El Búho

There are times
words come to my mind
faster in Spanish
than in English. Why

just this evening
búho flew faster
into my mind
than owl did. Something

suggested in the wing beats,
felt more like búho
than owl
to me. The remembrance

of a word I hadn’t used
too terribly often,
even in childhood,
made we wonder

what else
is flitting about my subconscious,
waiting for me to discover it.



Owl Queen by Don Martin.
You can find more of his whimsical work on Etsy and Red Bubble.
Don is a poet as well as an artist
and you can find his latest poetry collection on Amazon.




This poem was created for Poets and Storytellers United's Weekly Scribblings #17.




Rediscovered Wings

Imagine what it would take
for a dragon to rediscover her wings?

You would have to ask
what made her forget
she had wings in the first place.

How could she have left behind
the feel of her muscles working
in defiance of logic and physics?

To remember her wings
is to feel all the things
associated with flight—
the whistle of the air as she glided past
the feeling of rising
above the clouds
to let sunlight dance over scales.

If she could forget all that
how hard would it be to remember?
Would the fear of confronting the shame
of forgetting keep her from acknowledging them?

Or would the joy
of being whole again
leave shame and regret on the ground
while the dragon soared higher
on her rediscovered wings?


Photo by Ryan Moulton on Unsplash
Song Choice: I Won't by Little Mix

This poem was created for the Weekly Scribblings prompt at Poets and Storytellers Unites, Re-verse.

Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?


I told my husband to never doubt a Latina’s love when she is willing to go 8 days in her own home without rice. My husband is Jewish, and one of his big holidays is Passover. Someone once described Passover to me as “Jewish Thanksgiving” (a popular meme describes it as “They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat.”) But it’s hard for me to work up thankfulness (or enthusiasm) for 8 days of no bread, rice, or beans. Not to mention the work that goes into prepping the house.

To say this year was different is an understatement. To start, the boisterous gathering that is the Passover seder was off. Going on a treasure hunt for toilet paper and other basics also took priority over hunting through multiple stores for Passover specific foodstuff.

Have I fantasized about skipping Passover before this? OK, yeah. But not like this.

We didn’t do any major preparation. We didn’t bother to use up the explicitly non-kosher for Passover food beforehand. But we did joke that despite not having the things that made it a traditional Passover, in some ways this was the most Passover-y Passover ever. We had to make do with whatever kind of food we could find—a tiny roast, one box of matzoh, apple sauce instead of haroset for example. There was a literal plague we were hoping would pass over our house. And do not get me started on the stand-in for the Pharaoh.

A seder did end up happening over Zoom. As expected, we got extreme close-ups of the ears and noses of the folks who weren’t as used to technology as others. We went with a very simplified version of the seder to make things easier. But the interaction between family was still warm and lively. And the singing…well, the singing was as it always was, with all the gusto and heart of the Von Trapp family. None of pitch or tone mind you, but all the heart, and volume fueled by four cups of wine.

You know, this year I didn’t mind it so much. But I’ll still be sneaking rice when no one is looking. Can’t let it go to waste.


We did manage to score delicious macaroons
in a Marvelous Mrs. Maisel tin. With all the time I saved
not doing Passover prep, I made masks.

Song Choice: OK this is a lot longer than one song, but I couldn't not mention the Saturday Night Passover Seder which is raising money for the CDC. There's a lot of fun music, funny bits, and my husband was really moved by it.

April 2020

On my birthday,
I will take my tea
under the branches
of a dying cherry tree.
It has its scars, like I do,
raw and still exposed.

Ants have worried their way into the crevasses
and I know those wounds will not close.

But I see the buds
of the promised pink
that swirls around me
at the end of every April,
even though many of the branches
will never bear a bloom again.

It is enough that some of its branches will still flower.
It is enough that I still take up my pen.


Close up of a cluster of cherry blossom buds
thinking about blooming. They're stubborn.

Song Choice: Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance (I couldn't resist using an AMV version with clips from My Hero Academia)

Liner Notes for This Groove: I pulled a double off today, utilizing both the prompt at Poet's and Storytellers United (Weekly Scribblings #14 Let's Use Pathetic Fallacy, Shall We?) and Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads, Play it Again prompt, A L'Arora.