And the Universe Smiled

Sometimes good things happen just at the right moment. Today, I had a series of frustrating conversations with four different people. These are the kinds of conversations that make me wonder if I'm speaking English because the other person involved seems determined to misunderstand what I'm saying. These are the kinds of conversations that make me want to poke a pencil in my eye to stop the pain radiating from my brain.

And then, I received an email from Bethany Reisner, senior poetry editor at The Pinch. She accepted two poems for future publication. I'm always happy to receive this kind of email, but I'm doubly happy about this one because The Pinch is housed at the University of Memphis, which makes me feel like their neighbor. Thanks so much to Bethany and all of the other folks just down I-40.

Also of good fortune in the mail: contributor copies of Copper Nickel and Cave Wall. In Copper Nickel 12, you can read four of my poems: "The Interior Weather of Tree-Clinging Birds," "The Mortician's Wife," "The Mortician's Daughter," and "And Sweet Were the Uses." In Cave Wall 6, you can read the poem "Glacial Elegy I." These two journals couldn't look more different (CN is large and multi-genre: CW is petite and poetry-only); however, both are packed with AWESOME lineups. I can't wait to delve in there. Also very cool is that in Cave Wall, my poem is next to an amazing print of a frog by Deborah Mersky. Thanks to Jake Adam York and Anisetta Valdez at CN and to Rhett Iseman Trull and Jeff Trull at CW! Wonderful editors, all. Thanks also to the staffs at those journals, often unsung as well.

I'm basking in the good-fortune the universe bestowed upon me today.