knew I was safe

Then I knew it was you

And when every single time you leave the house,

you kiss my forehead and tell me you love me

even if I spent the previous night drilling

my Greek-American Queens-girl verbal rotary hammer

into your soft Appalachian belly

And when I hear you teaching our boys

How to be gentle when digging for worms

To never let a shoe graze an ant

And how to gently ease flies out of the house with a piece of paper

instead of a deadly swat

And when I watch you, Daddoo, not Daddy,

whistle as your prepare

Chicken and hotdogs and steak

as your lentils and tofu suffer on an adjacent burner

Then I know it’s always been you,

My West-by-God Virginia baby

Hefty morsel of strange sweet love.