A Poem — I. The dishes in the sink have scabbed over; This is healing, they tell her. Her friends guide her elbows as she scours Mottled pans, scrubbing away the grot; Wiping out bowls and laving plates, Their hands gentle with her as with cracked porcelain. At least she’s eating, they say. In…

A Poem — Young, and drunk already on your youth, You think maybe you’ll find religion at the bottom Of a bottle: head thrown back, eyes to God, You drink until every streetlight wears a halo, Until every face, lit sinister in the club’s black lights, Glows innocent and beatific. You don’t need…

A Sestina — So many nights you’ve traced you fingers along the jagged Lines criss-crossing her arms like a subway map, each scar a train That she swears is out of service; but you still wonder where they lead, What coaxed her underground, left her on that desperate platform to catch That elusive ride, that escape that…

My tastes at 40 are suddenly breaking pattern — I guess I kind of thought I’d outgrow crushes. I, possibly unfairly, find the idea of having a crush a quintessentially teenage experience — yes, even though I remember having my first crush in 2nd grade; yes, even though I was crushing hard on my wife before we got together…

Finding a Festive Challenge in the Darker Days of the Year — If you are a person with any serious interest in drawing — whether or not you are an artist by trade — and have spent any amount of time on the internet, it’s likely that you have at least a passing awareness of Inktober. Started back in 2009 by illustrator…

There are No New Ideas, Just Fresh Takes on Old Ones — Before we can be creators, we have to be consumers. Our creative ideas comes from a synthesis of our own experiences, our own unique perspectives, and the way those experiences and perspectives interact with those of others. Our creativity and our artistic output is a response to the world —…