I’ve been pulling some serious hours lately. I’m home from my month-long work trip but the work hasn’t stopped and I’m still averaging 60-hour weeks – working in the evenings and weekends, but at least now I’m able to do that from home, with my boyfriend and dog in the vicinity, which makes it a little better.

I admit I haven’t been writing as much poetry as I would like but when your brain is forced to concentrate on other things sometimes the creative side takes a backseat. This weekend I’m hoping to squirrel away some time and send off a chapbook manuscript (!!) but until then I just have to be satisfied with reading during my commute and jotting down a poem here and there – I just don’t have much free time right now.

But while I’m not writing obsessively I do have a couple of new poems that were recently published, poems I’m really proud of. The awesome journal The Legendary published two of my poems: Practice and Secondhand Love.

I have to warn you, Practice isn’t an easy poem to read but it wasn’t an easy poem to write and not every poem is nice and pretty and sweet. Hell, if you’ve read any of my writing you know I don’t really write that kind of poetry. So while Practice might make you a little uncomfortable that’s a good thing – because I really pushed myself in the writing of that poem and I’m proud of it – even if I don’t come off as a very nice person in it. Sometimes the truth is ugly but that doesn’t mean we should own it.

The other poem, Secondhand Love, is a love poem to my sister. Give that one a read to feel a little bit better and to feel a little bit of my heart.