It snowed today

Other homes, other families all

Green grass red popsicles

Lazy waves of skeeters

And weekend plans of

Jersey shore and Aunt Inez’ potato salad

But here at this house

Silent flakes

Smother the landscape

An neverending blanket

We watched powerless as the sweetness

of barbecues floats over from neighbors’ yards

While the chill creeps into our bones...

Ring ring

“Hello, this is Lena from All-State Auto Insurance offering new low rates in your area.”

“Well hello sailor, this is Monica’s Beauty Shoppe Funeral Home where when you die we curl up!”

Dial tone.

Ring Ring.

“Hello this is Bilbao’s Plumbing & Pizzeria. At Bilbao’s the secret is the sauce.”

Dial tone

Ring ring

“This is Bank of America Fraud Alert division notifying you of suspicio...

Smooth white paper one dot

Then another

Then another

Then one more

0.03mm micron pen on heavy mixed media

I should switch pens

Maybe 0.05

Or at least a .01

Instead my face inches

From the sketch

My pen one with my hand

My hand whispers to my lungs

Breathing in air molecules deeper

My lungs murmur to my muscles

Electric cackles to each fibrous bundle

till New neutral highways crisscross my bra...

1, 2, 3…

The window lock clicked seven times. Billie moved onto the next window and repeated the ritual locking and unlocking. Next window, with each click Billie’s shoulders relaxed a little more. She moved to the front door and unlocked it, relocked it, unlocked it.

The phone rang. Billie froze. If she doesn’t complete the ritual in one go she’d have to start over. It was Dad. If she didn’t a...

No skills required life

Eyes open to blinking lights

Clanging bells rattle my pillow

Morning bounces on a spinning wheel

Black or red

How did I get here

Pull that one-armed bandit

Sleepwalk through another day

Constant drone of cacophony

No daylight

No clocks

Time passes maybe

Tuck my luck into a plastic tub

Sleep a few hours

Under heavily patterned randomness

Then back on the floor

To throw th...

Except for the scrape of cutlery on china, the dining room was quiet, awkwardly horribly quiet. Karasu glanced back and forth from her daughter to her husband. Branan scowled at his fettuccine. Blackfield peered up at his parents’ dining room ceiling and wondered when he could flap out of this family nightmare. Clutching her fork like a weapon, Ravenwood glared at her dad. Cyan his eyes only for h...

Rave talked a lot when she was nervous. Hiking up the Allfather trail, my woman was talking a mile a minute. I’ve never been camping and neither had she. As a nymph I lived in and around the big water. As a shifter, Rave simply transformed and lived as a bird. This trip was a big step for us.

Spending days together in a small tent that’s serious couple stuff. Rave hopped from one foot to another...

“Spill,” Corby said and whacked Ravenwood in the back of her head.

“Damn girl I’m not playing.”

Corby swung again and Ravenwood ducked. The slender branch they perched on bounced. Bobbing and swaying, the old friends laughed. Maple whirlybirds rained down on the conspiracy of raven shifters below. Corby landed a few more hard whacks.

“Quit it, quit it! Nothing is going on,” Ravenwood said. “O...

Sherlock Holmes, Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot

And there’s Dupin by Edgar Allen Poe

These detectives make me grin, see

None more so than Lord Peter Wimsey

Marlowe, Spade, and the Continental Op

My heaven, library or bookshop

Yet no mysteries have I found sweeter

Than curling up with Sayers’ Lord Peter

Erudite, silly, damaged, yet urbane

That love unfurling with Harriet Vane

On a desert isle one b...

Once upon a time there was a story that we all think we know of a beloved princess pricked by a witch’s hex who falls into an unnatural slumber. You have heard of her years of sleep and the kingdom that slept around her. You may even know of the prince who awakened her with true love’s kiss. What you know is only a sliver of the tale.

The slumbering princess named Talia or Aurora depending on th...