Well, my dear readers, thanks for the well-wishes. I am feeling better, but I feel like I am falling behind in my poetry goals…Life has been intruding.
I have my parents in town for several days for the holiday, so I’m entertaining them, and I’m already neck-deep in grading and comments for my class (including several students who seem to never have been in a workshop before, which is weird, considering they’re MFA students, not high-school students or undergrads!) which I’m trying to do after my parents fall asleep, so basically the extra several seconds to breathe during the day…haven’t been spent writing or submitting.
But I am grateful for things. For my parents being alive and healthy and fun to be with, for my husband, for a mild winter and song sparrows. Today we went to Moonlight Beach and toured the huge flower fields in Carlsbad, taking picture after picture, even though the day was rainy and windy and chilly (well, chilly for San Diego.) I also helped my mom find a pair of jeans (she hasn’t been wearing jeans for years, and she looks great in them.) Doesn’t that sound like a day I should be thankful for?
I promise to post a poem again soon…

Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.


