You can't buy this kind of green in the store--this green plucked from the early garden, dusted off more than washed, eaten with not much oil and vinegar, and it tastes greener and sweeter than anything that has ever crunched between my teeth before.

As you know, I am living with "it," this nebulous "it" that is one step along the path of my life work, work that has never promised to feed…

He was almost past prime, but no one ever admits to being past prime so who knows. 

The days were getting shorter, but the nights came faster, a confusing accordian affect from noon on.

He'd had some business cards printed a few years ago, but they weren't much count in the bars because the girls were all glowing with electronics and just tucked them in back blingy pockets, smiling at the old pervert on the third barstool from the door.

It was different now, than it used…

My fingers are dark tonight, darting like tongues across the page.

My heart is hard tonight, beating the evening into submission.

My game is sharp tonight, as sharp as the cold iced liquor in my glass.

My name is grim tonight, stamped in gold-foiled fury on the future.

My hope is quiet tonight, but terrible-strong and taffy-thick.

My love is gone tonight, across continents, oceans, deserts, forests, and a clean, clean sky.

*I read…

She took pot shots at him via e-mail, and he guessed that ex-lovers were allowed to do that, but she often came pretty close to truth, to the place where the blood pooled. 

But it was old blood, and he had plenty, and truly, he'd rather fend off her zings than wonder if she still breathed.

Sometimes he thought she breathed via keyboard, but just as often he missed the real woman smell of her so much that he crushed her left-behind towel into his face to muffle his…

First you have to write a novel, a whole manuscript, and then you have to let some loved ones (preferably the nice ones) read it, and then you have to BE ABLE TO HEAR THEM when they say, "Uh, wow, but I don't get chapter four and some of your characters really peter out and why is it so sparse toward the end, and shouldn't the plot have a little more tension?"

The next step is obviously to wander around for several weeks talking about doing a rewrite on the manuscript that…

The older Rafe got, the shorter the summers seemed and the longer the winters stretched out before him, so he'd taken a bigger bite than usual out of the spring and headed up onto the side of Bride's Mountain while the wind still blew down off of the old snow and last year's grass still stiffened at dawn.

He was fucking tired of the hot, close leather shop, the never ending casseroles his…

I dreamed that somehow I had failed, and the penalty was to have TMI tatooed on my forehead, which sounded like it would hurt since that is a bony surface.

The tattoo artist seemed too gleeful about the punishment,, and she kept playing with my hair.

Today I am moving a stack of transite, stacked in the same place for years, and I knew he'd be there, or someone like him, moving like a college student on Monday morning, looking for a place to get back into bed, but I am glad it…

Almost a year ago, I wrote about romance, and a particular day when it came to a head in my life (like a pimple?).

Almost three years ago, I wrote about romance and transtions.

I've written my way into love, through two novels, through the publication of my first book, past the hard parts, the messy parts,…

If I lived alone, I would set the dial on the toaster straight up, lighly browned, and I'd carry my coffee cup out into the morning and set it steaming on the low rock wall while I fed the horses.

If I lived alone, I'd become strange in my ways, sitting in parking lots removing packaging from my purchases and throwing it into public garbage bins so I wouldn't have to take it home.

I'd leave the same cd in the player for weeks until the songs became a part of my…

The poems are rising but they're not here yet.

The poems are baking, fermenting, simmering, growing green around the edges, necessary slime for seasoning, keeping them from spilling out raw.

I don't know what the poems will look like, but I know the ingredients that I've added... western verbena, a red long-eared bull who's healthy and strong while his mom is showing ribs after that fifth snowstorm, ducks rising off the dirt tank, a moon so full that it looked almost warm, a…

Hi, all!  This is not a normal 6.  This is a small birthday present to myself here on my 41st.  Indulge me.  And click around among the links I posted as I mean them as a gift for YOU.  Cowboy poetry has been in the news lately, and though I am only on the fringes, don't write the traditional rhyming verse, I did want to pay a small tribute.  First, a traditional Cita6. 

He texted me a happy  birthday, this almost man who will always be able to wring my heart in his hands…

There is a frog song serenade going on punctuated by splashes as we ride down the creek.

This morning we reined our horses to a stop before we got two hundred yards from camp, stared silently at the bear track in the sand, the fresh bear track, the big bear track, the one made in the night as we slept sans tent beneath the trees.

We found the lion* track way up on the ridge and moved on until the horses began to walk sideways and willingly scramble uphill, away from whatever…

When I say "living with our animals," I don't mean declawed arrogant housecats or a take-me-on-a-walk-three-times-a-day, digging holes in your backyard hounds, but rather knowing the sound of the horses cleaning up the rest of their hay after dark and hoping that old black cow who volunteered at the corrals won't step on us as we lay on our bed of canvas.

We know she isn't going away any time soon--the promise of # 1 alfalfa is enough to hold her without rails until we make the drive…