H Love

Loving you
is having a hole
in the middle left side of my chest.
Yes, a perfectly drilled hole;
with the nerves and sinews exposed.
And there sits that great beating organ
Raw with loving you.
And every time you cry it is poked.
Even the good things
(Like your small hand on my cheek)
squeeze so hard it hurts.
And I'm thinking of writing this feeling down.
And I'm putting away your dirty pink tennies.
And out falls a penny.
Lucky copper.
It tinkles when it hits the floor.
It's heads. It's you.
And I feel it...right there,
my open heart.

7 Random Facts about my writing.

I've never gotten a blogging award. I don't really understand them, but I'm not going to lie, I felt a little honored to be the recipient of one from my friend, novelist Jeana Watters. I have been awarded "The Versatile Blogger" award. This award also comes with a rule that you have to write seven random facts. Since it's all about writing here, my seven facts are about my writing.


1. I once won a short story competition and was published in an anthology. The story was called "The Tattered Sandals" and was about domestic violence. I was 15 years old.


2. I have recently taken up poetry. I'm a lover of poetry but I would not consider myself a poet. I'm too maudlin. However, my little poems have brought me great joy over the past few weeks and I have no intention of stopping.


3. I am in the middle of two novels. One is a work of historical fiction and the other a mid-grade novel. I have been writing these books for two years.


4. Ever since I started writing seriously and studying the craft I can't read in the same way and I have lost a little bit of my ability to get lost in the story.


5. What I really want to be is an essayist, but feel terribly unequipped.


6. I have been paid to be a copy writer and a sports writer.


7. I listen to music when I write. It weaves itself silently into the subtext of my work. In fact, when I read my work I can hear the echoes of whatever I was listening to while writing. Is this some unique form of plagiarism? Can one plagiarise emotion?

P.S. I have to award someone else this. Like horrible chain mail that never ends (and yet again, oddly flattering). So I bestow that honor upon poet extrordinaire, Cami. Here's to you!

An Exercise from Julianna Baggott's Writer's Boot Camp day 2

A great writer that I once workshopped with is Julianna Baggott. She is running a summer writer's boot camp at http://www.bridgetasher.blogspot.com if anyone is interested.

I've been working on it daily and when I write something delicious, I'll post it here. I found one exercise on day two to be amazing. I thought I'd post it here if anyone wants to try it.

She had you go to the table of contents of a poetry anthology you've never read (her example used Sharon Olds) and pick a poem. Then write a poem with the same title (without reading it of course). She says that tables of contents can be great prompts.

I agree.

I love the poem I wrote. I chose the title "The Unborn." It was great that I didn't read the poem before because the actual poem is BRILLIANT. I still like mine, but I love hers. Here are the two...

The Unborn- Christie Gardiner
In a way
they've ruined my life-
or at least what I thought it was.
I hear them at night when I'm falling asleep
sitting up with that sick mother feeling...
little empty whispers
slip and slither through my ears.
I've given them years
and blood.

The Unborn- Sharon Olds
Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads,
Like gnats around a streetlight in summer,
The children we could have,
The glimmer of them.

Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing
In some antechamber - servants, half-
Listening for the bell.

Sometimes I see them lying like love letters
In the Dead Letter Office

And sometimes, like tonight, by some black
Second sight I can feel just one of them
Standing on the edge of a cliff by the sea
In the dark, stretching its arms out
Desperately to me.

The process.

Writing is a process! I'm still here. Still loving words. Still writing!