collective voices
In the mornings at Baltimore School for the Arts, all the music students (150? 200?) gather in one of the recital rooms and sing. When my daughter shadowed there, this…
you’re the tops
Topping my list of writing devices is The List. Lists are bare-bones instructions, yet they are also the meat. They are written with an affectionate detachment. They mean everything—and nothing.…
letter to my daughter
"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on. " Carl Sandburg On weekend mornings, I make coffee and sit at my desk for a leisurely perusal of news…
it’s only rock and roll, tyrone
The river’s muddy guts had backed up, explodedSpillin’ out the facts, fast and a lotSpillin’ out the facts of the city’s dirty secretsLike a city surfacing from out of the…
summer lovin’, had me a blast
Today, I nearly suffocated in my daughter’s room, buried alive under a mountain of clothing, a lot of it gorgeous, most of it too small. Half still had tags; the…
my baby, he wrote me a letter!
When I was fourteen or so, I put a free pen pal ad in the back of Rock Scene Magazine—something about Cheap Trick girl seeks fans of same. Perhaps I…
the spot on the wall
part oneI told a friend I was having a bit of an identity crisis. I’m not sure what I am—an author, a photographer, a mosaic artist, just another creative Libra…
Less Miserables
The change machine at Safeway spit out a Tennessee quarter, guitar-side up, and I considered it a sign: I should play my guitar! I consider everything a sign these days:…
live
When people asked me 13 years ago what I was having, I said, “a guitarist.” The sex of my baby wasn’t important, as long as I had created a musical…
the order of the teen-ix (xii)
This is where it starts to get hairy, literally. On Wednesday, my eleven-year-old daughter became—whisper it—twelve. On Twelfth Night, the anniversary of my own epiphany, Serena Joy Utah Miller began…