Publish or Perish

(This has been cross-published at All Things Education.)

I got an essay accepted at truthout. Yay! I wrote about the Obamas' decisions regarding the education of their children and President Obama's statements about that decision in the context of his administration's education policies. (A recent excellent and comprehensive review of Obama's promises on education in contrast to his actual policies can be found here.)

"Mr. President, We Want Your Children's Education, Too" went through many, many drafts and I was very pleased when it was accepted by the first place I sent it. (An aside about the writing/publishing process: Almost all of my publications had been submitted to targeted publications I know well.) I submitted the piece back in November 2010, but the editor I corresponded with warned me it would be probably a while. It happened to come out on January 9, 2010. At first, I was ashamed of its publication date, given it was the day after the shootings in Arizona; it didn't seem to be an appropriate time to be so critical of the Obama administration.

But then I found out that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was butting (yet, again) into D.C. Mayor Gray's DCPS Chancellor selection decision, urging him to permanently appoint Rhee right-hand woman and Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson, of whom he's "huge fan," and in the process by-pass a 2007 DC law which requires a rigorous review process including consulting a panel of teachers, parents, and students. Duncan also dangled the possibility of taking back Race to the Top money the District was awarded if his wish were not granted.

Besides registering my disgust with Duncan's confirmation that Race to the Top is nothing but a bribery scheme, with his interference in local affairs, and with his spitting in the face of transparent and democratic governance, I'll repeat one of the same questions I asked in the essay: If Duncan and his boss are such "big fans" of the reforms and "progress" in D.C.P.S., why do they not send their own children to them?

To those who tell me to mind my own business: Point taken. I'd be happy to. Just as soon as Obama/Duncan change course on the policies that are undermining the quality of my children's education and just as soon as, of course, they mind their own business.

UPDATE 1/20/11: A reader was puzzled about this sentence from the truthout piece:

My DCPS past, warts and all, has made me a different person than I would have been had I gone to a place like Sidwell, different in a way that seems lesser to my current eye. 

Reading it out of the context of the rest of the piece, I can see that the sentence is confusing and needs a re-write. Given the stance that I took, most readers probably knew what I meant, but I hardly want to assume that readers "probably know what I mean." Rather, I want them to know what I mean because my writing is clear. I can't go back and fix it in truthout (and there was never an interaction with an editor about clarity or wording where this might have come up) but just to be clear, what I meant was that:

My DCPS past, warts and all, has made me a different person than I would have been had I gone to a place like Sidwell. Had I gone to a place like Sidwell I think I would have been different in a way that seems lesser to my current eye.

Readers, if you ever see something that gives you pause or puzzles you or that you think may be factually incorrect, even if it's a simple typo, by all means, let me know. I value your feedback and pushback.

On False Equivalencies, Dichotomies, and Golden Ages in the Media

Still taking a much needed break from the behemoth in the room that is corporate influence. . .

When I first heard about plans for The Rally for Sanity and/or Fear, it kind of annoyed me. What's it about? What's Jon Stewart trying to do? Do we really need another rally? Mobilizing thousands of people--for what? The explanation that it was going to be a "festival" didn't squelch my grumpiness, either. Then why call it a rally?

Upon my neighbor's recommendation,  I watched Jon Stewart's speech and I thought: Okay, he did a good job with that; I enjoyed hearing what he had to say. I liked what I saw and what I heard from folks who had gone. But still something nagged at me about it. Although his speech was stirring, he looked rather undignified. I know, I know, when does Jon Stewart actually look dignified? But there is an authoritative dignity in how he metes out criticism, regardless of party affiliation or views, of those he satires, and I admire him for that. His rally undermined my high estimation of him. To me, he's not the guy who is supposed to organize or host the rallies; rather, he's the guy who is supposed to critique them.

When the more lefty pundits responded to his rally and the statements he made with the criticism that he was making false equivalencies between the right-wing television media, such as Fox News, and the left-wing television media, such as MSNBC, although it was not my particular quibble, I thought they had a legitimate point. As Bill Maher said, "two opposing sides don't necessarily have two compelling arguments."

After defending himself against the criticism, Stewart agreed to an interview with Rachel Maddow, which was quite lengthy, so I won't reflect on all of it, but one thing he did say was that he organized the rally in response to what he sees as the false dichotomy the media portrays between, for example, red states and blue states, and that what he hoped to bring attention to were the real problems, for example, of corruption and of deception. This is exactly what I like about his show and what I think he compromised--he should have known better than to expect to maintain that message during and after such a rally. Of course, then Stewart went on to make more false equivalents, this time between Republicans' seeing President Clinton through rose colored glasses and the Democrats' viewing Reagan much the same way. "Come on, you hated these guys," Stewart chided. No you come on, Jon, were the Iran-Contra hearings really the same as those of impeachment?

As  I was pondering the death of journalism and my own role as a blogger and writer after reading this article in The New York Times Magazine and this one in the Columbia Journalism Review, this op-ed by Ted Koppel came out in The Washington Post, entitled, "Olbermann, O'Reilly, and the death of real news." I think I was kind of bemoaning the same thing in this post about the death of true print journalism. But I realized after watching Olbermann's response that just as there was no golden era of television journalism, there probably was no golden era of print journalism, either.

Come to think of it, as I explained in my comment (scroll all the way down) on Ted Genoways's "Death of Fiction" piece in Mother Jones, I'm usually suspicious of false golden era claims or what I sometimes call "the kids today. . ." complaint. Conditions change, perspectives change, technology innovates, and transitions occur, but human nature and the need to write and report stay the same. In his response to Koppel's piece, wise lowkell over at Blue Virginia was able to express way better than I could, especially at 9:21 on a Friday night, how this is all coming together here and now.

On that note, good night and good luck.

UPDATE I: I forgot to mention this excellent article in the Atlantic by Michael Hirschorn about what happens to facts as they go through internet reports and social media.

UPDATE II: I'm waaay too sleepy to write coherently about this seven-year-old article in the Columbia Journalism Review that I just read about journalism and objectivity, but I will say for now that man, is it good and man, is it still relevant. If only anyone had or would follow author Brent Cunningham's proposals. Unfortunately, we're more entrenched than ever in a journalistic culture that includes major holes in coverage, lazy reporting, balancing coverage (as opposed to truthful coverage), and dearth of varied perspectives, aka, economic diversity, in newsrooms. But, hey, that's what happens when investigative journalism is not funded or valued as an integral part of a healthy democracy. 

From Writer to Blogger to Writer

I have been quite busy with my education blog, but I wanted to take a break to write here about writing, a.k.a., the reason I started this blog in the first place.


Recently,  I was a guest blogger on Valerie Strauss's blog on The Washington Post website, "The Answer Sheet." I sent her this, the original post, a critique of Michelle Rhee's tenure as chancellor of D.C. Public Schools. 


Valerie wrote back and said it was "terrific" and that she wanted to run it. Yay! After a day or so she wrote back to let me know that she still wanted to run it but that her editor said it was too long and needed to be cut and reorganized. I agreed, given the context and audience. Since I was tired of looking at the thing and knew she could do a much better job than I could of molding it to fit her particular blog, I let her do the edits.


The final version of the revised piece came out more strident and less contemplative than the original post, as it should have been, but the experience caused me to do some thinking about writing, blogging, voice, and what my goals are.


When I started this blog, my purpose was to self-publish and get feedback on my writing, to hone my craft, same with the food blog, just that the topic merited its own blog. I got good feedback on the writing, but many told me, including my own mother, that the posts were too long. One friend asked me if I could provide cliffs notes. Valerie's editor was essentially saying the same thing. As I've sent my education blog around to education people, I've gotten some additionally similar feedback, for example, one guy told me the posts should be "shorter and punchier."


This feedback is right on, for blogging, but when I started this blog I had no intention of becoming a blogger, per se. I just wanted to work on being a writer. On her own blog, education journalist Dana Goldstein discusses what it means to be a blogger and a writer in the digital age. I thought it was she who said (I can't locate the sentence now), "why can't blogging just be called writing?" Indeed. But I have come to realize that I should be writing in one way for my blog and in other ways for other publications.


This article in The New York Times Magazine explores the world of online journalism and blogging (and I just discovered another good one on the same topic in the Columbia Journalism Review). One line that really resonated with me was, "Opinions posted on blogs are cheap. Great journalism is expensive.” That's basically what I was trying to say in this post on journalism. For me, though, I am blogging to become a writer. It's so challenging to get anything published right now for reasons I won't go into here--blogging keeps me writing, publishing, and keeps the discouragement at bay that the constant stream of rejections bring. 


But blogging is cheap, or rather, uncompensated, and I can't go on doing it indefinitely. People say, "do it for yourself," or as Ted Genoways, the infamous editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review, spat at writers last winter, "Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood." I agree with that in principal, but one has to eat. Does that mean only independently wealthy or comfortable people can afford to write? Is that fair? What will that do to the richness of our country's body of journalism and literature?


I suppose I could move to Norway where, I read in McSweeney's Issue 35, writers are heavily subsidized by the government. I found, though, that the stories in that Issue 35 collection (and perhaps that collection wasn't representative) were rather, well, boring. Is that what comfort and security do a country's body of literature? Does the system in the U.S. weed out the crap and publish only work with the most vital sense of urgency?


I don't know. In the meantime, I'll keep writing, and blogging, until I either can't or won't any longer. 

Check out my new education blog!

Hello loyal readers!

This is a quick note to let you know, in case you didn't already, that I have started a separate blog dedicated to education. It's called All Things Education, inspired by the name of the N.P.R. program All Things Considered, which reminds me of the show's theme song, which reminds me of my mother preparing dinner on weekday evenings, which I am doing as I type.

In any case, I have copied and pasted and accurately dated all of my education-related posts from this blog to that blog and have so far posted four new pieces, including An Introduction: "My New Education Blog!," "What I Read About About Waiting for Superman," "On the False Manifesto," and "Follow-Up to 'On the False Manifesto': What about RE:FORM SCHOOL?"

Please read and if you think it's worthwhile, subscribe and suggest to your education-interested friends, family, and co-workers.

Thanks for your support.

Submissions, rejections, and meta-lit mag pieces

One of the secrets to becoming a good writer is to be a good reader: to read widely, deeply, and constantly. Although it can work both ways, in general the nonfiction that I read informs the content of what I write, while the fiction and poetry informs my craft. Sometimes, however, simple functional texts can influence my writing.

This past fall, I went on a major submitting spree, which meant I was reading lots of writers' guidelines, so many, in fact, that the format inspired imitation and I coughed up my own (mock) writers' guidelines and got them published in Defenestration.

Submitting work feels goooood. I get a rush every time I hit "send" to e-mail work, click on "submit" to an online submission manager, or mail a stack of yellow 9 x 12 envelopes from the post office. Unfortunately, most of what goes out comes back in: a few months after my submitting spree, the rejections started pouring in. I read and save every single one.

Some rejections are short, but personal and thoughtful. Some are longer form letters, but are thoughtful and encouraging, nevertheless. The next tier down are form letters also, but are shorter--direct but diplomatic. My least favorite come printed on post-it size pieces of paper that are wrapped in 8 x 11 sized offers to purchase subscriptions to the rejecting publication at a "special writers' " rate. (Ooooooo! I get the special writers' rate! I'm in!) The kicker is that they are mailed in the same SASE I provide for a response, so not only am I paying for the transport of my own pithy rejection, I am paying to receive a solicitation, as well. This is kind of like telemarketers charging callees for the phone calls. I understand that these publications are desperate to stay afloat and that the world of literature and ideas needs them, and I want to support them (most of the time I purchase or read at least one issue before I submit), but that's just plain tacky. Anyhoo, after reading so many rejections, I felt moved to compose a (mock) rejection letter of my own, published recently in swink magazine.

Now, to figure out how to get my more serious stuff published. These "Ten Rules for Writing Fiction" found in the guardian.com have gotten me started as did this provocative piece in Mother Jones by VQR editor Ted Genoways. (My comments are found on the third page--I try not to limit my procrastination-fueled nitpicking to facebook!)

Thanks for reading!


(photo by Mike Atherton, flickr username: Sizemore)

I had a miscarriage and gave birth to a poem

In mid-December of 2005, I had a miscarriage. I was about eleven weeks along when it happened, so I hadn't told the world yet that I was pregnant, but I had gotten the old maternity clothes down. Now this isn't going to be a poor-me-I-had-a-miscarriage story; I am not in the business of trying to rattle the fertility gods who have been more than generous to Cedar and me. I've only had the one miscarriage and at that point I already had twin boys, Caleb and Liam, who were conceived spontaneously just a few months after I went off of birth control.

I've heard stories of pregnant women intuiting that something is wrong with their pregnancies. This may well be in hindsight, but during this pregnancy I did not feel totally right. I had almost no nausea and just didn't feel, well, pregnant. But because I had an inherently high-risk twin pregnancy and because I had gotten severely ill when I gave birth to them (which is another story), I reasoned, faultily it turns out, that I had nothing to worry during any subsequent pregnancy; I figured I had earned a get-out-of-miscarriage-and twins-and-other-complications-free card. So when I started spotting, I was optimistic that it was just normal bleeding. Then the bleeding continued and intensified, and I went in to see my ob/gyn and she confirmed that I was, indeed, having a miscarriage. Sitting in her office that day, I was definitely bummed, but I kind of thought of the whole thing as akin to a dental procedure--you make an appointment for it and it happens and it's uncomfortable and unpleasant, but then it's over after a few hours and you go about your day. "Will I still be able to work while it's happening?" I asked, thinking that making sub plans would be a real drag. She paused and looked somewhat disturbed and responded tentatively, "Well, some people do." Translation: You have no idea what you're in for, do you? Two days later, I was so weepy and distraught, I could barely drive myself to her office for the examination I needed to have.

At this point, once the miscarriage was really underway, I realized no way could I have worked. Luckily, I shared my classroom with a sympathetic, supportive, and talented teacher and she agreed to cover my classes. But then a major snow storm came that night or the next day, so the schools were closed for a long weekend and it turned out I didn't have to make those pesky sub plans, or attempt to teach E.S.L. and World History to ninth graders while my body purged itself of a botched pregnancy.

I also remember telling my and Cedar's family and our friends about it in the beginning and feeling pretty self-satisfied with myself for being so rational about and comfortable with it all. "It's how nature works," I explained. "It meant there was something seriously wrong with the embryo and so it wasn't meant to be," I reasoned. "I have two already and I'm happy with them. It's just a bunch of dead cells anyway," I reassured them and myself. Of course, I still knew all of that when the great purge really began, and I still know it and then some (with the gift of perspective), but once it was really happening, I felt much differently. Soon, I was cramping, contracting, bleeding, sobbing, and grieving.

Even so, in the world of miscarrying women, I was one of the lucky ones. Besides having the weather elves on my side, I had excellent medical care and my caring husband, my two boys (just seeing and being with them during that time cheered me up), and a very supportive group of friends by my side. Plus, it all happened naturally: I was able to go through most of the process in the privacy and comfort of my own home, I didn't have to take a pill to jump-start the process, and I didn't have to have a D&C (Dilation and Curettage) at the hospital (where they essentially extract the dead embryo from you). I didn't even get to the point where I felt I needed to take the percocet prescribed for me. Part of me wanted to, to treat myself to a percocet high(Mmmmm, percocet), but the other part wanted to be all there, all present, to be a responsible mother to this little being, which maybe never was a being, but in the case that it was, to accompany him or her in sobriety to wherever it was they were off to next.

So the real point of this post is to share a link to a poem that was accepted and published recently in Literary Mama that I wrote about the physical and emotional experience of the miscarriage itself. The piece started as a series of free writing and was gradually whittled down to the essential narrative and images. The version published in Literary Mama, though, was not the original one. The editors suggested I cut out the first five lines, feeling that "the opening material acts as a preface and weakens the poem's urgency." So even though it was painful to sever a limb from my poem, I decided they knew what they were doing and to trust their judgment.

Looking at it on Literary Mama's page now, I am fine with that change, but I feel like I could have tinkered more with the formatting; for example, adding mores pauses and white space within the poem. That being said, when I was in the process of writing the final versions, I chose a block form without much white space to recreate the sensation of that experience being a blur, with one moment running into another. Also, I wanted to create the sensation of being surrounded by water, by liquid, because that's what it felt like, emotionally and physically: the tears and emotions and the waves that they came in but also the event of the miscarriage itself started small but then grew and became like a storm, the contractions rhythmic like the tides of the ocean. Finally, I was sending the embryo out into the water, into the sewage system, actually, the idea and images of which serves as the heart or climax of the poem. It was very hard for me to get past the fact of just flushing it all down the toilet; it seemed so heartless, so inhumane, so flippant. At the same time, there was no other option and no way to preserve anything for a ceremonial burial or anything like that--there was just so much well, stuff, coming out of me and I had no idea which part of the "product" was the actual embryo (or even what to call it).

Before I share the poem, I want to stress that all of this has a happy ending. The day I found out I was pregnant again (with Amelie), was the due date of the miscarried baby. Even if I had not had another baby after that for whatever reason, I'd like to think that I would not have considered the miscarriage to be a tragedy or anything of the sort. Liam and Caleb would always have been enough, more than enough (those of you who have spent more than five minutes with us know what I mean).

I know this probably contradicts some of what I said in the recent posts that emphasize science and reason, but it helps me to make sense of what happened: I feel like that miscarriage happened for a reason, to bring Amelie to us. We all love her so much and she brings so much magic into all four of our lives that I actually feel grateful that I had that miscarriage. I also know that so many women have them (something like 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage), that I feel like it was a rite of passage for me. Of course I have the luxury of feeling this way--perhaps I wouldn't were I on miscarriage number five; it's simple and easy to have just one. But I really learned from the experience and gained wisdom from it and was humbled in a positive way.

So, here's the published version:

http://www.literarymama.com/poetry/archives/2010/01/it-has-a-mind-of-its-own.html


Thanks for reading. And thank you, universe, for my wonderful life.


(photo by Robin Macklin)

Spellbound

If there's one thing I have learned from all of the writing I've been doing recently it's that I can't spell. It can sometimes take me up to five tries before I give in and consult with Merriam-Webster on-line (I don't normally advocate for on-line reading--I struggle with it myself, but the subscription is well-worth it: no paging through a book, no having to replace the dictionary each year, plus several references in one place). Sometimes I am so off that even Merriam-Webster doesn't recognize the word.

When I was in Mrs. Abbott's second grade class at Hyde Elementary School in D.C., though, I thought I was hot shit because words like "geography" appeared on my weekly word lists, which we had to write sentences with, spell ten times over, and then make a story out of. I credit Mrs. Abbott with getting me started with creative writing. She also taught me how to spell dessert (rather than desert): there are two s's in dessert because everyone always wants a second helping.

During my writing in November, I kept track of the words I had a particularly troublesome time spelling. This list of twenty is dedicated to Mrs. Abbott:

1. Everyone misspells entrepreneur. I even misspelled it again writing this.

2. Behemoth sounds exactly like what it means, but spelling it isn't so natural.

3. The spelling of combative should be obvious, but for the longest time I thought it was "combatative." I think Cedar actually corrected me several times on this, but I wouldn't listen.

4. I'm not sure why I have trouble with charlatan, It's really a beautifully and perfectly spelled word, which is maybe why my tendency (there's another one that always gets me!) is to misspell it. Also the word reminds me of Charlemagne, who was no petty charlatan.

5. I first wrote ilk as elk. I mean, don't elk follow the herd mentality, too?

6. Foolproof went through various incarnations, like scientific studies aren't "full-proof."

7. I wasn't aware of the u in fluoride, probably because I never learned how to spell fluorine, probably because I didn't study much in my chemistry classes.

8. For the longest time I thought that acetaminophen was acetametaphin. It's so much catchier that way, isn't? There are also many opportunities to go wrong with the vowels in the -minophen chunk of the word.

9. The two p's, one r, and two s's in suppressed are too much to keep track of.

10. I should have been able to spell nutritious on my first try, but I tripped over the "iti" bit.

11. Is it dialogue or dialouge? I can never remember and probably won't remember a week from now.

12. Vacuum is a great word and one of my favorite activities, but I dread spelling it. Are there two c's? two u's? Two m's? I can never remember. Someone give me a pneumonic (spelled that one on the first try) device for this one. Please!

13. I just have to remember that accommodating can accommodate two c's and two m's. But that won't help me to remember to not try to put a's in the o's spots.

14. Why is it marshmallows? Who in God's name doesn't call them marshmellows? Nobody says marshmallow. I'd wager that majority of you just found out it was -mallow and not-mellow.

15. Ensconced fucked me up for a good day or two before I figured out how to spell it. Even once I had the correct spelling in front of me, I couldn't see where I had gone wrong. The first n is nearly silent, and then all of the soft c, soft s, and hard c sounds get all mixed up together.

16. It is hard enough to know when to use phenomenon or phenomena. I had to say to myself idiotically slowly: fe-no-me-non to spell it correctly.

17. Who knew about that sneaky little first i in plagiarizing? Not I.

18. Six years of French in junior high and high school, plus three in college including a year abroad in France and a French studies major and I still couldn't spell vinaigrette. The second i was a revelation to me.

19. I've bought balsalmic vinegar so many times, you'd think I could spell it by now. Why all of the toothless l's?

20. Exceedingly is part of the accede, antecede, cede, concede, intercede, precede, recede, secede, exceed, proceed, succeed, supersede group. Patricia O'Connor in Woe is I calls them words with "seedy endings." I agree.


I hope I don't learn to spell well anytime soon--I'll loose another one of my procrastination tecniques.


(photo by flickr user elginwx)

Another Haiku on Politiku, a Clarification, and a Brief Follow-up

A few follow-ups from my last post:

1) Another haiku of mine is up on Susanna Speier's Politiku. Exciting! This one is about, you guessed it, the H1N1 virus and vaccine. I even got to work a bit as a co-editor with Susanna on her post and haiku choices.

2) It may seem from the following paragraph in my last post that I am equating other types of medicine such as chiropractic adjustments, massage therapy, and acupuncture with pseudo-science:

"Natural medicine is all the rage right now. Part of this is simply brilliant marketing--'all natural' products and curing our ailments 'naturally' sounds instinctively more purifying, wholesome, healthy, and safer than the 'un-natural' alternatives. Herbals and vitamins can be key to good health and there are conditions, like chronic back pain, that conventional western medicine doesn't handle well and that chiropractors, acupuncturists and massage therapists handle in much less invasive and less medicated ways. But many pharmaceuticals are made from herbs and ingredients found in nature. And natural doesn't mean safe: poison ivy is natural and so are rattle snakes and so is hemlock."

With poor clarity of ideas and poor organization in that paragraph, I can see how that would come across. What I meant to say is that while I am suspicious of products that toot their "all-natural-ness" specifically for the purpose of marketablity (and not because there's some proven health benefit to their having that quality) and while I don't agree that "all-natural" medications are automatically superior to "non-natural" ones as many consumers seem to believe these days, I think that there are some unconventional (and often non-western) medical treatments, practices, and ways of healing that are valid and even superior in some cases to those conventional western medicine has to offer. Moreover, western medicine has a lot to learn from the emphasis of those practitioners on maintaining health and preventing illness first and foremost over simply reacting to illnesses after they happen. That being said, I believe that it is unprofessional, unethical, and irresponsible when and if such practitioners advise their patients to entirely renounce conventional western medical treatments, especially ones that have proven successful.

There are places where science and medicine diverge. My concern is with medical and health practitioners who claim their treatments and protocols are valid according to the scientific approach, when they clearly aren't. Science, unlike art, is not a malleable concept. Unlike beauty, science is not in the eye of the beholder. To me, science doesn't seem to be a relative term. More on this later, maybe . . .

3) This New York Times article is about a case where scientists are advocating for fewer tests and procedures, less spending, and less medical intervention, based not an any political or economic agenda, but on findings from research. These findings show that the benefits of the current testing protocols may not be worth their cost and the harm they cause. This article also illustrates the divergence between medical scientists and practicing medical doctors. I can see how women's groups would see this recommendation as an attack on women's health care, the advancement of which has been hindered by discrimination against women, and I acknowledge the influence of politics and economics on medical science, but I don't think that's what is behind these particular findings.

I got a politiku published!

One of my oldest friends, Susanna Speier, has a project she blogs about for the Huffington Post called Politiku. She comes up with a topic--usually related to recent news--and then puts out a call for submissions of haikus. The most recent topic was Obama's Nobel Peace Prize and she included one of my submissions! Susanna was by far my most intellectually creative and interesting childhood playmates and I'm thrilled to be back in touch with her (thank you, facebook) and to be a part of one of her publications.

To read my politiku, click the link here.

I have an essay up at Mamaphonic!

This is one of the first essays I wrote when I started writing seriously again. It was for a non-fiction writing workshop. It has been through many revisions (more than I'm sure were worth it) and has been rejected by many publications. But I finally found a home for it. Thank you Mamphonic!

Check it out:
How I Found My Writing Mojo

A prose poem of mine got published!

Here is a link to a satirical piece I got published in Defenestration, an on-line literary magazine dedicated to humor. Be forewarned that it's quite different from the work I normally post here:

http://www.defenestrationmag.net/