Rough Waters I don’t want the miracle. I want to hold fast to my hurt, my fear ringing in my ears. The mole you show me in your hair harks back to my oldest worry: the cancer that ate a friend in a few years time, a story that never ends. Oh, every in-explainable bump […]
Author: Nancy Schatz Alton
Finding That Satisfied Space
This morning a friend sent me news of a college classmate who has an MFA and my familiar rising jealousy of his degree was smaller than before. I know that’s because I spent an hour or so this weekend deleting computer files from 1999 to 2013. Oh, what I discovered! I forgot all the places […]
On Tears
“I can’t even control my own starving.” –Melissa Stein The approach to the full moon pressed against me & came calling & asked me what I’m scared of. I’m scared of what’s next after finally learning how to love my children well. I’m afraid I’m allergic to dairy & my cheese consumption is feathering my […]
She’s 16!
as the wind tangles the rain* It took so long to learn that the breeze on my face started as the wind in China. Much like it took 16 years and no time at all to know you woke me up to love. My all-encompassing forward motion held itself to your brown-eyes and I was […]
Thought Poem
If time energy & love are my only commodities, how am I going to spend them? (Stop, slow down. Full body to the ground: listen.) Shhhhh. I don’t hear myself yet. Or I do, but it’s still a mumbling mess. Keep listening, I think. Go back to the trees and stand within them and […]
Space Shift/Slide/Sigh
Hey everyone! I’m working on my memoir again after 3 or 4 years of not working on it at all. I can finally see it and know what I want it to look like. I’ll be posting excerpts here. It’s a memoir that mixes form (like Sherman Alexie’s new memoir) and it’s also hopefully somewhat […]
Muscle/Tree Memory
Muscle/Tree Memory I have a memory and it lives in a tree. All trees. It lives in all trees. The one I climbed in college. How I sat inside of it. I’m there saying hello to my favorite professor. The one who made time/worked part-time/shared a professorship with his wife: for his family. How […]
How long?
How long have you wanted to love yourself with a vastness that replicates oceans?
My Life
My life is My life is a sticky smorgasbord of electric blue hats and unmatched socks and wide open prairie crashes within cloudburst rain squalls that push unknown interiors on my bewildered imagination; this sounds like a dog’s daydream utterance. My life crackles with secret lockets crunching under the weight of heavy clogs dancing […]
Is It Raining Where You Are?
Lately it’s raining people here. As in I am meeting with so many people as I explore where I am at and where I’d like to be eventually. I’m here to tell you that people are gracious in their sharing. That asking how they got where they are is a nice question. And that I […]