Wrightings

  Middle finger right hand a pencil nub, red from wrong grip stressed like the spelling trying to coax the rules but neat enough to be accessible  Even her name was misspelled  Deborah became Debra

 Birding in the dark the grackles sing lullabies to blinking red lights even the semaphores sleep and I am an April fool

Auditions Fifth row center end  Neck cocked to catch  Almost every word Relaxed into the smell of musty velvet seats  each mid-April honoring fellow poets getting inspired writing new shit Naomi Shihab-Nye can be found in Roundtop,TX

 

  When I am in the city When I am downtown in the city especially near the towering buildings the street vendors, the traffic, and the crowds , they give off such hints of filth. I would almost say that we all deserve to die. I am so distant from hope  in which goodness, and discernment, ever existed in the world so I walk quickly, holding my bag tightly. Around me the throngs stir in their fast pace and call out, “Tourist, go home.” The disdain flows with each word. And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “you have to keep moving, don’t look up at the buildings, don’t block people trying to get somewhere, and  don’t be afraid to eat on the street.”

 March should hold no terrors, so they claim, Beneath the glow of full moon’s watchful eye; We count backward, reckon loss and gain, And whisper debts we fear we can’t deny. To Jupiter, great lord of sky and flame, Whose thunder shakes the hearts of mortal men, We cast our sacrifice, invoke his name, And pray misfortune shall not rise again. Yet shadows stir where trust once firmly stood, For closest hands may turn with hidden blade; In halls of power, masked by noble good, Ambition’s cost is dearly, darkly paid. Heed well the signs ignored in fateful hour— Pride invites the fall of mightiest power.

           WRIGHTINGS and friends celebrated poetry on PI day with PI-kus from Washington, D.C. to Washington State, from Minnesota to Corpus Christi, TX. Please enjoy and share the idea for next year! 

  I was bumped, tagged, notified  that we would be all a Glo for poems in 2026 we’re looking for a home a Facebook prod made me smile my words will be expelled not judged for more than  first pass through or  ‘New Shit!’ as some might refer to But it’s begun so let have fun plan your April writing this way and stop by here for some cheer of poems written each day

  They say you killed yourself, but don’t we all The pain thickened when your first husband called you fat even after you had the surgery he insisted upon.   The pain intensified    by your second husband loved you so much and worked so hard that he didn’t have time to be with you. And when you wanted to finally give him a child. He dropped dead of a heart heart attack.  The pain deepened as an alcoholic after the stomach surgery, which you were warned about.  The pain darkened because your mother needed assistance and you couldn’t give it  Then as your third husband used PTSD as his excuse for his affair and you finally came home to help — everything was already taken care of.  Everything except you. So as you tied    to piece together a life with the car given to you    in the home given to you, and the jobs given to you, your life became disposable.  Like all of ours.  For me, I give mine up little by little one ho...

  January 24, 2026 Dear Northern Weather The temperature is when I awoke at 6:30 am was a balmy 71°. I had my usual cup of coffee in bed, scrolled the internet for a few minutes, before getting dressed to walk my dog.  But, arrived. You’ve come to Corpus Christi on a breeze so strong it nearly blew me down. Before I got home at 7:30 AM it was 52 degrees. My bare arms and legs tinging. The temperature continued to drop, 32 by 4:00 pm.  I understand everybody likes to come south for the winter, but some are not welcome here. You frighten us with your frosty fingers and icy streets.  You nip our toes in our January sandals.  You have arrived. You may stay for one day only and then you must go. Please do not break too many pipes during your visit to our beaches.  Sincerely,  A South Texas resident 

 

Skin remembers fire long after the flame is gone. What once was pliant, breathing, now cools into something altered clear, tight, fragile as art hung in a window no one dusts. The body learns a new language: pull, burn, white hush of silence. Nerves whisper alarms the mouth grows tired of translating. Pain becomes a season with no agreed-upon name. Doctors speak in diagrams, in careful gloves and brighter lights. I nod, polite, while my body leans away from itself, as if distance might soften what has already fused. There is grief here not loud, not cinematic but a thin mourning for ease, for touch without calculation, for the simple mercy of not thinking about skin. Yet fused glass still catches light. It bends sun into color, holds warmth longer than expected. Even changed, it is not ruined. Even scarred, it is still a surface the world moves through. I learn to tend myself like a careful artist: slow heat, patient cooling, respect for new limits. Not restoration but survival shaped ...

  My name is Joy—four days past Christmas born, Too late for hymns, too soon for grace of morn. I brought no warmth, no candle to the cold, No miracle of the season had been foretold. The heart I house is clouded, thick with night, A grief that dulls all color, sound, and light. Depression sits where healing should have grown, A rot unnamed, untreated, overthrown. Take care with names—those wishes etched in skin, Those crowns of promise pressed on infants’ sin. Had I been Lynn, or Sue, some neutral sound, No debt of cheer would track me all around. Who knows what truths my mouth might dare release, What darker thoughts might surface without peace? What I might be if not required to glow, To counterfeit a joy I’ll never know. I never loved my name, yet it is clean— Not half a prayer, not prophecy unseen. Not Hope, half-promised, dangling in the air, Nor Destiny, too bold to be unfair. Nor weighted like the names that openly Confess their grief—Mara, Lament, p...