I have loved the tumbling infection
of laughter from my seven-year-old’s
throat, the pitched squeal of my own
relief as his mood revolves
from crank to joy,
better than my mother’s homemade margarita
cheesecake.
Month: February 2014
The Teachers
So. Much. THIS.
by Sarah Blaine
We all know what teachers do, right? After all, we were all students. Each one of us, each product of public education, we each sat through class after class for thirteen years. We encountered dozens of teachers. We had our kindergarten teachers and our first grade teachers and our fifth grade teachers and our gym teachers and our art teachers and our music teachers. We had our science teachers and our social studies teachers and our English teachers and our math teachers. If we were lucky, we might even have had our Latin teachers or our Spanish teachers or our physics teachers or our psychology teachers. Heck, I even had a seventh grade “Communications Skills” teacher. We had our guidance counselors and our principals and some of us had our special education teachers and our study hall monitors.
So we know teachers. We get teachers. We know…
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January Haiku Contest Winner and A Valentine Challenge
First off, congratulations to Sky Vani, who is the winner of our most recent haiku contest! Here’s her winning entry, on the theme of New Year’s resolutions:
failed resolutions
with joint forces strive to goal
~ living happily
Sky Vani, please send me an email (to forest [dot] of [dot] diamonds [at] gmail [dot] com) with your address so I can send you your prize.
Everyone else who entered the contest but whose entries were reserved for a new contest in March, please check this blog again over the next few weeks for when that round begins. And thank you to everyone who participated by sending in an entry (or more than one) and by voting.
And since tomorrow is Valentines’ Day, I’m going to make my annual request that, even if you aren’t part of a couple and even if you dislike the holiday on general principle, you go a little out of your way to do something nice for someone this weekend. Kindness Day and all.
It doesn’t have to be romantic: you could just tell a friend how much the friendship you share means to you. It doesn’t even have to be personal: just be nice to a random person you might otherwise ordinarily walk past because your eyes are locked on your smart phone screen.
Of course, if you want to write a sweet love poem to someone, well, that’s a charming gesture, too. 🙂
Happy weekend, everyone!
This Thursday Night…
Hey there. For those of you in the Houston area this week: I’m giving a reading this Thursday night at Kaboom Books at 7:30 as part of the LitFuse reading series. Two others will be reading as well. Click here for the Facebook event page. I hope if you’re in town you’ll come out and represent. The Milk of Female Kindness: An Honest Anthology of Motherhood will be on sale there for $15. If you can’t be at the reading but would like to purchase a copy, you can do so on Amazon here, or you can get one from me directly if you’d like me to sign it.
Also, regardless of where you are, don’t forget to vote on the January Haiku Contest entries. You can do that here, and you have until Wednesday night to do so. Keep watching this blog to find out who the winner is!
All the best.
Voting for the January Haiku Contest Now Open!
I know you’ve been waiting for the poll to open on this haiku contest; thanks for your patience while I’ve been slogging through my day job’s week from hell.
There was a small conundrum with the entries for this contest, but first let me say how wonderful it was of everyone to submit so many poems! The problem, though, is that a bunch of the entries, albeit thoughtful and interesting and fun, didn’t really conform to the format/style guidelines outlined in the contest rules. That is, some of the entries weren’t 5-7-5 syllables. So all those poems which didn’t fit the guidelines have been reserved and will be part of a new short poem contest in March, with the same prize as this contest.
But many of the entries fit the haiku form I outlined beautifully, and these viable haiku are presented here for you to enjoy and vote on! Voting will be open for a week, until Wednesday night next week. You can vote once a day, so it’s like approval voting — and so remember that voting for all of them is like voting for none of them. Feel free to share this post with others, too, so lots of people can enjoy the haiku and vote.
And if yours is one of the entries listed below, please make sure to check back on this blog to find out who wins. If it’s you, I’ll need your contact info so I can mail you your prize, a copy of the new anthology Strange New Words by Ari Marmell.
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January Haiku Contest Entries
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from veronicahaunanifitzhugh:
Reaffirmation
Do you resolve to
hold me when I pull away
and kiss still my tears?
.
from JoanneBest:
what I may intend
isn’t always in my reach
still I keep trying
.
from Greg:
My New Year’s resolve
to eat less, exercise more
lasted till Friday
.
from Sky Vani:
failed resolutions
with joint forces strive to goal
~ living happily
.
from mjlamarche (#1):
resolutions; clouds
wind-threshed, light-slivered. squeezed by
goals other than mine.
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from Tshering Dolkar:
to let go of me
that you I like river flow
like flower just be
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from laine:
My mind says “Achieve!”
or the year will be a waste.
My heart disagrees.
.
from Mjlamarche (#2):
each year’s promise drops
its seed on dry, frigid ground.
the harvest? pure joy.
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from David Hutt:
resolutely hitchhiking:
packet of Gauloises,
she passes me some red wine.
won’t quit hitchhhiking.
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from Maria:
Hope burgeoning, blooms
The new year clears life’s losses
Clouds bursting, Renewed
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Forbidden Cookbook: Game Day Guac (and a Haiku Contest Update at the Bottom of This Post)
I do not watch the Super Bowl.
Even though I live in Texas, I admit I don’t really care for football, not any part of it, and so I don’t host or attend Super Bowl parties as a general rule. I don’t watch the game, not even for the commercials (though I have been to quite a few SB parties in the past which were primarily devoted to watching the commercials).
But I know a lot of people do enjoy it, and so I wanted to share my recipe for Continue reading “Forbidden Cookbook: Game Day Guac (and a Haiku Contest Update at the Bottom of This Post)”
Sappho's Torque 