The new issue of Mid-American Review is up and it celebrates a number of firsts for me: I’ve never been in a journal consecutively, never more than twice and I’ve never been so happy with a poem. Besides now I get to say James Wright with my name and that’s always a good thing.

I am writing. I shouldn’t jinx it by saying it out loud but hell I’m surrounded by boxes, grief, two children who are not reacting well to change and I am writing. It is similar to how did the chicken cross the road; how did Teresa Ballard survive this time in her life? She made a book-- it is the only way I know to get to the other side.

Both girls are doing Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream this summer, it was the price of a writing trip but I figure when they are old, after mommy has written a number of bad books they can support me. Besides I get to see them as fairies.

The prose book is 5/8 of the way done. Fractions are a big thing in my house at the moment. Olivia considers them fun—I think she might have been switched at birth.

If the rib was a boat, a hollow curve unfilled, if emptiness
was a seat, a wooden plank; would you let me on board with my paddle, my compass without needles, say to me row, as if you understood direction, your voice lifting above lilies, tendrils of plankton till you were done, satisfied where we had drifted.

Darling in this place so far from land where we cannot see shadow, do you understand how voices carry? I have heard you in the ship of others, the small songs and dirges. I have watched you offer no direction. I have lied and you have listened. But here is the seat of emptiness; it has no nails or hinges, if in the hollow curve we curl together, nothing is lost—we become air to each other.