Getting Ready for Kachemak Bay

I've been working like mad to get ready for the Kachemak Bay Writer's Conference. I'm leading 2 workshops, sitting on 2 panels, meeting with a writer to review her manuscript, and giving a reading. I really hope it will be a productive and energizing week for all of us going.

I've also been working like crazy on my manuscript, since I'm mostly going to read from that for my reading. Right now it's really helpful for me to read it in public and get some audience feedback. I spent all weekend with it spread around the living room floor trying to arrange it. I'm feeling pretty good about it now, but it feels like it still has a ways to go.

Here's a new poem I'm thinking of including in it:



Sleeping in Charon’s Wake


Some things
always wake us—a tug, coming in, at 3:00 am
prop boiling the water like a boat crossing
the Styx, our own boats slamming the dock in the wake.
I open my eyes and see powerful sodium lights
shining into the hatch over my head,
hear the shouts as the tug fights the current,
and a man leaps to the dock, to get a wrap around a cleat.

And other things
don’t wake us. Jonie, eating at the pub on steak&prawn
night, drinking her usual bottle of wine, slips
coming down the dock, slips
into the cool, green river next to her own boat
which must have rocked a little bit, in the wake
of her body. Which must have rocked, a little bit,
in the wake, of her body.