my lyric essay "visitations" is out in ghost proposal

Somehow I managed to write three flash in the three-day Kathy Fish Fast Flash Reunion Extravaganza this weekend, while doing a bunch of other things, including a potluck in Livermore (okay, we didn't cook the vegetarian lasagna ourselves) and a party in Marin (at Cristina Garcia's for her upcoming play). I was hoping to start a lyric essay (two of the prompts would have worked) but characters' voices kept intruding. The third prompt, where we were supposed to thread facts through a narrative,  turned out to be the basis for all the lobotomy research I've been doing for the Lunatics project. It's grim, maybe the darkest of all the ones I've written, but I'm so glad to have a structure for what I'm going to do with it.

And one of my lyric essays came out today, in a journal I love, GHOST PROPOSAL. Here’s their description of the magazine:

“Proposal: an offering; a possibility; a conjecture; a guess; a hypothesis; a thing-to-be-explored. Ghost: a shadow on the sleeve of your sweater; a rhythm returning from lifetimes before; the meandering suggestion of a river on an ancient, yellowed map. At Ghost Proposal, we’re into writing that is aware of its own topography. We like work that engages with thought process. We think of writing as ‘a letter from a stranger that you can’t bear to throw away. It haunts you; it strengthens you.’ (Mary Oliver). We want to publish your strange objects. The whispers sitting in between your shoulder blades.”

It's the perfect place for my essay "Visitations," comprised of whispers and hauntings and memories and wanderings.

​Love the cover art by  Kailey Barthel.