Tell me again how I burst forth,
reaching for the sky with immense
petals from some rainforest where
my ancestors came from, but I
sprang up from nowhere, arrived
in a dark green vessel, unmarked
and unheralded. Tell me again
the story of how you didn’t
know me and then suddenly you
did, and how you watched me
every day, how I sat on your
windowsill and performed the
superhuman act of making you
happy in the middle of February.

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For the November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 4. Prompt: a superhero or superheroine poem.

In case I haven’t mentioned it, besides pushing myself a little by writing directly here rather than in Word, which is my usual, and which gains me a modicum of editing time before I post, I’m also not looking at the prompt until I’m actually ready to write. That way, I don’t prewrite by mulling over ideas all day long. The poems you see this month are as close to my “first mind” as you’re going to get.

Hey, big news! I just found out that I get to be part of a reading at Woman Made Gallery here in Chicago on Sunday, December 7. I hear it’s a really great space, and I’m honored to have been selected. I’ll be reading from my chapbook Secret Rivers. If you’re in Chicago, I hope you’ll come out. Also, there will be snacks.