poetry

Train

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The color lightens for some of us on the silent smoothness of this train. There are occasional interruptions, the lonesome call from the train, hushed snores from a passenger sleeping upright, a rustling as someone digs through their bag. 

There are houses visible out the windows on the left. The view on the right is better, a mix of brush and small trees taking over ground once occupied by humans. The buildings are broken, the windows dark without glass to reflect the snow and early morning light. The yellow bricks are covered now with creeping vines and the painted initials of street art. 

The tracks flow beside the river, metal and wood paralleling water, movement of the train making the water seem still in the early sun. Seven geese swim sleekly through the green gray water. The lines of their bodies make a different kind of V, a rippled reflection of the sky. 

As the river slows, small patches fuzz like a window with a layer of frost, not frozen exactly but ready to be so. Watching the river this way, on this moving train, offers up little gifts: two dogs, one brown, one black and white, standing together at the river’s edge; a small herd of deer in an open field across the water, a painting in the early morning art museum of my life here on this train. 

The ground opens as our speed increases. Our movement makes the sun seem to flicker as we pass by the filter of trees and brush. If I lean down a bit, it shines directly into my eyes, brilliant yellow white against a watercolor sky. There’s no snow here, the ground red brown with fallen leaves. 

I look over at my companion. He too looks out the window, a silent watcher of a silent scenery. There’s something peaceful about the gentle rocking of the train, the curve that causes all the passengers to lean slightly right or left. 

This journey is toward something. It adds a promise, a hopefulness unlikely to be fulfilled but right now no one questions it. Instead, we all face forward…looking toward that promise, that possibility without the cynicism of reality to dim the morning light.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate.

Much love.

Train

Little Green Umbrella

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 1 Comment

Give me the confidence of a woman who talks to strangers with the justified expectation that her conversational gambits will be successful. She jumped right into a conversation with me by pointing to my umbrella (stuffed into my backpack because it isn’t raining.) and telling me that it reminds her to buy a little one to carry around with her. 

I took my headphones out and responded to her. It took a minute, actually, to pull me out of my work and figure out what she meant. I’m so used to the little green umbrella tucked in the outside pocket of my bag that, at first, I didn’t realize that was what she was pointing toward. 

She told me that no one carries good, small umbrellas anymore. She’s got big umbrellas but they’re a pain to carry around and she forgets them. The little ones break as soon as there is a stiff breeze and what good is that. Honestly, she’s not wrong. 

From there, somehow, we ended up in a discussion of the loss of local shopping options. She doesn’t like malls and hated when Kaufmann’s was sold to Macy’s. Apparently, there were lots of good stores downtown at one point. My favorite was Kaufmann’s – good sales, good clothes, great bakery. It was 11 delightful floors of fun and I miss it, even though I would probably never go there these days. 

Downtown shopping led to a lengthy critique of communities – she mourns the loss of sandwich shops in the community where I’m sitting right now. There really aren’t any good sandwich shops in the area. Hmm. Another good point from my new friend. I see her at the coffee shop every time I’m here and I’ve never considered talking to her. Just busy, you know. Who else has something to share? Who else just wants someone to talk with for a bit?

We chatted for maybe 30 minutes and then she left to catch the bus. She rides public transport from the North Hills community every day to come to this coffee shop because she knows the owner. Also, she likes Millie’s ice cream and would like them to open a store here because there’s no good ice cream in our neighborhood. (She’s also right about that.)

I just turned down my music so I could eavesdrop on my table neighbor. He spends a couple hours here every day, working on a project that seems to be life-changing. It probably isn’t but who doesn’t think their projects are life-changing?! Anyway, he received some bad news today about the project, slammed his computer shut, cursed under his breath for a few minutes and then left. SAME, brother. SAME.

Can we talk about the creepy coffeeshop regular who touched me — very creepily — the other day? Actually, I don’t want to talk about it. Any woman reading this already knows EXACTLY what I would say. Any guy reading this — if you even THINK for a blink of a moment that it was an accident, I hope you get cramps in your calves every night about 15 minutes after you fall asleep for the rest of your life OR until you realize that men don’t run their hands along other MEN’S backs accidentally. Weird coincidence, that.

Lots of stuff – shorts and poems – out to sub right now and the novel in revision. I wish I could type faster to get everything done that I’m trying to do. I have absolutely the most hilarious idea for a holiday novella. I just can’t wait to get to it but I also have two new novels in planning. It’s raining ideas and I don’t have an umbrella…oh wait. I’ve got that little green one in my backpack.

Much love.

Little Green Umbrella

Gothic Poems?

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , 1 Comment

There’s a lot of poetry floating around in my head (mostly the kind that one would submit to Okay Donkey or Sad Goose Coop – corny, weird stuff – you know the type) but I’m busy, too busy to focus on poetry at the moment. That isn’t, as you’ve undoubtedly noticed, preventing me from writing the blog entry. I’m busy but still procrastinating of course. 

It’s been more than a month since I last chatted with you. Hey! How are you? How was your July? Mine? Oh my gosh. Thanks for asking. Crazy. It was crazy. I hardly had a moment to sit and contemplate. I’m not even sure what I’d be contemplating but that’s the point of contemplation, isn’t it?

I’m so close to being finished with the latest novel. It’s like when you see an image in the distance and watch it form gradually as you draw closer. I know what’s going to happen and I know how it’s going to happen. Now, it’s just a matter of putting the final few thousand words on the screen. Sometimes, that’s the hardest part. It’s so easy to start writing but what if I can’t finish it? What if I can’t write the ending that I envision? The first 60,000 words roll off the fingers but the last 10,000 arrive one letter at a time.

I’ve been thinking a bit about grief lately. More than usual? Probably not but perhaps with more awareness. This month would have been my 30th wedding anniversary. I know I’ve mentioned before that we never really cared about marking particular days and even missed our actual anniversary date more than once. But now that there’s nothing to mark, I’m more aware of the date approaching. 

This has made me consider the changing face of grief. I’ve seen a bit, in my half century (plus). Life and therapy have encouraged me to understand my own grief and trauma, without comparing it to others, without why me-ing. But there are times when I feel the weight of it more. 

Trust me when I say that is NOT a plea for sympathy. 

As most grieving and traumatized individuals would tell you, after the initial event, we don’t really want people to sympathize. Learning to sit with – acknowledge, if you will – our experiences, talk about them, accept them, is part of the process of changing. 

It’s not like emerging from a chrysalis. I’m pretty sure no butterfly has ever thought, “if only.” It’s more like becoming fluent in a language. Initially, there’s a lot of struggle, trying to figure things out. Then, as we become more experienced, we recognize what things mean but we can’t always communicate. Over time, we get more fluent, but we still forget and still communicate poorly on occasion. 

The changes we experience are things that no one who hasn’t gone through it could anticipate. Unless you’ve lost your partner, you probably won’t understand those days where partnered people seem to surround you. While we were driving home from treatment one time, Ken pointed out all the old people we passed. There were so many. His unspoken message was clear:  why won’t I grow old but all these other people have? 

As his end was approaching, I was looking at my future. He saw a lot of people who had already achieved an age he never would. I saw so many silver-haired single women, sitting in groups at the coffee shop, alone together. 

Colin Hay’s song “I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You” captures the experience particularly well (which shouldn’t be surprising because this is a man who knows grief). “I still find pieces of your presence here” is exactly what my life is like. 

It’s not just that sometimes I open a drawer and find something that I can picture being held in Ken’s narrow, long-fingered hands. That definitely happens but sometimes it just makes me laugh, like when I stumble across the yellow, banana-shaped, banana slicer – I think I told the banana slicer story in an earlier post.

It’s also that I am as likely to find pieces of his presence in a moment, a memory, an image from a movie, or even in words that I write. His presence is inside me, not captured in an object or a place. That’s lovely and difficult, not something for sympathy so much as understanding. 

Anyway, because you now think I cry myself to sleep every night – what an exhausting thing that would be – I’ll point back to Hay’s song – “I don’t want you thinking that I don’t get asked to dinner.” 

Yeah, that’s not a weird announcement that I’m dating. No thanks. But I am living joyfully because I should. Otherwise, what’s the point? A slog of sorrow and a lonely death? Not for me, though I do think ‘A Slog of Sorrow’ would be a delightful gothic poem or maybe an Irish drinking song. 

And on that note, it’s time to wrap this up. I’m going to breakfast with friends this morning. What are you up to today? 

Much love.

Gothic Poems?

Coffee Shop Life

Deb Zuroski, , , 7 Comments

I’m at the coffee shop again, working. (Am I really working if I’m writing a blog post?) There are two friends sitting in front of me and they are giggling like 5 year olds. Their hair is fully gray, their cheeks patterned like wrinkled tissue paper. And they’re talking like they’ve known each other their whole lives. 

That’s one of my favorite things about the coffee shop, one of the things I missed the most when these places had no tables and we were all sitting at home, hoping to wait-out the pandemic. It’s a weird stranger connection, that feeling that you don’t know anyone and yet you know them all.

And just now, a woman shopping for an aluminum coffee mug knocked one over with a loud clang and the domino effect happened, three or four falling, though it sounded like thirty. 

She looked up to see if any of us had noticed. Yep. We all had. But I pretended like I hadn’t. Because who hasn’t experienced that (completely unnecessary) feeling of mortification?! 

Whoops. She just dropped a ceramic mug which, surprisingly, did not break. I wouldn’t give it a second drop though, just to test it. And I think she should probably stop touching things for a bit. Third time’s a charm, you know. 

A woman with a baby stroller is at the register with her entire family, husband, young child, new baby, and the grandparents. She looks tired but is wearing the best dress, striped pink, orange, blue, green, and white. Just looking at that dress makes me a little happier. And I’ll bet it makes her feel a little less tired. 

The giggling ladies have left, replaced by an older woman in a woolen shawl and a beautiful Gibson Girl hairstyle. Oh my gosh. She’s the mom of striped-dress woman. I did not see that coming but her fabulous style was definitely handed down, mom to daughter. 

Sometimes I eavesdrop on conversations but today I’m wearing headphones. Lizzo, right now, but it’s a playlist. The chair dancing will likely be replaced by something weepy in 5, 4, 3, 2, … 

Ha. I was wrong. It’s Devil Devil by MILCK. Dark but not weepy. 

The rush has slowed for the moment, a perfect time for aluminum-mug lady to come out and dust. Yes, she works here. I didn’t realize that initially, though it makes sense since she was doing a lot of stuff-touching. 

This is the coffee shop with the garage door that is opened when the weather is warm. The door is all glass so I can people/puppy-watch even when it’s chilly, like today. 

Every time I’m here I see a man who wears a big, very bright, knit cap over his locs. I’ve never seen him without the cap but I’ll bet his hair is long because the cap sits straight up on his head, ala The Cat in the Hat. 

Back to chair dancing: the song is 35 by Rob Ruha. Yes, people look when I chair-dance but I figure they’re people-watching, too. Might as well give them something to look at, right?

A young woman just entered and I am absolutely certain I know her. She’s probably my daughter’s friend but I’m damned if I know what her name is. She hasn’t noticed me or else she’s playing the long game, texting Haley to ask if I’m here. That has happened before but my darling girl always gives me a head’s up so I don’t accidentally ignore someone. She’ll even text me a picture so I can find them and say hello (like I’m cool or something). 

Last week, a young man was interviewing for a job at a table near me. He was so sweetly earnest and excited to show off his portfolio. It seemed to be going well but like all coffee shop interactions, I’ll have to write my own ending since I won’t know what really happened. In my story, he definitely got the job. Maybe even now he’s writing a social media post that I’ll interact with later on Twitter. 

Sad song time. You Were Meant For Me by Jewel just started. I know all the words because I used to sing it to Tristan when he was little. I remember singing, holding him in the dark in the middle of the night, the week after my mom died. “Hearts are broken every day.” I don’t think it will ever not be a hard song for me to hear.

But we are a tapestry, each of us, made up of all the threads of our experiences, right? That’s what people say. There are some threads I’d like to pull but that’s not the way our tapestries work. Thus, I listen to Jewel and think of my mom and how much she wanted to still be here with me and my sister, even as she hoped and occasionally tried to die. Life is confusing. 

There’s a big line all of a sudden. The waves of coffee-buyers are unpredictable. I looked up from my screen and watched the line develop. Then an older man walked in, got into line, looked at his watch, made a surprised face, and ran out the door. 

What’s his story? Forgot to pick someone up? Parking meter expired? Late for an appointment? Had a sudden urgent need to buy a sticky bun at the bakery across the street? (Yes, there’s a bakery directly across the street and yes they have delicious sticky buns – at least, so I’ve heard. I only look at sticky buns. I never eat them. Of course. Because that’s exactly what one is supposed to do when one encounters a sticky bun in the wild.)

Two young people just left – a very pretty girl who is majorly crushing on a hot-as-fire young man. Phew. There are still flames on the floor where he walked. I think she might come back in to touch them as they spark and expire. He looked at her as she turned away for a second and I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual. It’s really obvious that they’re not currently together. I hope one of them says something. Life is too short to miss these opportunities.

Power and Purpose by Joseph Trapanese just started playing. I love how it builds to a crescendo. A little too powerful for a coffee shop afternoon though. I should be striding through the woods like Mary Oliver, scribbling words into my notebook with my number two pencil. She said that she could really only write if her body was in motion. Of course, she had a horrific childhood so the woods were also a true safe space for her. The coffee shop is safe enough for me, at least at the moment. 

Line out the door right now. I love the vibrancy of this community. There’s a young girl sitting at a table playing with a little feathered chick – the kind that hop when you wind them up. She’s so proud of it, holding it in her cupped hands as she sits there. Then, gently, she puts it on the table and it hops around, making a quiet clicking sound. (The sound was temporarily obscured by Macy Gray belting out I Try. But now I can hear it again.)

There’s a man on crutches waiting for his coffee. I’m watching discreetly to see how he’ll handle the coffee and the crutches. It doesn’t seem like a viable combination, at least from my crutch experiences. Then again, I have been known to nearly fall over while crutching along and overbalancing so I’m probably not the best judge of coffee-crutch skills. 

Bob Dylan is singing his portion of End of the Line by Traveling Wilburys. I don’t love Dylan but I do love him on this song. Tom Petty is my favorite of the group but honestly the whole collaboration is genius. How could it not be?

Well, crutch-coffee man nailed it. He put both crutches under his left armpit, coffee in his right hand, and slow-walked his booted-foot self to a table. Should I have offered to help? Maybe. But I was busy admiring his balancing skills. I would probably have knocked over my unlidded iced tea if I’d tried to help him. And honestly, he’s got boss-level skills

There’s a woman sitting by the garage door right now. She has red hair that is absolutely gleaming gold in the light and I suspect she doesn’t have any idea how glorious that mane looks. I’ll never understand people who don’t see the beauty of red hair, with its golds and russets and oranges and variegated reds. 

On the other end of the color spectrum (is it really though?), the young woman next to me has blue hair. Sometimes I think about dying my hair or getting a tattoo. Hair dye is a lot less painful so that might be the way to go. But I’d kind of like to get a tattoo to represent the WHO I’ve become as I’ve worked my way through enough trauma for the lifetimes of a few people. 

It’s nothing like the trauma of watching an army attempt to destroy your home but we don’t measure our traumas against other people. Trauma is trauma. It doesn’t need a scale to validate it. 

I’ve been singing a phrase for weeks now. After finally getting really annoyed because I don’t have any idea where I picked it up, I asked Ms Google for an assist. Turns out it’s from Fly Me to the Moon. I don’t listen to Frank Sinatra and I’ve never seen Squid Game … so why in the world am I singing that phrase (“in other words, hold my hand”) over and over again? I have concluded that the problem is – my brain no work right anymore. 

Time for more chair dancing. Everybody Everybody by Black Box. A banger. Even corpses in the ground tap their toes to this one. 

In case you think I’m still not working, I beg to differ. I have opened my scrivener app and stared at the screen for more than two hours now, occasionally changing a word or typing and deleting a sentence. #WritingLife #Progress

Okay, now I have six hundred, thirty-nine words. HA. And my battery isn’t quite dead yet. 

Someone is missing their vanilla iced coffee. Did you order and then accidentally leave without it? Please, go get it because they’re convinced that shouting louder will cause the coffee to get picked up. And it doesn’t seem to be happening.

I’m listening to Disturbed’s version of Sound of Silence. It’s pretty great. Better than the original and I was almost alive when the original came out, proof that I am not suffering from OG contamination.

And as I’m watching the shop fill up again, Sober by Lucy Spraggan starts playing. 

It’s gray outside now and the dynamic in the shop has changed. The customers, mostly women, are working on computers. One is on a zoom call. I see three close-up faces on her screen. This is why I don’t like zoom calls. When I’m sitting with someone physically, they are nowhere near as close as their face on a zoom call. 

There’s a quiet spell at the counter. The three employees are looking at someone’s phone – pictures of hairstyles, I think – and they’re giggling as one of them tries to describe something, maybe a haircut they want? Corporate office would probably disapprove but I love that they’re smiling. 

Welp, the chat is over. I swear a soccer team just walked in. Okay, slight exaggeration, it’s just a big friend group – they aren’t loud but they’re young. You know how that is – vibrant, almost buoyant, with the promise of life. 

The battery has just reminded me that it will be dead to me (pun intended) in about 15 minutes. That’s good timing. I’ve reached my writing goal for the day, plus this blog entry. And I have some research to do. Time to walk the hill home. It’s a daunting prospect but very satisfying to reach the top. Is that a metaphor? Maybe. It’s also just a walk. 

Much love.

Coffee Shop Life

Poetry As Food, Food As Poetry

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 2 Comments

Today seems like a good day for a poem I wrote last year after I wandered a grocery store trying to find ingredients. I submitted this to a virus poetry contest. You can read the winning entries here. Public Poetry is also producing a virus poem anthology which looks amazing.

Hungry For Thought

The over-proofed dough falls with my IQ
While I make bad art with pasta and glue

My brain resembles last night’s lasagna
Cold as a scope the doctor puts on ya

Maybe a chicken too dry to enjoy
A letdown, some say, like coffee with soy

I wish that I knew how I used to think
My julienned thoughts are all in the sink

Pureed with peas to a mushy green mire
A soup, if you will, with one rubber tire

Covid I curse, it’s this virus’s fault
For 19 plus pounds of junk in my vault

I long to create a thing that’s quite smart
Clove mixed with peaches, a tasty pie chart

One thought every day is all that I wish
With luck by next year I’ll finish a dish

In honor of my cooking poem, tonight I made fried chicken. Messy but delicious!

Take care. Mask up. Be safe.  

Poetry As Food, Food As Poetry

Sky Blue Eyes

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of agency. One of the things I’ve struggled with the most since I lost Ken is my own agency. At first, after he died, I lived within the construct that was already established, long established, during and by our relationship. 

Over time, though, that construct started to crumble. I’ve mentioned before that a few months after Ken died, a doorknob fell off a door. (Apparently, Ken tightened doorknobs regularly and I just didn’t know or didn’t notice.) Instead of reacting as things happened to me, I needed to start acting — making choices and decisions about where to spend time, where to spend money. 

Maybe that’s a big DUH moment for all of you but for me it was both endlessly freeing and terrifying. Children in abusive households choose their survival strategies … stay with me here. I’m saying that, as a child, I had to decide whether to capitulate or fight. That wasn’t a conscious choice obviously and it wasn’t a single event. I usually chose to fight, which is probably not a surprise at all to people who know me well. And it’s not some bullshit humble brag either. Choosing violence in a violent household is a survival strategy, not a Tiktok video made to gain followers.

Anyway, the point is that AGENCY, the ability to act independently and to choose freely, is not something emphasized in abusive households. Since my husband was also raised in an abusive household, I think we probably unconsciously just leaned into each other’s survival strategies. Therefore, I didn’t have to learn to think and act independently until my husband died. GULP.

So, here I am, older than sliced bread, learning to make decisions for myself. I am living proof that old bitches (I will not call myself a dog and I will own the use of bitch as applied to myself and it’s amusing that it’s a bit of wordplay — HA!) …  can learn new tricks.

I’ve been sitting on the porch steps, listening to the baby birds in the nest above our back door. The parents were so discreet that we didn’t even realize we had bird neighbors until we heard the babies yelling at dad — more food please! — yesterday morning. Now, there’s a cardinal calling. I can’t see it — it’s perched in our enormous honeysuckle — but its call is loud and clear, standing out from the cacophony of early morning tweets and chirrups and cackles. 

The gift of our little backyard — watching a bird slip into its nest in the neighbor’s eaves, listening to the squirrel scolding the dog barking next door, sitting in the silent peace of a sunny afternoon — is a pleasure that makes me hope fall never comes. 

Yesterday, the sky was so intensely blue that looking up was like looking directly into my mother’s eyes (I looked up into my mother’s eyes the depth of the morning sky). My daughter was snoozing in the shade. My neighbors sat under their umbrella listening to pop music in another language. I could tell that it wasn’t English but I don’t hear well enough to know what language it was. They’re Scottish and Syrian so it really could be anything, including Donna Summer, Five For Fighting (yes, even THAT song which is a little surreal), classical, opera, folk music (mostly middle eastern). 

A couple weeks ago, they were listening to French pop music, deliberately loud in order to drown out my other-side neighbor who is also HOH but does not use headphones for her Zoom calls. Until Isla and Dan put on the French pop, we were all listening to a very explicit discussion of treatment options for a high-risk pregnancy. 

I wouldn’t say that I like listening to French pop but I like it a lot better than listening to analyses of transvaginal ultrasounds. Nothing against transvaginal ultrasounds other than that they’re extremely uncomfortable to receive (speaking from experience) but it does seem intrusive to listen to doctors talking about someone else’s. You know?

In other news, this week, we’ve been exploring lavender — lavender sugar, lavender lemon cake, lavender cream (in coffee). I don’t drink coffee so I can’t comment on that but the lavender lemon cake was delicious. And there’s an added bonus that the whole house smells great.

My saucy protagonists found something disturbing on their walk yesterday. They’re still processing it (and so am I) but it seems likely that they’re going to need to be very clever to get out of this situation. I left them in the middle of the woods, panicking, so I think I should get back to terrifying those teenagers now ….

Be kind today. 

Unclench your jaw. Relax your shoulders. Take a deep, SLOW breath. Find something to laugh about … if nothing else, here’s a mental image for you of my 10 year old Maine Coon learning to wear a collar with two very loud bells. He hates it but the birds and I are very happy that he jingles with every step he takes. 

Much love.

Sky Blue Eyes

Shadow and Bone?

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Have you watched Shadow and Bone on Netflix? When the book series was purchased, there was a lot of talk about how white the books were. This is a common conversation. Writers are generally encouraged to “write what we know,” which adds to authenticity of voice, place, etc. Unfortunately, that absolutely leads white authors to write books that are predominantly white. 

When white writers want to include non-white characters, we are cautioned by BIPOC to GET HELP with the character development and writing. (There are literally sensitivity BETA readers who will read your book draft for bias, problematic representation, etc.) White people know much less about BIPOC than we think we do. How many times have you read a book written by a white author who describes their Black character as a type of food — chocolate eyes, caramel skin? Can you imagine reading a book with white characters described similarly — “skin the color of strawberry frosting”? 

Okay, that made me laugh so much that I have to describe myself in food terms. Here goes:  Her deep-set blue raspberry kool-aid eyes were the only color in a cream cheese face dotted with raisins. NAILED IT. Get the point? It’s hurtful and wrong to write about people and cultures without doing the work to make that inclusion authentic. 

So, Shadow and Bone needed to become less white. How did the development team do that? Did they put in the necessary work to add cultures authentically? No. No, they did not. Instead, they added racism to the story, Asian racism, with deeply troubling racist tropes that I’m not going to repeat here. 

That’s more than disappointing. It’s anti-anti-racism. Nothing says white privilege like adding a big heaping spoonful of racism to make a story less white. It’s ridiculously tone deaf in the current environment; and Netflix, in their sprint to Oscar relevancy (as awards continue their slide to obscurity), should have considered that there are many obvious and effective ways to make the series less white without racism. 

Early in my writing journey, I started writing a fictionalization of a sweet story a teacher told me about a Black child who took a tomato home to share with his family. I got a solid 15,000 words into it before I had traveled far enough on MY journey to realize that it was not my story to tell. 

It is essential that white writers make space at the table — build a new table if the one you’re at isn’t big enough — for BIPOC writers. That’s one reason why, for those of you who are uninitiated in the publishing controversies of the moment, there has been much criticism of Simon & Schuster for agreeing to publish books written by famous people who are racist. There is no need to amplify racist views and doing so tells BIPOC that there isn’t really a place at the table for them.

Since publishers are, frankly, in it for the money, an excellent way for us to support and promote inclusion is to amplify books by non-white authors. Check them out. Literally. Go to your local library and check them out. Or buy them. Or listen to the audio books. Add them to your Goodreads “want to read” list. Show publishers that you are interested in stories told by people who don’t look like you. Here are three (of many) kidlit books by BIPOC authors coming out this month: 

  • Counting Down With You by Tashie Bhuiyan
  • Last Gate of the Emperor by Kwame Mbalia & Prince Joel Makonnen
  • The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He

Not interested in these? Try something by Angeline Boulley or Cherie Dimaline. 

In additional writing news, my story has taken a turn. I can’t discuss it because that would give away important plot details but even I was surprised. It seems likely that there are more twists coming. I can say that my protagonist’s best friend, who is chaotic neutral, is going to play a much more significant role than I initially thought and, honestly, I’m here for that.

My virus poem did not get into the anthology. As promised, I’ll share it in a separate post soon. Actually, given the very large number of entries, I’m surprised that the Public Poetry team chose a small number of poems for their collection. I think I would have published a longer chapbook (even without my entry!) because pandemic art and literature will be a piece of our history, like our vaccine cards and our masks.

LeVar Burton coined a term that I hope will catch on: community immunity. He suggests, and I agree, that language matters in the effort to get people vaccinated. We’re not cows; we’re people. Working together, we can give community immunity to those who cannot be vaccinated.

Get your shot or shots. Wear your mask. Help get us to community immunity.

Much love. 

Shadow and Bone?

Powerpuff Girls and Clouds

Deb Zuroski, , 7 Comments

I was feeling a little low this morning. My computer and my hotspot were acting up, seemingly not caring that I had work to do. I still don’t know, hours later, if it was the network, the building I was in, or gremlins doing gremlin-y things.

The phone rang — at least that was working, I thought. It was the bank.  There was a snafu with a transfer I initiated last Friday. Could I stop by the branch for a minute? Great. Technology worked fine for that but not for things I actually wanted to do.

As we were leaving our appointment, I tried to negotiate a trip to the local grocery store with my passenger — unsuccessfully, because he’s now a better negotiator than I am, darn it — so I dropped him at home. Bank first or grocery store?  Bank, I decided; and as I look back on the day, I can point to that as the moment that changed everything. 

The bank visit itself took less time than I waited at the crosswalk after parking across from the bank but I was in no particular hurry at that point. Bank issue resolved painlessly, I drove to the grocery store, nearly empty on a Monday morning, and picked up the various essentials, as identified by two hungry young people — bananas (the daughter), a baguette (the son), smog balls (the daughter), wheat chex (me), orange juice (the son), rosemary (the daughter) — you know, just the essentials. 

As I’m loading my groceries into the car, a woman approaches. “Excuse me,” she says. “I need some help but I don’t want to make you nervous so I’m going to stand back a ways.” I know what she’s saying — she’s black and she doesn’t want to upset a white woman.  She’s a little afraid of what I could potentially do to her with one phone call and that makes me feel even sadder than I did when I got up this morning. 

“What’s wrong?” I say, as I put the last of the groceries in the car. I’m smiling at her but she can’t see that through my mask. She’s masked too. It’s deep yellow, drawing the gold from her eyes, but she’s upset and I know she’s not smiling. 

“I’ve forgotten my EBT card,” she says. I don’t hear the rest of her sentence because it’s noisy in the parking lot. 

I pull my credit card out of my pocket (I almost never carry a wallet or purse). “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I don’t have any cash.” 

She’s horrified. “I don’t want money,” she says. “I need a ride. I forgot my EBT card and all I have is $5.” She shows me the bill in her hand. She’s not carrying a purse or wallet either. “I just want to know if you’d be willing to give me a ride home because it’s a long walk.”

“Of course,” I say. She offers to sit in the back (absolutely not, I tell her) and keeps assuring me that she doesn’t have COVID-19. I say, “Me neither.” And she laughs. 

“You’re a superhero,” she says. “A girl superhero. You know, like those cartoon girls.” 

“Powerpuff Girls,” I guess. 

“Yes,” she says and puts out her fist for me to bump. “We’re both Powerpuff Girls.” Yes, we are.

Once we’re settled in the car, I ask where I can take her. 

“The projects,” she says. “Do you know where that is? Low-income housing?” 

I do, sort of. I’ve passed the projects many times on the way to Ian’s school. It’s a long way, more than 3 miles, from the grocery store. I ask, “Did you walk this whole way?” 

“Every time,” she says. There’s no grocery stores near the projects, you know; it’s not profitable enough. She directs my driving gently. “Left at the exit. Can we turn right onto Graham?” 

I tell her that I think so. There’s an officer directing traffic because there’s construction all around us. She says she’s going to ask so we don’t get in trouble and she calls out to him. “Sir, sir. Can we turn here?” 

He rounds on us with such a look that I flinch. Then he smiles and says. “Yes, you can. Have a good day.”

I say to her, “I thought for sure…” 

And she laughs. “So did I. He sure had a look on his face.” We share a relieved laugh. “Left turn up here,” she says. 

And then she talks to me. If there’s such a thing as reincarnation, she’d like to be a tiger — because they take such good care of their cubs — or a cloud. “A cloud?” I say. “I’ve never heard anyone suggest that before.”

“I’m going to explain it,” she says. “Clouds seem so soft but nothing can hurt them. They move. They stay still. They’re beautiful. They come in many different shapes. They even change shape. I’ve been abused my whole life. I think I’d like to come back as a cloud.”

We keep talking. She tells me about her daughter, only two pounds at birth, but now a beautiful, happy 22-year-old. Her neighbor, kind of a nasty woman, passed away two days ago. She wonders if the lady would still be alive if she’d just been a nicer person. What did I think? I said that I thought negative emotions were destructive. 

She nodded. “I’m 47,” she says. “How old are you? You look really young (HAHAHAHAHA) but talking to you is like talking to my daughter AND my mother.” The conversation, and her gentle directions, continue the whole way to her home. “A right here. Do you see that it’s a triangle? You want the sharp angle.” 

As we’re driving up her street, I see a statue (in the Garden of Hope) made from rebar. I point to it. “That’s beautiful,” I say. 

“It IS! There’s another one, a little bigger, on Webster. You should go see it on the way home,” she says. “Just ahead now. You can pull over beyond that white car on the right.”

“I’m glad I met you,” she says as I stop the car. “I hope we meet again someday, under better circumstances. Now, do you know how to get home?” I tell her that I do and that I’m glad I met her too. She slips out of the car and turns around to say good-bye one last time. I watch as she starts walking away. 

She turns suddenly and stretches out her hand. “Do you want this $5 for gas?” She shows me again the bill in her hand.

I shake my head and say, “Thank you but you can’t pay for the gas. It was my pleasure.”

She pulls her mask down and smiles at me. “I hope we meet again,” she says, as she presses that $5 to her chest and walks away.

I didn’t realize until I was almost home that I don’t even know her name. 

If there’s such a thing as reincarnation, what would you be? 

Stay safe.

Powerpuff Girls and Clouds

Fauci and Focaccia

Deb Zuroski, , , , , Leave a comment

On a recent morning, I was working in my writing room (aka my bedroom) because it was still too chilly to write outside. The windows were open, though, and as I worked on a poem, I heard the beautiful trilling call of a young cowbird perched on the magnolia outside. I slipped quietly to the open window and watched as he puffed up his wings and trilled again and again. “Welcome, spring,” he called. “Welcome.”

That night, the kids and I ate dinner outside: grilled marinated chicken, fingerling potatoes, and crisp, raw baby carrots. While we ate, we watched, and were occasionally splashed by, the house finches cleaning themselves in the bird bath on the roof patio above us. They like to stand on the edge of the roof and shake their wings, sending droplets onto the deck below. Do they know that they splash us? I like to think so.

Yesterday was stormy, wind driving the rain into the window panes and throwing tree limbs to the ground like a child angry with a favorite toy. A good baking day. I made focaccia bread … twice. I decided that the first result (is focaccia a loaf? An edible plate?)  wasn’t spongy enough so I made a second. Both tasted great but the second was definitely spongier. 

I’m still not quite satisfied but the clock said it was too late to make a third. I’ll share the recipe below in case you have an urge to try it. Because our kitchen tends to be very cold (62F is the norm during the winter), I let my bread machine do the rise but if it were summer, hand-kneading the dough and a rise on the counter would be my preference.  Also, because we like rosemary, I sprinkled the top with rosemary and a little sea salt before baking. 

Today is catch up on writing projects day … which is why I’m procrastinating by writing a blog entry. HA. I have a couple stories by critique partners to review. I also have a pre-publication book to review. It’s a YA romance and I’m super-excited to read it. I’ll share details later.

I got my first vaccine dose last week. It was a remarkable experience. There were hundreds of people at the location I used, some in line, some volunteering. After a year of sorrow and death and anxiety and isolation, the mood was joyful. People were smiling. Strangers were talking about what they’ve missed and “when I get my next shot, I’m going to ….” For me, hearing — over and over — I’m going to hug my mom, sibling, grandmother, child, friend, was the most emotional part of the experience. I really do think, if we can get the mutations under control, we’re going to have another “roaring twenties.”   However, the pandemic isn’t under control. Only 28% of the US population is vaccinated. That’s a lot of people but not nearly enough. 

Be safe. 

Keep wearing your mask. 

Don’t be John Jefferson Williams. 

Much love.

Enjoy the focaccia bread.

Fauci and Focaccia

Want to Play a Game?

Deb Zuroski, , , , , Leave a comment

When I was a little girl, my mom used to call herself “attractive.” One day, when I was in school,  I got into a fight with another 7 or 8 year old. She said something mean to me. To get back at her, I said, in my little-girl voice full of little-girl spite, “yeah, well, you’re ATTRACTIVE” because I knew that word meant ugly.  The teacher corrected my definition but I didn’t understand for a long time that what I was actually parroting was my mom’s own self-hatred. Hurting yourself hurts more than yourself, though she really never understood that. 

Mom wasn’t a conventionally pretty woman at a time when a woman’s value was equated even more closely than today to her appearance and she could never see herself as having worth. She’s been gone for 24 years now but I remember how artistic she was and how loving and that her eyes were the color of the early morning sky.

On Saturday, I will quietly mark the fourth anniversary of my husband’s death. Four years of birthdays and holidays and Wednesdays, of photographs and adventures and catastrophes, of dinners and breakfasts, of midnight popcorn and freezer pops and pop tarts (brown sugar), of cookouts and drive-ins …. Are we okay? Are we grieving? To answer, I’ll just tell you this little story: Earlier this month, someone asked my youngest son where his dad is and Ian answered, “if there’s a heaven, he’s in it.”  

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Although I don’t talk about it much, I am a gamer, though I’m not a fan of first-person shooter games. I have a Wii, a WiiU, a Switch, an Oculus VR headset, a Steam account … and yes, I’ve played games like Portal and Terraria, Animal Crossing and Age of Calamity, and, of course, hundreds of hours of Minecraft. My unchallenged favorite, however, is BOTW (Breath of the Wild for you non-gaming folk). I’m even listening to a BOTW playlist right now, as I work. 

For people like me, BOTW is kind of a perfect game. I can meander anywhere my mood takes me, fight monsters or look for treasure or ride my motorcycle (or my horse) or catch bugs or do quests or just explore. I’ve beaten the game on the WiiU and the Switch 3 or 4 times. Playing is a little like rewatching a favorite movie or reading a book so loved that it is beginning to fall apart in your hands. 

We had leftover dough from skillet pizza night last week so we made chicken bake sandwiches a couple days later. They were so delicious that I am thinking about making them again this week, if we have a rainy day. It’s warm enough that we’re grilling out on nice evenings, though I think we’re going to have to invest in a new grill. Ours is over 10 years old and just crumbling to pieces. We like grilling far too much to put up with failing tools — how can you make a good grilled flank steak if only two of your grill burners consistently work?! 

We also made some great cookies last week. I’ll include the recipe below in case you are interested in trying a cookie made with cake mix and cream cheese. Weird, right? But trust me; they’re so tasty.

The results of last year’s pandemic poetry contest will be announced next month. There were more than 750 entries which seems to have surprised the wonderful folks at publicpoetry.net who hosted the contest. Honestly, what else did we have to do all of last summer but compose poetry about our human condition?! Anyway, I have two entries (the maximum allowed per person) so keep your fingers crossed for me. Wouldn’t it be an honor to be included in their anthology marking one of the most significant events of our lives?

I have a couple things out to agents right now and am working, as I noted recently, on finalizing a STEAM project. I’ve got my agent query list ready and am tweaking the poems and text with the goal of querying the first week in April. It can take weeks to get responses back so I’ll be getting to work on a project I’ve been planning in my creative down time. It’s a YA romance!

So much work goes into writing a novel before the actual writing begins. I’m a little bit of a pantser (meaning I craft by the “seat of my pants” rather than plan out my whole story) but that’s only because I’m not actually world-building like SF/F authors do. Imagine trying to create a magical world like Hogwarts without planning in advance. It would require so much rework/rewriting to fix all the problems created along the way and — believe me — there’s already LOTS of revision involved in writing a book. 

Okay, so if you are interested, here’s the chicken bake recipe I used. Instead of the dressing called for in the recipe, we used homemade ranch because we like it better. 

And here’s the cookie recipe. I have no idea if these freeze well because we ate them all. 

Thanks for spending some of your day with me. 

Stay safe. Wear your mask. Get a vaccine. If you think the vaccine isn’t safe, consult your doctor, not your neighbor, not that youtube video, not fox news entertainment.

Much love.

Want to Play a Game?