On Sunday afternoon, I joined a hundred or so women in Alberta Abbey in Northeast Portland. What began as an invitation to a small gathering in a friend's living-room had expanded, within a week, into this bigger, sprawling, holy-seeming space with a stage and a ballroom, a balcony and curtained side-rooms, where we broke out… Continue reading Because Going Home Is Not An Option
Author: Deborah Rose Reeves
Enough For Keeping
I have a new story in The Stinging Fly. It's about apples and woodturners, sort of. I haven't done too much woodworking lately, not since last Spring when I finished my blanket chest. Our place is so small, there's only so much room for another box, bowl, or coffee table. But some things from the past… Continue reading Enough For Keeping
Fund My Dream!
Please help fund my dream. (My dream was that I was a sardine in a bait ball and you were a hammerhead, a great one.) (My dream was that I was the last hermit crab and you were an old marmalade jar.) (My dream was I was wandering in a narrow gorge with so very high… Continue reading Fund My Dream!
Quite unlike what it became
Finland 2007 moleskin journal, and the first scrawlings of a story that would eventually be my first published story in 2014. Found in a box, hardly decipherable in parts, and quite unlike what it became, as far as I can read. Pages smell strongly like linseed oil. That's all. (But, also, I feel old tonight… Continue reading Quite unlike what it became
Ragtag & Sundry
A periodic news and reading roundup (or: the most interesting, weird and worthwhile ways I procrastinated on the www of late). This Conversation between Dan Gunn and Lydia Davis at the wonderful Music & Literature. This 1929 Soviet-era silent movie by Dziga Vertov, who once said: “I am eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, am… Continue reading Ragtag & Sundry
Day One
Prune. Make room for summer's blooms. Say GoodbyeIReallyLovedYou. Burn, then walk away. A poem, by Naomi Shihab Nye: Burning the Old Year Letters swallow themselves in seconds. Notes friends tied to the doorknob, transparent scarlet paper, sizzle like moth wings, marry the air. So much of any year is flammable, lists of vegetables, partial… Continue reading Day One
You—like us—great for an instant
Forgive me, I am someone who seeks out synchronicity---that is, confirmation that I am where I am meant to be, in this exact moment in life and time. It's silly (is it?), but I need it (why?). Last night, driving away from Portland, Ian turned the radio to a local station playing jazz. "Do you… Continue reading You—like us—great for an instant
Answers
Mark Strand has died. His was among the first American poetry I read as a teenage girl (apart from the obligatory Robert Frost of my childhood schooling). I was looking for Answers and Alternatives and poetry often pointed the way into and out of myself. In true teenage fashion, I especially sought those words I… Continue reading Answers
The Uninvited
Last night I dreamed I was skating on glass. Nobody wants for mold to appear unbidden, and flourish, in the airspace between their double-paned windows; but, if it must, they can only hope for the crystal kind whose fine filaments creep into your nighttime with whisperings of snow. From the Old Norse vindr auga came the word window: ‘wind… Continue reading The Uninvited
Two Lovely Things, Briefly Noted
1. My first short story, 'Lay Down The Dark Layers', has been published by the Irish literary magazine, The Stinging Fly (hurrah!) 2. This anthology---Winged: New Writing on Bees---is essential and beautiful and its existence in the world makes me happy (about some humans and all bees).