Poems in the Spring Issue of Ploughshares, the Last Cherry Blossoms, and a Trip Down Memory Lane

Poems and Pink Tulips

A New Poem in the Spring Issue of Ploughshares During National Poetry Month

Amid all the grim news, I had a little package of happiness arrived in the form of my contributor copies of the Spring issue of Ploughshares, edited by one of my favorite poets, Tracy K. Smith. I am so happy to be sharing space with poets like Chen Chen and fellow blogger January Gill O’Neil.

Here is a picture of Sylvia lounging with her copies of Ploughshares and a sneak peek at my poem, “Irradiate,” from my manuscript-in-circulation, “Flare.” I feel very lucky to have appeared in two dream journals this month,

I just wish the rest of life wasn’t so chaotic. I hope you guys are able to celebrate National Poetry Month at least a little. (I’m going to order some more books and lit mags from my local poetry-only bookstore, Open Books. Whoops, I just did this – they take Paypal now! So dangerously easy! Three more poetry and poetics books coming my way!)

Social distancing with last late pink cherry blossoms

The Last Cherry Blossoms

It’s mid-April, and the last of the cherry blossoms, my favorite, the pink candy-tuft type, are blooming. Yesterday was gloomy and today we’ve having rain, which somehow feels appropriate to what is going on in the world. I’m trying to get outside when I can, but I have to avoid other people even more than most people with my health issues, so I’ve been haunting weird places – abandoned parking lots, mostly – to get my flower fix.

House Finch posing with faux bird cutout

A Trip Down Memory Lane

A weird thing that’s been going on in social media is trying to post senior year pictures in support, somehow, of current seniors who are missing their graduations and proms. I can’t imagine being in high school during this time, so difficult. So love to you, high school readers.

I kept hardly any pictures from my senior year, sadly, but I found a few pictures from 1990-1991 in Glenn’s photo album. I mainly saved pictures of my friends rather than myself. And I have a picture from my mom’s senior formal, which is awesome – she was a knockout.

So, kids, remember to save the photos you took before the lockdown happened, because twenty years from now, you may want those pictures. Get print versions, just in case.

So this trip down memory lane didn’t stop with pictures – I actually zoomed with five of my closest high school friends, some of which I haven’t talked to in 20 years (Facebook messages are not the same thing.) It was a little melancholy – one of my friends lives in NYC and is being hit hard as that whole city is, another is an ER doctor waiting for her state’s coronavirus onslaught to happen. But it was great to catch up with everyone.  The pandemic has certainly kept me in closer touch with many people – old friends, my siblings and extended family – than usual. Everyone now is looking to the end of lockdown, although I don’t really see how we can do that without more widespread testing, more N95 masks, and a regular treatment protocol that keeps patients – even young people without pre-existing conditions from dying (we’re getting closer, but not there yet.) It does seem like Washington State’s cases peaked about three weeks ago, but that’s not the case in many places, cases are still on the rise. I have dreams about going out to the grocery store, to the bookstore looking at magazines – mundane things, but then I realize in the dream this is not safe for me. I’m afraid that’s the reality for me, with several risk factors, I just have to stay inside longer and be more careful than the average person. I am looking to survive this birthday month and year.