chapbook release

My first printed chapbook, Being Seen, is now available from Ethel. It’s prose about being sick, trying to see the doctor but often failing, not feeling seen, blurry vision, and there’s a dog in it. Working with Ethel and having my words enveloped within a beautiful handmade book was a dream of mine after being an Ethel fan for years, and the cover Sara designed for my chapbook was everything I wanted.

reading

I’ve been reading Greyhound by Joanna Pocock as my daytime-reading book. It’s exactly what I wanted right now as I daydream of taking another long-distance train trip: an account of two long distance bus rides, seventeen years apart, with reflections on aging, America, changing cities and landscapes, traveling alone as a woman both when young and when less-young, driving vs not-driving. I’m so into it. I’m jealous that I didn’t think to write this.

lost and found

The morning after the lunar eclipse*, I looked out the back window to see a small black and white cat climbing the porch steps. She seemed to want something, so I put out food and water. She’s not a known neighborhood cat and I haven’t seen her before this day. She hung out on the porch the whole day, so I set out a cat bed my own cats had rejected, and later a toy and a cardboard box. It’s always been a dream of mine to just find a cat or kitten and let it in my door, being chosen in that way. That was 5 days ago. She sleeps out there each night, in her little cat bed, though she has started to wander during the day. But she won’t let me come close and runs every time I open the door. I put out her food and water for breakfast and dinner and try to talk to her in a calm voice in case she can hear me from the yard. In the past days, I’ve researched everything stray or feral cat related, bought an outdoor shelter, placed found cat notices, have tried to build trust. I worry about the coming Fall. I don’t know where she came from, or how she got here. I’d love to get her inside. For now, I have to accept the relief I feel when I see her bright green eyes staring back at me, and let go when I see that she’s not out there, each time hoping she’ll return.

*it was actually Wednesday when she appeared, several days after the lunar eclipse, but the narratives we tell ourselves versus reality etc etc etc

I just had work published with Bulb Culture Collective, rehomed work from a defunct lit mag. “Smooshie” is nonfiction about the neighborhood cat I wanted to keep when I was a kid. Eclipse looks a lot like Smooshie.

Smooshie, early 1990s, Phoenix

Terrestrial pre-order link

My book from Malarkey (publishing May 2026) has a pre-order link! Pre-orders will be signed and come with a cool bookmark and copy of King Ludd’s Rag. I have some kind blurbs to share soon. I need to plan a book launch and reading(s)…trying to plan an event somewhere in Seattle makes me realize I don’t know of any event spaces, I don’t really go out…

anyway

I’m singing a line from a Fifteen song: “it’s the end of the summer.” I try not to sing it anymore. I was at Zia Records in Phoenix years ago with a guy, and he was embarrassed by my love for Rancid, so he suggested a “cooler” band. He pulled a Fifteen CD (Choice of a New Generation) from the racks, which he claimed was similar but at a higher echelon of punk bands, and placed it in my hands. Which reminds me that guy friends and exes would try to alter my tastes or look to get my overall appearance and vibe to a cooler point, like my guy friend suggesting I wear Vans instead of the chunky running sneakers I sometimes wore on my unsexily wide feet, or my old roommate throwing my Transplants CD behind my bedroom dresser. I ended up liking Fifteen. I later heard that Jeff Ott, the lead singer of Fifteen, was accused of sexual abuse. The sound doesn’t hit me the same way it did in the late 1990s/early 00s and I don’t listen anymore, but this line plays in my head sometimes in Jeff Ott’s whine.

Posing casually with some trash bins in Phoenix, 2001(?) in my Hot Topic dog collar from Metro Mall

xoxo