nov 28/HIKERUN

hike: 40 minutes
Minnehaha Dog Park
21 degrees

Since July or August, FWA and I have been taking Delia-the-dog to the dog park every Friday morning. We’ve only missed one Friday, when we were in Chicago. We took her a few days later, instead. I wasn’t sure if we’d go this morning because it was much colder, but we did. Wow! What a great walk! The dog park is like a winter wonderland. The trail was hard dirt, but no snow, and there was barely any wind. Lots of sun, calm, quiet air, and a river, still and sparkling. I was bundled up in long underwear and my new winter hat and gloves. Had a great talk with FWA about a new project he’s working on.

There was a moment — hard dirt path, bright sun, snow, tree trunks all around of various thicknesses, birds or Bird chirping above, crisp cold air, listening to FWA talk about something he was passionate about, being outside and moving through beautiful land. I told FWA that this moment was making my top ten images of Winter.

run: 4.25 miles
locks and dam / wabun / ford bridge and back
22 degrees
10% snow and ice-covered

With the warm sun, low wind, crisp refreshing air, and the clear path, I knew I needed to go out for a run. I was planning to run to the bottom of the locks and dam no. 1 to admire the river, then walk up the hill and run back, but I got to the bottom and someone was doing a video — they had their camera on a tripod and were standing with their back to the bridge, talking to the camera in Russian — I think it was Russian. I didn’t really stop, just turned around. I decided to run up the Wabun hill and over the ford bridge on the south side, then back on the north side.

Beautiful and wonderful and moments that were effortless, others that were difficult. A small mental victory: I wanted to stop and walk again, but I saw the bright yellow crosswalk sign at 38th street far in the distance. I told myself that I could keep running until I got to it if I just put one foot in front of the other and did it. I did!

10 Things

  1. the river surface was scaled and gun metal gray except for where it was burning silver
  2. a man with a dog, walking fast — I ran to the far side of the path to avoid them. even so, the dog lunged as I ran past and almost reached me
  3. cars driving fast! over the bridge — zoom zoom
  4. stopping at the bench above the edge of the world to admire the view — the bluff wall on the other shore was speckled white
  5. the grass near the bench was covered with crunchy snow — I listened to the 2 distinct sounds, crunch creak, as I slowly walked over it
  6. running on a bare sidewalk under the ford bridge on the st. paul side, hearing a slight echo from my footsteps and the rumble or whoosh? of car passing me
  7. the cold air rushing through my teal hat and making tassels hanging from the ear flaps bob
  8. the wabun hill was covered in leaves and a little slippery
  9. on parts of the path covered with snow, faint traces of reddish-brown dirt that someone from minneapolis parks had spread earlier
  10. the quick, graceful lift — up down up down up down — of a taller, faster runner behind then ahead of me then gone

nov 27/RUN

4.5 miles
john stevens’ house and back
27 degrees
wind: 18 mph
25% ice covered path

Too cold and icy for Scott, so no Thanksgiving run together. It’s too bad we couldn’t do it, but he made the right choice. Too much wind, too much ice, too many other people running and walking. He would have been miserable. I didn’t love all the run — it was hard to run into that wind! — but I loved a lot of it. It wasn’t too cold or windy or icy for me. Winter running is back!

10 Things

  1. clip clop clip clop a runner approaching from behind, wearing ice spikes and running on bare pavement
  2. 2 runners descending on the part of the path below the road south of the double bridge, one of them in a bright orange jacket
  3. minnehaha falls was rushing and (almost) roaring — I stopped at my favorite spot to watch it fall fast, and in sheets, over the ledge
  4. sometimes a little cloudy, sometimes bright sun
  5. the train bells at 50th street station were chiming frantically
  6. a group of people paying for parking at the falls — I wish I could remember what woman said . . .
  7. kids voices over at longfellow house — were they sledding down the hill like RJP did, when she was a kid?
  8. the view above the edge of the world was open and wintery and calming — I kept my distance from the bench because there was a big branch that looked like it might fall in the strong wind
  9. a human, in dark clothing, and a dog, standing at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench
  10. the 38th street steps are blocked off for the season — today they were thick with ice

update, the next day: I forgot about the silver surface of the river! Runnng south, it burned in the distance as bright sun hit rough water. Wow!

Happy to have a relaxed, drama-free Thanksgiving. The kids are doing much better, and are getting along. RJP made the stuffing this year; FWA, mac-n-cheese. I made 2 pies: apple and maple cream. And, for the first time, I made my own pie crust! I’m proud of myself for saying I was going to do it, then actually doing it. Now we just have to see how it tastes.

Friday morning (the next day): The pies were excellent! Both of them, thanks to Smitten Kitchen: Maple Cream Pie and Even More Perfect Apple Pie. Scott said the maple cream one reminded him of pumpkin pie but better. I was delighted by how the 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger brightened the apple pie. When I took my first bite I said, it’s so bright! that ginger really brightens it up!, which FWA found hilarious.

Found this poem today. What does the Mississippi River Gorge smell like?

Yaquina River/ Lana Hechtman


The river smells like the absence of sea,
like sky that has lost its confidence,

current wafting down the centuries from 
natives who lived and died on these shores,

the breaths of children’s laughter, their songs
ripple the slow water that goes

only at the pace it is determined to go.
The river smells like bufflehead feet and goose

feathers, salmon scales and brown silt,
fallen cedar boughs, dropped fir cones,

like women brave enough to swim
and gritty motor boat bottoms.

Slick as oil, clear as rain.
The river smells like green and bronze,

the blue of berries and purple of night, 
smells of floods and grief, of relief 

in times of drought, of every dreamer
who ever skipped stones upon it.

The river smells of sun’s sloped shoulders
and moon’s languid kisses, 

and the riverbank smells like a place
to plant myself for all my remaining years

rich delta, aroma I have come to love
despite missing the sea.

nov 26/BIKERUN

bike: 16 minutes
run: 1.25 miles
basement

It rained, then snowed last night. Today: 2 inches of icy snow on the ground. Even so, I decided to go out for a run. I got bundled up and headed out. Almost immediately I realized it was too icy and my legs and feet tensed up. I was less worried that I would slip and fall, and more that I would run strangely and strain something. So I ran for a few blocks, then turned up a block and walked back. It was disappointing because it felt good to be outside, to breathe in the cold air. Returning, I heard a strange, almost squeaking, creaking noise. I thought it might be some branches rubbing near a fence, but when I looked at them I couldn’t see anything. A minute later, I encountered a woman with a dog. She called out, it’s the sandhills! they’re migrating! I said — oh, they’re up in the sky?! how cool! I’m assuming she meant sandhill cranes — I just looked it up and yes, it was Sandhill cranes! I listened to their call and it sounded like what I was hearing earlier. Nice! I’m so glad I got outside!

Before I biked, I had to put my bike back on the stand and pump up the tires. It’s the first indoor bike of the season. I watched the rest of Lucy Charles Barclay’s race recap from the 70.3 World Champs. I’m always impressed with the mental toughness of the professional runners and triathletes.

Running on the treadmill wasn’t fun. I needed better music — and a better attitude, I guess. I’d rather be running outside or at the ywca track. I listened to a podcast, which didn’t help me forget that I was running in the dark basement on a treadmill. I’m still glad I did it and that I can burn some energy in the basement when the weather is too bad to be outside or to drive to the y.

nov 25/SWIM

1.5 loops
100 laps
ywca pool

Another great swim, another 1.5 loops to add to my tally of loops swum in 2025! The pool wasn’t too crowded. At one point, I was the only one in the water. When another swimmer arrived, she called out, we’ve got the whole pool to ourselves! I noticed the shadows on the pool floor flickering. A swimmer next to me, in a black t-shirt and green with a blue pattern, or blue with a green pattern, swam some freestyle, some breaststroke for the deeper part of the lap, then aqua jogged in the more shallow part. There was another male swimmer on the other side of him, swimming freestyle. At first I thought he was fast, and that it might be fun to race (in my head), but he turned out not to be fast enough to make it fun.

I wasn’t planning to, but I decided to do 2 sets of faster 200s: 3 x 200 on 3 min, with 30 sec rest. By decide I mean, the idea of swimming a faster 200 with the clock popped into my head early in my swim, so I did it. As I swam I thought, I should turn this into a set of 3. Then, in the last of the 3 I thought, I should do an easier 800 then do the set again. There was never really a plan, and even though I did choose to do it, I didn’t really; it just happened. As I swam, I thought about how it might help me mentally — specifically for endurance, but also for overall well-being — to add some harder swimming sets this winter instead of only moderate and steady lap after lap.

Anything else about the swim: as always, I saw orange everywhere. No fuzzy friends, I recall staring down at the drain and recalling how past Saras would imagine, only in a fearful flash, that Jaws would pop out of it. I lost track of my laps during a 200 and thought about how ridiculous it is that I can get off track just counting 8 laps — my miscounting today was not my first rodeo (the first time I remember hearing this delightful phrase was when my PT was letting me know that my kneecap had probably suffered a subluxation many times).

a draft almost done

The goal: be finished with this manuscript before the end of 2025. A thought this morning as I read through it and reflect on echolocation: it’s all about locating and being located in this place, in time and space. That locating involves:

  1. being the someone that makes sounds that will bounce off something else to create an echo, and the someone that listens for echoes made by others to locate something
  2. being the something that is located/placed/found
  3. being the echo that is created by one subject’s sound being received by another subject

Always, three. Immediately, I ‘m thinking about my poem, “An Exchange on the Winchell Trail” which involves a walker, a runner, and the You (in thank you/you’re welcome) that passes between them. And then I’m thinking about a line in my poem, “Everything”:

trinity: a baby owl in the hollow of a tree, the woman who points it out, the girl who stops to look

other threes: rock, river, air / girl, ghost, gorge / triple chants — 3 beats / grandfather, mother, daughter

Another think I’m working through: the little poems in which I take the words of another — mostly poets — and fit them into the form of my breathing pattern: 1 2 3 breathe / 1 2 breathe. The original name: form fitters. Can I think of a better one? Breaths? Breathing (with?) [author’s name]?

during the swim

Every so often, as I swam, I thought about naming my form fitters, “breathing with . . .”. I wondered if I should use only the poet’s first name, as a way to indicate more familiarity. Later after the swim, I mentioned it to RJP, and she thought “Breathing with Emily” sounded a little cheesy. I guess I agree and am thinking that “Breathing with Emily Dickinson” sounds better. Does it?

nov 24/RUN

7.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
47 degrees

A big goal of 2025 achieved: I ran over to the lake and back! I think this is the first time I’ve done that this year (I’ll have to check later). Since I accomplished that goal a month early, maybe I can add another goal for December: run to the lake and back without stopping. Today I stopped to walk, but only after I had run 3.3 miles. Stopping was mostly a mental issue, although I also started speeding up too much a few times, which elevated my heart rate and made it harder to keep going.

Another beautiful day — at least to me. It was gray and brown and dull yellow. Humid. The moisture made the air cooler when I stopped to walk.

10 Things

  1. a roller skier, graceful and smooth in their motions and the rhythm between their legs and arms
  2. the path under the ford bridge was closed: tree work
  3. running on the grass through large piles of leaves
  4. the creek was very low
  5. only one spot on the creek was babbling as water rushed over the rocks
  6. 2 people walking and talking on the pedestrian bridge, reviewing/planning their Thanksgiving menu
  7. the dock is disconnected, part of it in the middle of the lake, the other in the grass between the path and the water
  8. geese in the swimming area, one of them flapping its wings furiously
  9. the thwack of a ball on the pickleball court (someone is always playing! do they play in the winter?)
  10. the very strong, unpleasant smell of weed near the 44th street parking lot

before the run

Discovered this delightful line in poets.org’s poems of the day, Egg Tooth/ Benjamin Garcia

Ears are the eyes on the sides of your head. 

Ears are the eyes on the side of your head makes me think of what I read last night about echolocation from Daniel Kish (Batman) who sees through sonar.

Activating the Visual Cortex to rewire the brain

Our collaborative projects with research centers in the U.S. and around the world have led to the discovery that the echoes from FlashSonar clicks reflect off surrounding objects, sending auditory signals that activate, and are processed by the brain’s Visual Cortex.

Visioneers

Auditory signals that activate the visual cortex? Very cool. A decade ago, before my vision declined dramatically and before I knew much about vision, I would have found this statement impossibly strange, but now I know better. The brain is amazing and adaptable and its ability to compensate for faulty eyes is not surprising at all.

oops — for the second time in less than a week, I didn’t see my water glass on a table and put something down too close to it and tipped it over. Last week, water spilled all over a New Yorkers. This morning: my laptop. Boo! No more clear water glasses. Time to rely exclusively on my bright blue hydroflask.

during the run

I thought about seeing with my ears and echolocation and listening to the sharp sounds my feet made as I ran. Closed my eyes a few times while I was running to see how it felt and what I could notice. Wow — I need to work on my balance when my eyes are closed!

writing update

I have (almost) finished my manuscript, Echo // location (formerly known as girl ghost gorge and haunts before that). Also put together a chapbook out of the rock poems in it that I’m calling, Riprap which I’ll submit this week.

nov 23/RUN

3.1 miles
bottom of locks and dam hill
49 degrees

Oh, the sun! Warm enough for me to take my sweatshirt off halfway through the run. Beautiful by the gorge with the bare branches and open view. A few of the trees looked silvery. Was it because the sun was hitting the smallest branches, or a few tiny leaves? There were a lot of lone roller skiers out on the trail. One of them looked awkward, as if they were testing out their skis for the first time in years, or ever. Some bikers, walkers, other runners. An adult and 2 kids howling under the ford bridge. Why?

My favorite part of the run: the surface of the river at the bottom of the hill. A clear reflection of the bridge arches in the water, but the water wasn’t smooth. It looked like an impressionist painting or brush strokes or something else related to a painting. I wondered why, then I realized: the clouds! A sky filled with feathery clouds reflected on the water!

Heading back up the hill I heard the 2 kids and the adult again. This time they were quietly talking up in the bridge arches. I ran for another mile, stopping when I reached a 5k. I walked the rest of the way, admiring the shadows and the tiny buds (is that what they are?)

nov 22/RUN

6 miles
hidden falls overlook
40 degrees

Sun! Warmer (but not too warm) air! An open view! And 6 miles! A good run. I’m tired now and my legs are sore, but I felt strong and light and full of energy at the end.

10 Things

  1. click scrape scrape click — a roller skier’s poles approaching from behind
  2. one roller skier bundled up, another in shorts
  3. running beside 2 roller skiers, one of them listening to the other express concern/frustration about some part of his ski not locking in right
  4. a mini peloton on the road — 10 bikes?
  5. small scales on the surface of the gray water
  6. a serpentine of big cracks and asphalt erupting on the st. paul path
  7. the small building above the hydroelectric plant on the st. paul side is spray-painted bright pink
  8. the gentle trickle of water over the rocks at hidden falls
  9. a bad heavy metal hair band anthem blasting out of the window of a white car
  10. not a wide open view — too many thin branches — but the feeling of openness and air on the st. paul side

Thought about my rock, river, and air chants as I ran. Recited (in my head) as much of the rock one as I could remember. Liked the groove I fell into as I chanted

poet’s clock
poet’s clock
poet’s clock
this big rock

Finishing up the run, I felt strong and fast and proud as I thought about all the work I’ve put in over more than a decade of coming to the gorge at least 3 or 4 times a week, sometimes more, and running and noticing and writing.

nov 20/SWIM

1.5 loops
100+ laps
ywca pool

Any day I get to swim is a great day! Another good swim that started with my ritual: push off from the wall and swim just above the blue squares on the pool floor until I reach the deep end, which is about 2/3rds of the way, then surface. Today I shared the lane with another good swimmer. She was using pull buoys and hand paddles and had a strong freestyle stroke. Nice. As I swam, I thought about my latest visual, echolocation poem and wondered if I could figure out a form to read (not listen to) that prioritized aural over visual. Saw lots of orange — orange cones off to the side, orange cones ahead of me, blocking off the hot tub, orange swim trunks on Scott. No pool friends — fuzz or clumps or bandaids. Also don’t remember seeing any dancing shadows. Only the intense smell of chlorine and the almost leaking of googles and the familiar feeling of stroking and breathing and flipping at the wall.

This poem-of-the-day on poets.org! All of it is wonderful, but since it’s long, I’ll post only the second half. I love a great winter poem!

from Posture of Devotion/ Kimbery Baleser

But, in January, we hold this promise. 
While lake ice shifts, dark a murmur, 
a creak. Now moonlight falls on snow crusts— 
always where two touch, night glistens. 
When distant wolf howls, answer comes.

Imagine the upturned muzzle, body  
a triangle of sound. Hazel eyes  
mere slits. This reverence—an ancient hunger 
for pack. See, too, each black branch; 
limbing—bare, suspended in soon.

How pristine the listening posture 
of pine marten, of fisher, of fox— 
each body cocked. To pounce, to dive 
nose-first into snow’s secrets, 
to search winter tunnels for mice.

We, too, poised like supplicants— 
rawness of the world a prayer 
we read but cannot speak. Silence 
an invocation, heavy as tobacco  
sinking into snow—into earth’s altar.

Against moon’s brilliance, slit your eyes. 
Let warmth of reflected light fill you; 
that holy—that glance of tiny gods. 
Make of your hands an empty globe, 
your body a vessel taut as river.

This image of snow at night! I love opening the back door, looking out at the snow in moonlight, and delighting in the snow sparkling like diamonds, or how I remember stars in the sky sparkling in a cartoon from when I was a kid.

Now moonlight falls on snow crusts— 
always where two touch, night glistens.

g listens — I never noticed, or thought about, how glistens is listens with a g. Glistens = sound traveling to ears (and eyes?), glazed with glitter

In her about this poem, Blaeser mentions being inspired by Kaveh Akbar’s talk on poetry and spirituality. You can watch and listen and read the whole thing online, here: The Word Dropped Like a Stone: Sacred Poetics Under the Reign of the Money God. Great title, and opening paragraph:

Today the great weapon used to stifle critical thinking is a raw overwhelm of meaningless language at every turn—on our phones, on our TVs, in our periphery on billboards and subways. So often the language is passionately absolute: immigrants are evil, climate change is a hoax, and this new Rolex will make you irresistible. Interesting poetry awakens us, asks us to slow down our metabolization of language, to become aware of its materiality, how it enters into us. Sacred poetry, from antiquity to the present, teaches us to be comfortable sitting in mystery without trying to resolve it, to be skeptical of unqualified certitudes. This lecture will orbit poems drawn from the past forty-three centuries, poems that remind us language has history, density, complexity. In surveying these examples, we’ll discuss how language art might serve as a potent antidote against an empire that would use empty, vapid language to cudgel us into inaction.  

Poetry and Spirituality / Kaveh Akbar

nov 19/RUN

5.2 miles
bottom and franklin and back
39 degrees

Another great late morning for a run. Overcast, possibly some drizzle/freezing rain/flurries. Not too cold, not too windy. Everything gray with brown and dull yellow. Listened to music because I had the King George song from Hamilton in my head — Billie Eilish, then my time and moment playlists. Even with the headphones in, I could hear a loud rumble below. Some sort of big machine doing something — was it at the white sands beach? I noticed a walker notice the sound too. He was startled, then confused, then curious as he peered down, trying to figure out what was causing the ruckus.

Witnessed a big, dark brown squirrel dart fast across my path. So fast that I didn’t have to stutter-step. Stopped at the bottom of the hill for a port-a-potty stop and to admire the river: blueish gray with little ripples. All open, no ice chunks yet. Stopped again at the sliding bench and in the tunnel of trees just above the floodplain forest. Took out my headphones and listened to the gorge. It sounded like it might be softly raining. Heard loud rustling, saw a flash of movement down below. Felt calm, relaxed.

At the sliding bench, I took a picture of the progress: open! no leaves to block out my view of the white sands beach, only thin branches that I can see through!

sliding bench / 19 nov 2025

One more thing about the run that I almost forgot. During the second half, after I climbed out of the flats, I felt fast and free. I had a huge smile on my face and was almost feeling a runner’s high. I haven’t experienced one of those in a while.

more of echo location

echolocation: using sonar flashes to “see” / interpreting echoes (as sound, as reverberations from the past) / navigation / location / locating and being located / finding being found / placing being placed / listen for echoes / gain substance and become an echo / repeat, not same but similar / the location of echoes / an indication of a big and open space / using words and sounds and syllables to place my self, to become more than ghost, girl

“Echolocation is the act of emitting a sound that bounces off an object or surface and comes back to you as an echo. This echo can help determine distance, location, motion, size, shape or surface material” (source).

Passive echolocation is sound that occur incidentally in the environment. As a car travels through a tunnel, the sound changes as the car enters the tunnel, travels through it and exits the tunnel. The sound your cane makes on the ground as you tap or roll will be different when you are next to a building compared to in an open area without obstruction.

Active echolocation, on the other hand, is sound you consciously produce like clapping your hands or clicking your tongue. Eventually, the sound you create bounces off other objects and comes back to you. Since your brain is familiar with the sounds you make, the echoes are easier for you to distinguish. By consistently emitting a sound and waiting for the sound to change, you can use active echolocation to help you navigate through an environment.

source

 How does the
sound of your
footsteps change
as you move
from tile floor
to carpet?
Listen to
the sound your
voice makes when
you are in
a small room
compared to
a large room.

Sit in a
moving car
passing by
parked cars. Roll
your window
down. Listen
to how sound
shifts between
each parked car
as you pass them.

you learn to
hear doorways
and walls and
wide open
spaces

Echolocation is an interesting metaphor within poetry and an important practical approach to navigating an unseen (or not seen) world.

Location for me is about recognition — being seen, offered a place in the family of things, and recognizing others (being held by/holding). And it is also about literally locating and navigating a world. As my vision fails, what other ways can I safely move through space?

And, here are a few lines from U A Fanthorpe that link echoes with ghosts and remind me of echolocation — especially those humpback whales:

Ghosts of past, present, future.
But the ones the living would like to meet are the echoes
Of moments of small dead joys still quick in the streets

These are the ghosts the living would prefer,
Ghosts who’d improve our ratings. Ghosts
Of the great innocent songs of freedom
That shoulder their way round the world like humpback whales

nov 18/RUNSWIM

4.3 miles
marshall loop
35 degrees

The forecast was for 2+ inches of sloppy snow early this morning. Maybe rain too. Completely dry. Everything happened just south of us. Hooray! Great conditions for a run. Not too cold or too windy or too crowded. Today’s mental victory: I ran all the way up the marshall hill, over to the river, and down the summit hill without stopping. Stopped at the overlook on the bridge for a minute to check out the sandbar and the reflections and the smooth surface of the river. Beautiful.

10 Things

  1. egg/breakfast sausage smells coming from Black Waffle Bar — no sweet waffle smell
  2. no more leaves on the trees, all on the sidewalk
  3. cars backed up on lake street
  4. the light at the top of the hill: red
  5. smell: savory, eggs and bacon
  6. a car parked in a driveway blocking the path
  7. the bent and crooked slats from blinds in a garage window
  8. two people standing and looking at a stone wall above the ravine near shadow falls
  9. a roller skier on the path, then on the road
  10. several stones stacked on the ancient boulder

echo / / location

I can’t quite remember how it happened, but I was thinking about my Girl Ghost Gorge poems and echoes and chanting — oh, yes, it had something to do with sound and a call for submissions for soundscapes in poetry. As I thought about my rock river air chants, ECHOLOCATION, suddenly popped into my head!

Echolocation is a great title for this collection. Or, echo location. Or, echo | | location. Or, as Scott suggested, echo / / location. I looked it up and someone has a poetry collection with the title echolocation. Is that a problem? To have the same name? I’m not sure. I like the sound of girl ghost gorge, and a girl (me), her ghosts, and the gorge are the theme that inspired all of the poems. But, being located in time and space — both placing myself and being placed by others — seems even more like the theme. At the very least, I’d like to title the final poem of the collection, echolocation.

Here’s something to read about humans and echolocation: How Does Human Echolocation Work? It’s with Daniel Kish, Batman from an Invisibilia episode.

The rest of today is about studying echolocation!

I mentioned echolocation in these past entries:

update, several hours later: I received an email today from a journal that published one of my poems: I’ve been nominated for a Pushcart Prize! This is my second nomination, which is really exciting! It’s for “The Cut-off Wall” (“The Cut-Off Wall” — Rogue Agent, March 2025).

Also, another cool thought about my collection and the chants in it. I’ve been playing around with making the shape of the river out of words in my river chant:

flow flow flow
slow slow slow

In early drafts, I had the words form the river, but now I’m thinking of making a page of these words and removing some to form the shape of the river/gorge. It’s echolocation with the syllables flow and slow bouncing off the object I cannot see! I’m imagining a sound accompaniment to this, inspired by Diana Khoi Nguyen’s reading of her “Triptych” for Ours Poetica:

inspiration starts 2 minutes in

Nguyen doesn’t remove words, but creates space in-between them where the shapes of her brother would be if he had not cut himself out of the photograph. I need to think about how I want to do it — like in this poem, or by removing some of the chanted words altogether. Maybe I wouldn’t call them chants but echolocations?

I think I’d like to do them for all three of the key “objects/subjects”: rock, river, and air! Very cool. I think this would be a great submission for the poetry soundscapes feature that I mentioned earlier in this post.

This section explores poetry in all its sonic dimensions. Across the premodern world, at a time when books were scarce and costly, poetry was often chanted or sung aloud, and the boundary between song and verse was fluid. Many poems resonate with the sounds of nature, while others pulse with onomatopoeia and sonic texture. Later, poets since the early 20th century have pushed the medium to its limits, exploring how the sonic interacts with grammar, rhetoric and rhythm on the page. 

For a special section of Mantis 24 (2026), Soundscapes of Poetry, we invite submissions  that engage with sound in any and all ways—whether through music, noise, onomatopoeia or rhythm, or even the sound of silence itself.

submission call for Mantis

The only bummer: your submission doesn’t include sound files; it’s only the written word. I’d like to find a journal that also wants the sounds.

swim: 1.5 loops
ywca pool

Another swim! Swam at the y before community band rehearsal. It felt good and it wasn’t crowded. I had my own lane. I felt strong and relaxed and swimming a mile and a half wasn’t hard at all. I tried to think about echolocation while I swam, but I just counted my strokes instead.