I’m still around, though not writing as much due to the demands of my new job. I’m teaching English to 8th graders, most of whom regard me with cool disregard or outright contempt…but there are some who get me. I sense a few sparks flickering to life, and that’s encouraging. I still come home tired–and some days plain exhausted–but I haven’t been so drained of energy that I’ve started siphoning from my spirit.  Taking spiritual energy and repackaging it to give away to young people who can’t help but be vampiric, especially those who have little or no support at home, took a disastrous toll on me when I last taught in public school. Not again, say I.

I’m determined to find a way to write more. Twenty minutes a day is reasonable, and I can build from there.  In that spirit, below is the first poem I’ve written in weeks. Weirdness, it seems, is still with me.

Dear, yet Cursed, Rachel

“I hope you don’t mind a little bit of blood,” said Dear Rachel,
unleashing a torrent of red upon my finest carpets—recently cleaned!—
and heaving a crimson sigh that colored the rest of my days,

numbered as they were, I know, counted and sifted by a cowardly
man using the sky as cover and the clouds as disgusting, disguising agents,
oh, how I knew, and yet—AND YET!—Dear Rachel commits to a visit
and has the bitterest gall to bleed and bleed and bleed freely for at least an hour,

during which time I prayed (I’m ashamed to say!) and called upon friends
near and far to remove her, to chain her, to lock her away and swallow the key,
kill and bury themselves in an old-growth forest so nothing but nurse logs
would know the fate of the vile metal and Dear Rachel would be Cursed Rachel
and then forever forgotten, erased as surely as my lineage which dates back to