Author Archives

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SOL: And just like that, my bubble popped

Her voice hisses across the dividers of clothing racks.

“Do you know what they said on the news last night?”

My head jerks up, away from the discounted sweaters, and I look around trying to find the disembodied voice. Is she talking to me?

“No, what?” someone answers and I pinpoint a trio of women gathered at the end of the next row, looking through the long-sleeved shirts.

“They said it costs 56 thousand dollars for each immigrant. Can you believe it? I thought Mike was going to go through the TV! He had to turn it off. Couldn’t listen to it. And you know they get everything paid for. EVERYTHING!”

My hands still amidst the cotton and wool. I look over again at the speaker. She’s a benign looking gray-haired elderly woman. She continues her rant.

“And the law says they can’t work for six months. So they just sit on their as#!s.”

Her listeners nod enthusiastically and another one eagerly jumps into the conversation.

“I know! They get everything. And I get NO help. Nothing. I have to pay for my rent, my car payment, everything. And they just sit on their as#!s and get everything paid for.”

“Tell her what they do here, Betty,” the other one says, encouraging her friend.

“Ok, you know what they do here?” She pauses strategically, then continues, clearly relishing her contribution, “They just cut in line. Cut right in front of everybody. Like they think they’re the only ones who matter.”

The initial speaker interrupts, “Maybe 300 years ago this was the ‘Land of Opportunity’ but there was no one here then. Now there’s no room.”

They continue their talk for quite some time. There is a lot of repetition. A lot of talk about sitting on as#!s. I listen to them rant, sickened by the hateful intensity of their voices, by their utter lack of empathy…and by my own by-standing. What should I say? What can I say? I run through and reject all sorts of possibilities. I doubt they’d be open to my mentioning their own inconsistencies (If immigrants legally can’t work for six months, what are they supposed to be doing? Also, there actually were people here 300 years ago. etc.) or questioning them further about their knowledge, beliefs. I don’t have facts and statistics readily available to spout. No antidote available for their Fox-fueled venom.

Hearing this vitriol in my own community shocks me. But really, I should have known it was there. We have major problems all over our country. Major divisions. People are struggling in so many ways, and clearly there are problems with the immigration system. I try to remember to have empathy for these women. They are frightened or struggling, looking to make sense of things. Still, I back away from them: the hatred and the “othering” that they espouse feels toxic, dark and deeply disturbing.

I take my leave from the store soon afterward, unable to rummage through used clothes and books any longer. Ashamed that I don’t say something. Anything.

The irony that I was shopping in a store named “Goodwill” was not lost on me.

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PF: A Wordle Poem

This week has been our winter break, and I’ve had minimal plans and lots of down time. Sometimes that feels good, sometimes not as much. It’s been quite cold in the mornings, and I’ve struggled to find the motivation to get up and out. I teeter back and forth on the balance beam between sluggish and relaxed.

Yesterday morning, although the skies promised a humdrum sunrise (is there such a thing, really?), I drove down to watch day begin at the river. I wasn’t the only one appreciating the views.

When I got home, I stopped to feed the birds before heading inside. As I neared the feeders, mourning doves departed in a flurry of feather and sound. A cardinal serenaded me from a nearby tree, and chickadees and crows chimed in. There were a few more unknown calls rounding out the chorus. So much singing!

Soon after coming inside, the morning lured me outside again to wander around my yard, listen to the bird song and try to capture a few photos. I can’t remember how long it had been since I’d done that. Even though it was still cold and none of my photos were particularly inspired, It felt oh-so-good.

When I sat down later for my daily Wordle, my four guesses (in bold) seemed to flow out of the morning and afterward, into this poem:

Today I will drink fresh morning air
inhale rippling bird song
and let both guide me
to build a day
worth remembering

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Tabatha Yeatts at her blog The Opposite of Indifference . Be sure to stop by today or any day for some inspiration!

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On the fading of good intentions…

I begin today with so many grand and productive intentions…

I wrote that sentence probably fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes ago, and immediately got side-tracked by incoming texts and messages. I chatted with my sisters and a few friends, made some plans, then checked my e-mail and scoped out a few cameras on line.

My good intentions are already fraying about the edges, losing clarity, and if not exactly paving the way to hell, definitely creating a path headed toward indolence…

It’s winter break here and I’m torn between two options: laze and lounge or cram something into every available moment. I’m trying to strike the right balance, but it’s hard.

At this moment I’m sitting in the living room. To my right the rising sun is peeking in the windows. I thought about going out to take photos earlier, but it was about 8˚F and I wasn’t that inspired. Instead, I lit the fire in the wood stove, and settled in to drink my coffee and write (and apparently text and message and shop).

So now, my feet rest on the ottoman and the cat is curled up next to them. I’m warmed by both fire and fur. Every so often the cat twitches in her dreams, nudging me. She’s working herself closer and closer to the edge, oblivious to her peril. Just now I had to reposition her so she didn’t fall off. Of course that was misinterpreted as an invitation to join me on my chair, so next I had to gently deter her from repositioning entirely onto my lap/computer. As you can see, I’ve been busy. Thankfully, we’re both settled in again now. At least for the moment.

And so flows the time.

Soon I’ll head into the kitchen and rummage around for something to eat. My thoughts turn toward the wood-fired bagels and fruit salad left over from our family brunch on Sunday.

Still, I don’t move.

It’s such a luxury to be unproductive. I have vague thoughts of making vacation plans and reservations, getting work done, exercising…

The fire crackles in the stove. The sun warms my shoulders. The cat is safely positioned in the middle of the ottoman. My coffee’s gotten cold, but I really don’t care. My stomach reminds me again about those waiting bagels. But for right now, I’ll just sit a bit longer.

This leisurely morning is simply delicious.

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Taken for a Ride

I’m easing away from the stop sign, turning right onto the main road, when I see it. The car is squatting in a shadowed lay-by, ready to pounce. My heart thumps.

Did I come to a complete stop?

I thhhhhinnnnnk so. I’m not 100% sure. I drive the short distance to my next turn turn, flick on my blinker and glance in the rear view mirror.

Oh, crap! It’s pulling out.

I watch it pull onto the main road as I make my turn off of it and proceed down the hill. I keep one eye on the road ahead and another behind me.

Is it turning onto this road?

My breath hitches.

Please no please no please no!
Oh, no! Yes! It is! But, there are no flashing lights. At least not yet.

My pulse skitters.

Am I going to get a ticket? Oh, no! What will that do to my insurance rates?

I eye the speedometer, keeping it right at 35 mph. I drive onward. There are still no flashing lights, but I feel its presence behind me like a nemesis.

Maybe they’re running my plates. Will it show that I’ve never had a moving violation? Ever! In more than 40 years of driving! Shouldn’t that count for something?

I continue driving, trying to talk myself off the ledge of my incipient free fall into panic, keeping my speed right at the limit.

There’s nothing you can do now. If you get a ticket, you get a ticket. It’s not the end of the world.

I wrest my eyes from the ominous headlights behind me and try to keep them on the road ahead…when they’re aren’t glued to the speedometer.

Maybe I should turn off this road just to see if it follows…

A crossroads is up ahead.

Will it turn off? Should I?

I keep on driving. I hold my breath, and pass the turn, continuing on my regular route.

Is it slowing? Maybe just a little? Yes! Yes! It is! And the blinker’s on. It’s turning!!!

I watch it start to turn down the road that leads away from me.

Immediate relief seeps through my body. My hands loosen their death grip on the steering wheel. I take a deep breath.

Phew!

I glance back to ensure that it’s well and truly on its way. But wait…what?!

My foot lifts off the gas. I look behind me again, able now to see the full silhouette of the car. The silhouette that does not look like a police car… Not At All.

My mind whirls.

Wait, was that even a police car? Or was I mistaken all along?

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PF: In Vino Veritas

In vino veritas

My relationship to poetry
is much like mine to wine
I don’t know the terminology
but I know what I like
what flows into me
with soft notes of currant
or spicy pepper
subtle pleasures that
have me sipping more
and slipping into giddy

Once someone talked to me
about the poetic use of anaphora
and I momentarily pictured 
elegant Greek vases
crusted in time
holders of sweet, secret ambrosia…

Was I so wrong?

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Carol Varsalona at her blog, Beyond Literacy Link.

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Poetry Friday: Secrets

For the past several years I’ve enjoyed the creative prompts for the New Year Poetry Challenge (NYPC) from the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center. Each day from mid-December to mid-January, they offer up an original and rich prompt, encouraging you to take it in any direction you’d like. You even have the option to send in one poem to be considered for entry in their annual NYPC chapbook. This year I shared the first ten prompts with my writing group, and Catherine Flynn liked one so much that she chose it for our Inklings challenge. The theme: Secrets. The task: “Write a poem about secrets——family, community/societal, governmental, personal, etc.”

Way back in December, when I first responded to this prompt in my notebook, I was also working on Heidi Mordhorst’s fabulous Yuletide prompts, one of which was to “try to write about effort”. These two prompts combined into this poem:

This pen holds secrets

You can tell by the way
it resists the pull of paper
how you have to exert force
to mark the page
how the ink bleeds and blots
and each letter requires
just a bit more effort
so that your hand aches
as the weight of those secrets
coagulates
until you
and the pen
come to
a stuttering
silent
stop.

©Molly Hogan

This week Mary Lee Hahn hosts the Poetry Friday Roundup at her blog, A(nother) Year of Reading. She shares her response to this prompt there. To check out what the other Inklings did with this prompt, go to the links below:

Catherine Flynn
Linda Mitchell
Heidi Mordhorst
Margaret Simon

And then, just because everyone should listen to this song more frequently…

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Winter Gift

Everything was coated in thick blankets of white. The sky was quilted grey but, with the occasional thinning of clouds, it periodically shone opalescent. Winter-bare trees lifted branches limned with white, while pine boughs hung heavy yet somehow graceful with their snowy burden. Every so often a gust of wind lifted a branch or brushed two together, and a small powdery flurry shimmered and showered to the ground. It was mesmerizing.

I was driving to school after an unexpected and very welcome two-hour delay. The scenery at home had tempted me into a little bit of morning photography, so I was running a bit late. As I watched the flurries and looked at the landscape around me, I found myself thinking of Frost’s poem “A Dust of Snow”. I started to say it out loud.

The way a crow
shook down on me
the dust of snow
from a hemlock tree…

I stopped there.

What was the next line? Something about mood… 

But try as I might, I could only fully recall those first few lines and the last two “and saved some part/of a day I had rued”. I repeated the first four lines again, hoping to jar out the missing few lines. It didn’t work… but I didn’t really mind. It was a not-minding kind of morning. I just drove along, reveling in the gorgeous morning around me, feeling my spirits lift at one beautiful scene after another.

Coming around a corner, I had to slow down behind a line-up of cars. Wondering at the delay, I looked up ahead to see the tell-tale flashing lights of a school bus. Most mornings I would bemoan my fate at that sight, feeling the need to get to school, to get working. To hurry.

Not this morning.

This morning my smile grew, and I settled in to enjoy the slower ride through the winter wonderland.

What a gift!

Looking back up my driveway before heading off to school

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Why I Take Pictures 


I always look forward to writing in response to Ethical ELA's monthly prompts, even though I generally keep my responses in my notebook. One day last week Dave Wooley offered up a prompt. He invited people to use Leah Kindler's "Why I Write Poetry" as a mentor and respond with a list poem using anaphora (which is, according to Merriam-Webster, not a Greek vase ;), but instead "a word or expression...repeated at the beginning of a number of sentences, clauses, or phrases.")

If you know me or follow my blog, you know that I love to take pictures and often share them on Facebook. It's become an essential part of my world. It seemed natural to ponder why I take photographs.

Why I Take Pictures 
(after Leah Kindler and Major Jackson)

Because each dawn is a promise
Because it slows me down from rushrushrush 
	to hushhushhush
Because it helps me to lose
   and find myself, simultaneously
Because when I switch my perspective
	new worlds are unveiled
Because I can escape the heaviness of today 
	through the portal of a lens
Because there’s magic in watching a heron
	unfold its wings and rise from the silent marsh
Because sometimes deep in the core 
   of a pile of haphazardly heaped snow
	a blue heart glows
Because the sky is a living canvas as is the marsh
	as is the forest as is each individual tree
Because a reflection reflects, and the birds, oh the birds!
Because time ceases to matter
Because sometimes I can capture what I see	
	and what I feel 
   and then transcend both
Because even when my camera is not in my hand, 
	it’s tuned me to resonate 
   to the exquisite 
Because even when my breath exhales into frost and my fingers
	bone-ache with cold,
	joy flutters and takes flight.

©Molly Hogan, draft

Yesterday morning I was trying to be productive and take advantage of a two-hour delay, but then I saw the ice outside, and the flocks of robins, and before I knew it, I was out the door and taking pictures...in my slippers!

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is with Susan Thomsen at her blog, Chicken Spaghetti.

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And on a weeknight!?

I talked to my sister on the drive home from work last night. We chatted about this and that, sharing what we’d been up to, what was going on. As I pulled in the driveway, I said to her, “Well, I’ve got to go. Kurt and I have a hot date tonight. We’re going to get our passport photos taken!” She laughed and we said our goodbyes.

After some quick primping (ha!), Kurt and I were ready to go to Staples, for our exciting photo session. I grabbed two library books as we walked out the door, announcing, “Let’s stop at the library on the way and return these.”

Within about ten minutes, we were at the library.

“If you’re just dropping those off,” Kurt said, “I’ll wait here in the car.”

“Let’s both go in,” I suggested. “They’re got the Joy of the Arts show on display right now. We can check it out.”

Kurt was amenable, so after I dropped off the books, we wandered into the adjacent gallery. We admired intricate drawings, textile pieces, oil paintings, watercolors and more. Over and over again I was impressed by the high quality of the work. There are so many talented people in this world! At one point I stopped in my tracks, amazed by a detailed pencil drawing of a dog’s head. I had thought it was a photograph. It was exquisitely rendered, only the head of a white furred dog, emerging from a white canvas with warm, inquisitive brown eyes. It was somehow lively and ghostly at the same time. Amazing!

After voting for our favorites, we left to head to Staples, and quickly found ourselves in front of the camera.

“No smiling,” the clerk advised. “And you need to take your glasses off.”

Five or so minutes later, we had our photos and were heading out the door. (In case you’re wondering, my photo is pretty appalling. My glasses hide a multitude of sins, not to mention two red spots where they rest all day long on my nose. Not smiling and a winter-dull complexion don’t add much to the mix. Glancing at the picture, before quickly tucking it away, I found myself wishing I’d come for my photo before a long day’s work, when I, perhaps, looked a little less like a cadaver. Oh well.)

Kurt and I walked out into the parking lot together.

“So, where are we going to go out to eat?” he asked, half-joking, as we got into the car.

We debated going home or eating out, and almost before we knew it, we were somehow ensconced in a local pizza spot and ordering dinner. And all this on a Monday night!

On the way home, I commented, “Wow, this really did become a date night! We headed out for passport photos, but ended up going to an art show and out for dinner.”

He replied, “It’s almost as good as our date night Friday, when we go grocery shopping together!”

We are definitely on an upward trajectory! Who knows what might happen next week!?

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Sucker Punched

Grief’s a funny thing. You’re going along just fine, and then suddenly you get…

Sucker Punched

Clear skies and sunshine
on the drive to work.
Like a bolt from the blue
the radio host jokingly refers
to “skivvies” and
my heart is skewered.
This is such a “you word”
I breathe deeply
try to regain my balance…

But I miss you, Dad.

©Molly Hogan

This poem feels a bit private, like something to keep in my notebook, but I’m trying to recommit to regularly participating in PF and also to sharing things that feel a bit more vulnerable. So, here it is.

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Robyn Hood Black at her blog, Life on the Deckle Edge. She’s sharing a wonderful post about all things tea-related. Be sure to stop by!