How the Clues Add Up

 Three clues add up to one answer. Here is the title page of my upcoming book:

First edits of the layout are underway.
Kelsay Books estimates two months until publication. 

Inheritance of Flowers will soon become a book to hold in your hands, turn the pages, read any and all of its sixty-one poems! 

 

Spring for poetry. 

Cheers,

Charise

"Creed"

 

Creed

 

I believe in frogs

   their ins and outs     

leaps to bounds     

   how they splay—

 

set a spray

   of watery beads

break surface

   plop soundly—

 

only idea stays

   visible invisible

spoken through

   the droplets—

  

this comfort with

   one’s element

slippery as it is, easy

   to slip away entirely—

 

 

~LCMH

On Location

Of course, during a Paris visit, I returned to the sites featured in poems of Muse in a Suitcase. These poems were written in absentia, based on memories and events. They are now enlivened by a fresh glance on location. For instance: 

 

Two blocks along 

the Rue de Seine... 

  ~ from "Ode to the Big Tomato"

 

A beacon in a city of light when

I was twenty and reticent.

   ~ from "Shakespeare and Company" 

Consider visiting, or revisiting, Muse in a Suitcase today. If you lack a copy, go to Barnes and Noble, Amazon, or Bookshop.org to order yours. Paris (as well as Morocco, India, Thailand, Panama, Israel, Italy) awaits!

Cheers,
Charise  

Today in a Journal

Previously, in a studio. We’re talking about the poem “To Do or Not to Do” which was recited for a yoga class. My daughter requested its creation—on the occasion of her first yoga teaching experience. Her one criteria was to suggest living in the moment. Ahh… something we so desperately need. 

Now published by Tiny Seed Literary Journal: https://tinyseedjournal.com/2025/01/21/to-do-or-not-to-do/

We are Ten

Hello in 2025! Mix and Moss Poetry is ten years in the making. We began in 2014, as a platform for original poetry. Since then, other platforms have materialized... thirteen journals and four books. Who knew? This writing life is a steady, blooming endeavor, with two more books forthcoming this year. Whew!  

To mark this milestone magnifique, I'm running away for a bit. Paris beckons. 

Warm wishes,
Charise

To the Lighthouse and Beyond

Recently published in The American Scholar, my addition to the ending of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. This prose poem is not only by permission, but by prompt. "Next Line, Please" column is back after a five year hiatus! Thank you to David Lehman for resuming this endeavor. 

Visit https://theamericanscholar.org/what-a-strange-path/  to see the full column. Enjoy reading other entries and participate in the next writing prompt if you're so inclined! 

Cheers,

Charise

Luminary

A villanelle for poet, professor, electric presenter Nikki Giovanni, who passed away Monday, December 9. I had the good fortune to hear her read at my local DC bookshop, Politics and Prose. The quote "I am a beautiful woman" appears in her poem "Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)."   

 

Nikki Giovanni at Politics and Prose 

We must have been numb

while she was hip she was 

here: I am a beautiful woman.

 

She paused all of a sudden,

choppers overriding her buzz.

We… must have been numb.

 

DCers, what had we become,

she teased. We had not budged.

Where am I... a beautiful woman?

 

Airlift, the fall of Saigon? 

Unfazed, blasé our bias

has been. Must we numb... ?

 

Perched on her chair lissome

as a gazelle, quick her prowess.

Here I am, a beautiful woman.

 

How the reading of the room

and her poetry coalesced.

She muscled, bent, the numb... 

hear I am a beautiful woman.

~LCMH