never eat a free
Mexican taste testing lunch
of new recipes
and think you’ll get a
good night’s sleep because you won’t
(neither will your spouse)
Resist
Bop ‘Til You Drop: Day 3 of October’s Open Write
Wendy Everard of New York is our host for Day 3 of October’s Open Write, inspiring us to write Bop poems. You can read her full prompt here.
The Process
Here are the basic rules for The Bop:
- 3 stanzas
- Each stanza is followed by a refrain
- First stanza is 6 lines long and presents a problem
- Second stanza is 8 lines long and explores or expands the problem
- Third stanza is 6 lines long and either presents a solution or documents the failed attempt to resolve the problem
My poem is inspired by a friend’s Facebook post. She’d found Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cake donuts and thought it would be a good idea to share ~ to tempt her friends, of whom I am surely the most temptable.
Little Debbie Donut Bop
{the problem:}
in a word:
willpower!
why?
Who made these
Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cake Donuts?
{expand the problem:}
oh, that’s easy to expand:
just open the bag.
eat.
weight increases.
waist and hips expand.
arms expand.
thighs expand.
{the failed attempt to resolve the problem:}
taste bud EXPLOSION!!
the sugar-grit of green glittery garland
white snow-pearl smoothness
red-ribbony-wrapped tinseling
savoring the sensations of Christmas in October
An October Reminder
get your mammogram
{{Breast Cancer Awareness Month}}
~reminding my friends~
I finally got my cycle of mammograms to October, the most popular month to get a mammogram! I took a half day, and at first didn’t make the connection – – I wondered why the lobby was more crowded than I’d ever seen it. Then I remembered: it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Everybody’s here for the squeeze.
But I’m completing the whole triathlon. I’m getting bloodwork, having the mammogram, and having a colonoscopy all in the first two weeks of the last quarter of the year.
When I finished my annual screening with close to 30 pounds of pressure on each side top to bottom and sideways (according to the digital readout), I had the strangest urge to go celebrate with a pancake breakfast. Instead, I thought about my recent bloodwork and the results that my sugar should be considered before making any spontaneous breakfast moves. Once I’d removed the gown and gotten my girls repositioned and safely strapped back into their carseats under my shirt for their travels through the day, the mammographer thanked me for coming, giving me a pink cup to help me carry the message.
This coming week, I’ll take the table for the other end and take a nice nap while the nature walk for polyps commences. I’ll try not to dwell on last year’s trip along Route 66, where we stopped in Missouri at the Uranus Fudge Factory. I’ll think instead on the first time I had a colonoscopy and decorated my @$$. And at all costs, I’ll resist the urge to stop for fudge on the way home. (And for the record, I do not want a brown mug from the Colonoscopy Department to match the pink one from the Mammography Department in the picture above).
To all my friends and readers: get your tests done, and try to find a way to make the dreaded medical visits we put off a sparkly checklist accomplishment.
Onward!
Tails on Trails Weekend Walks
they love to take walks
to go “tailing on trailing,”
as state parks call it
Our three Schnoodles enjoy taking to the trails. In Georgia, the state parks have a program called Tails on Trails, and you can even get a t-shirt for yourself and your pups to identify yourself as a Tailer-on-Trailer.
Our boys may look all nonchalant about it, but don’t let them fool you. They live for this. Boo Radley could not settle himself down for all the things he was trying to take in, and Fitz had to pee on every upturned leaf and then kick dirt and pine straw up in a confetti nature parade behind him as he scratched off. He and Ollie tried to scale a vertical cliff like they were mountain goats or something.
Come with us for a few moments as we walk. The band of brothers will lead the way.
Book Talk Continued, an Illustrated Reverse Haibun
I shared, they listened
we engaged in the need for
more writing to heal
My haibun today is in reverse – my haiku is first, my narrative is second, but I’m also adding pictures to make it an illustrated haibun.
The evening kicked off with Craig Logan’s welcome to TUAC and introduction, and then I was honored to share the journey of my writing group’s most recent books after the publication of Bridge the Distance and Rhyme and Rhythm: Sports Poems for Athletes. I printed these notes and placed a copy on the podium to guide me through the evening.
Book Talk Agenda and Talking Points – October 3, 2025 6:30 p.m. TUAC – Thomaston, GA
Agenda Timeline
6:30 – Welcome/introduction/talk
7:00 – Stop talking and take Q and A, Drawing for free books from David’s Bust Vase
7:30 – Reception, Meet and Greet, Book signing
Talking Points
Thank you for coming!
Land Honorarium of Place, Native Tribes, People, Our Stories (keyword for the evening)
In The Beginning:
Write before Read – – the photograph of Dad’s stacks of books/me as a baby seated among them/ him studying/ firm roots in books and language
Crayons – writing in the books, or how I to read and write using Crayola names of colors
Childcraft – Harold Monro “Overheard on a Salt Marsh” Poem fixation, and….
a Child’s Garden of Verses – two copies by age 6
Checklist Book: Memoir, my first book – Father, Forgive Me: Confessions of a Southern Baptist Preacher’s Kid
The Middle:
Mother’s death, NCTE Convention, and Sarah Donovan with The Groups at www.ethicalela.com that emerged ~
Bridge the Distance (Oral History Project through Oklahoma State University)
Rhyme and Rhythm (an invitation to an anthology – read Golden Shovel)
And then……we coded prompts since 2016. Predominant themes emerged: Healing, Assessment, Community Spirit, Technology uses, and Teachers’ needs for shorter texts and stories
Who wants to work on which books? We made groups.
- 90 Ways of Community by Sarah Donovan, Maureen Ingram, and Mo Daley (Read poems from here) – Mo Daley’s poem – “She Told Me Many Months Later”
- Just YA an anthology of over 15 writers
- Words that Mend: The Transformative Power of Writing Poetry for Students, Teachers, and Community Wellbeing and The Authors
- ePoetry by Sarah Donovan and Stefani Boutelier was picked up by a a major education publisher and will come out in 2025
- Assessing Students with Poetry Writing Across Content Areas: Humanizing Formative Assessment for Grades 6-12 by Sarah Donovan, Barb Edler, Kim Johnson, Anna Roseboro, and Gayle Sands is under contract with Routledge and will come out in 2025
The Conclusion:
Keep writing – set a timer – tell your story. Write it down. SHARE it. Your story matters.
Q&A
*Photos shared with me by Bethany Johnson and Briar Johnson, and I am ever appreciative of my sister-in-law and my husband for their outpouring of love and support!
Open Write September Day 5
Barb Edler of Iowa is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the final day of our September Open Write. She encourages us to celebrate our writing group through poetry of any form today. You can read her full prompt here and read the poems of others. On the heels of a celebration of the Labor Day launch of our books Words that Mend and 90 Ways of Community earlier this week, I can’t think of a better way to write today than in thanksgiving and heartfelt gratitude for a group of writers who make a difference in how we live and how we think.
If you don’t have a writing group, I encourage you to find one ~ and you can use this one as a great model for a face to face group in your own corner of the world after spending a few hours looking back at the prompts and the feedback. Get the books, read them, and feel the deep need to fix places you never knew were broken. Too many of us have lost our footing and found ourselves floundering and then discovered the power of writing and what it can do. Today is a day to celebrate the power of the pen and the ways it connects us with others. Anna Roseboro said it best at our celebration: if poetry can do this for us, imagine what it can do for our students. We all need poetry and writing in our lives.
Belonging
we step from shadows
into glowing candlelight
from our scars
we discover soothing balm
from mourning and grief
into reassurance there is
reason to go on
we come from loneliness
to take a hand of belonging
from disconnectedness
to welcoming acceptance
we leave our fears
step into the fold of peace
we leave disappointments
find spiritual hope
we feel our hearts
pulled at the words
someone else’s
shadows
scars
mourning
grief
loneliness
disconnectedness
fears
disappointments
are our own moments
our own memories
and we know
we know
we know
this is no ordinary
writing group
these are
our lifelines
our people
our friends
our family
the ding
next time he
goes to a
storytelling night
he will time his
cliffhanger at
exactly two and
one half minutes
and then when
they tap that
ridiculous spoon
on the coffee cup
to signal thirty
more seconds
he will smile
return to his seat
leave everyone
hanging
and sit down
Early Morning Schnoodling
somebody woke up
grumbling, growling
snarling over space
scrapping, snapping,
licked my sleeping face
tussling, pulling, beckoned
me to play
early morning
Schnoodles
greet the day
Getting a Grip
getting a grip on
her future starts with
burning the Christmas tree
boxes one decade now in
her attic
buying enough hummingbird
nectar to last through October
and watering the string of pearls
cascading from the porch table
getting a grip is festooned with
saying goodbyes to too much
long held hostage from living
new lives in better spaces
like all those music boxes
of childhood and sad, stained
table linens frayed with holes ~
gaps in the timelines of
lineage like broken branches
on that cross-stitched tree
of names and thread strands
of who goes where and how
pre-affair, divorce, remarriage,
cousins once-removed now
fully removed and never coming
back because they did the
same thing with their goodbyes ~
they burned the Christmas tree
boxes and all that’s left is
the cooling ash of
what once was
before their birds
left the nest for the skies
Credelio Question
four ticks already
from taking down the fenceposts
have me wondering
whether we should be the ones
taking the dogs’ flea/tick pills
Common Threads 