A friend recently gave me a book called 1000 Words by Jami Attenberg. It was full of writing encouragement (not advice), which was exactly what I needed. And in the spirit of that book…
I’m trying something new.
KDP started something a while ago that I liked the idea of. Kindle Vella. It’s an episode at a time storytelling tool. Very much like Wattpad and some other sites out there, so not really new. But it’s based off the Amazon Kindle platform, so it’s got a little bit of “oomph” there. Plus, all my books were published using KDP, so Kindle Vella feels very familiar already.
With that said, my story is called Nothing New Under the Sun. It’s a mystery set in a small town on the coast of North Carolina in a bookstore with a cat… Well, they do say “write what you know”.
I hope you’ll check out Nothing New Under the Sun. Maybe leave me a comment and let me know what you think. I’m hoping to have some fun with this. And just so you know, I never use AI to write my stories. It’s all me.
Nothing New Under the Sun by Michelle Garren-Flye. Copyright 2024
People think I’m crazy when I say this is my favorite day of the year. But it is. It’s the day I feel the most hope for the future.
Today. The darkest day of the year.
Want to know why?
Because every day after this one gets brighter.
In honor of the darkest, most hopeful day, I’m doing a “live poetry writing”. If you haven’t joined me for one of those, it’s sometimes interesting since I’m working at my bookstore and am often interrupted.
(At 11:16 a.m. I’m already interrupted by customers. How dare they? Just kidding!)
Winter Solstice
By Michelle Garren-Flye
(11:20 a.m. debating about form versus free verse…really should’ve thought about this ahead of time!)
What makes the darkest day of the year so bright?
When the sun leaves early, why do I still hope?
I refuse the fear the end of day, the coming of night
With the long darkness, I know I can cope.
(11:23 a.m. I’m thinking sonnet, then. I do love sonnets.)
Daylight may not last as long while the night grows
and flowers cannot emerge in the absence of sun
but even now, I sense the spread of nighttime slows
and the approach of dawn will soon come.
(11:29 a.m. I know. Sun and come don’t really rhyme…)
In my bed, I wait to hear the first bird’s sweet whistle
(11:38 a.m. Sorry, I was off trying to find a book for someone. Back now.)
in the dark and the cold, with my head on my pillow.
and then it comes, like a message of dismissal
to the cold of yesterday, a welcome to tomorrow.
(11:45 a.m. I did stop in the middle of those last few lines to check out a customer. Not doing badly on time, considering…)
I jump from my bed, ready again for employ.
This day and the next I feel will bring joy.
(11:49 a.m. I wrote this couplet to end the sonnet thinking I wanted to write about joy, but as I wrote the last line, I thought maybe I should concentrate on faith instead. So, I’m working on an alternate.)
I jump from my bed, but wonder about my haste,
I pause to think but I know: it’s all about faith.
11:54 a.m. I’m done. This was fun and I will most likely polish this one up some. No idea what I might use it for, but it’ll go into a folder on my computer, anyway. Thanks for joining me! Enjoy the darkest day of the year, but don’t forget to have faith. Tomorrow will be brighter!
Poetry continues to be my main objective in spite of a couple of ideas I’ve had about novels. If I hear about a new form of poetry, I have to try it out. And then I have to stretch it. Remember Stretch Armstrong? How you would stretch and stretch him to see how far you could stretch him and he’d still go back to his original form…until he didn’t.
I sort of feel like I did that with haibun. Haibun is the combination of a haiku and a prose poem. Matsuo Basho wrote them. I discovered them relatively recently and decided to give them a try. And stretched the form a bit. What do you think? Is it still a haibun at its heart?
Silence
By Michelle Garren-Flye
it’s awkward, silence,
because it wants treasuring
and I reject it
laying too heavy on my ears in the dark, begging to be broken, shattered against the brick wall, revealing the death of sound ringing in my ears, spilling out like the yolk of an egg until the utter madness is stunned by a brief click in the wall behind the thermostat as the furnace breathes life into our emptiness…
don’t rejoice too soon
complete silence verges on
total perfection
you will seek it again, want to crawl into it, feel it envelop you in velvety warmth as if it can never break because it always always bends and that’s why you can never make friends with silence, why you can’t love it even if you want it, you will always seek release from it, but…
the birds will ghost you
the wind and waves will give up
leaving you…awkward
This weekend, I saw the Taylor Swift movie with my daughter. It was fun and a little awe-inspiring. One of the first scenes was this little tiny woman standing on top of a lighted podium in the middle of a huge stadium absolutely full of people shouting and crying and singing along.
Now, I love music. It’s been a big part of my life for a long time. I’ve been to several concerts, including legends like John Denver, Robert Plant, and Bon Jovi. More recently, I’ve seen several K-pop concerts with my daughter, including Stray Kids and Twice.
All of those experiences were wonderful, but seeing this woman (who really is still human, no matter how great her talent) standing on that podium made me so envious. Wouldn’t I love to be able to do that? To get that immediate feedback from a crowd hanging on your every word.
But that’s not my life. My life is to write and doubt and hope that someone out there reads and finds meaning. What Taylor Swift has in excess, I undoubtedly lack.
Maybe we all have to give up whatever that is in order to have performers like her? If so, it’s definitely worth it.
Loud (a poet’s wish)
By Michelle Garren-Flye
Sometimes I wish I could be a bit loud,
proclaim each verse and be proud!
But I’m doomed instead
to be great in my head.
In the face of the crowd, I’m just stoic;
my voice comes out less than a croak.
(Can you hear in the back?
Forgive my panic attack.)
My confidence is next to none.
(As in, out of ten, about a one.)
So I’ll just continue to write,
convince myself it’s not trite.
I may wish to throw my head back and rage—
But instead I’ll whisper my words to the page.
A bit of fall color. Photo and poem copyright 2023 Michelle Garren-Flye
There are so many things to wish for. What’s your wish?
One Minute
By Michelle Garren-Flye
It’s 11:11, what’s your wish?
Is it love…money—or a bit of peace?
Go ahead, speak it and be selfish!
You’ve spent your whole life trying to please.
Whisper it to the first sparkling star…
Watch it drift away on dandelion fluff.
Pray for relief from your past life’s scar…
Hope a simple wish will be enough.
But just one single wish may not suffice!
I tell you what I think we must do:
in order to fulfill your wish’s price,
I’ll pledge mine to benefit you.
Hurry before the minute hand turns!
Tell me the passion that in you burns.
Self Portrait in 30 Years
By Michelle Garren-Flye
She sits on her porch as people go past,
taking notice of what they bring into her past.
Little bits of their lives that pepper the now…
a tired mother…a crying child…now it’s all past.
Her son mows the lawn now every two weeks.
She likes it best when one week has passed,
when the grasses breathe rustles and chirps
echoing in her heart like songs from the past.
Those days when everything hurt so much—
if only she’d grasped that one day they’d be past.
Her daughter brings groceries, unpacks them inside:
“mom, come in, the summer’s heat is long past.
You’ll catch cold out there in the autumn breeze.
What keeps you outside when supper time is past?”
She smiles and takes her daughter’s dear hand,
hopes she’ll never know this longing for what’s past.
She could have dreamed up a magic spell back then
and stopped precious time before it had passed:
when she was a happy, tired mother of three…
now a lonely woman thinking only of the past.
She searches the stars for Orion’s sword belt,
Longs to fly to their light, leave this ache in the past.
Congratulations, it’s a ghazal (pronounced “guzzle” not “gu-ZAHL”, much to my disappointment).
Ghazals are hard to write due to their rhyme scheme, which involves repeating the same rhyme over and over. It can sound monotonous or forced. I’m just getting started playing with ghazals, so if it sounds monotonous or forced, I apologize.
The inspiration for this poem actually comes from a house. I used to walk by this house and see a little, old lady sitting on the front porch. I often wondered what her story was. I waved at her a few times, but before I got the nerve to stop and speak to her, I saw an ambulance there in the middle of the night. And then the little, old lady was gone.
I have no idea what happened to her, but her house is going through a major renovation. The porch is still there, though. I like to think she was lucky enough to spend her last days sitting on her front porch, maybe thinking of her loving children and eventually slipping away into her memories of past glories and loves.
Maybe that will be me someday. Because even if it’s painful to remember past sweet memories, it’s definitely better than not having them.
I first found out about the power of retrograde Mercury in 2021. Last night to celebrate the ending of the most recent Mercury retrograde, I went to the beach. It was the new moon, so the stars were bright. I laid on my back in the sand and looked up at the sky and after about half an hour, just as I was preparing to leave, I realized I could see the Milky Way, that elusive cloud of hundreds of billions of stars that is so seldom visible in the sky that I’ve never actually seen/noticed it before.
Part of me wanted to stay all night looking at that misty cloud, but at least a portion of this poem is somewhat true. And so I left. I did manage to (surprisingly) capture some of what I saw in a few pictures, though. And today I wrote a poem to go with one of them to share here.
Retrograde Mercury
By Michelle Garren-Flye
My first time seeing the Milky Way, Mercury was in retrograde.
Everything went wrong, and I couldn’t linger long—
the cat was sick, the car failed to start, the restaurant I picked
had a two-hour wait, so I gave up, surrendering to my fate.
As the sunset faded, the stars above me played,
and I only spared them a glance, in no mood for a dalliance.
Yet later when my belly was filled,
I thought about the way they spilled
through the sky…
down into the sea…
and wished
(oh wished)
that sight had held me
in place for a bit…
In the face of their beauty…
why couldn’t I just sit?
Milky Way during Mercury Retrograde by Michelle Garren-Flye
I used to panic whenever I’d draw the Death card from a Tarot deck. How could that possibly be a good thing? Even if it’s just the end of something, if it’s the end of something good, it’s gonna suck.
That’s why we as humans tend to celebrate beginnings. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, the New Year. But we don’t really acknowledge that with every new beginning, something ended. The carefree life of a non-parent, the single life, the old year.
Today I pay respect to an ending in my life by celebrating what it was and what it brought me. It’s bittersweet, but I know that this is a new beginning, too. I’m ready for what’s ahead.
Let’s go.
Loop
By Michelle Garren-Flye
You left me once in the middle of a rainstorm,
I was tying my shoe, concentrating on each loop, and you
took the umbrella and wandered away
because something else caught your eye.
I finished my task
but I was soaked to the skin
and even though you gave me my own umbrella,
I never really forgave you for taking ours.
I doubt I ever will.
I’ll bring it up at family gatherings
and every anniversary
as if you could go back and change it,
hold the umbrella steady above me.
Turn back the clock
because without that,
the end will never change.
Almost every night I have a fortune cookie with a cup of tea. It’s become my ritual. They are sometimes funny, sometimes uplifting, sometimes philosophical, sometimes almost a little spooky in the way they apply to my life.
I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. I try never to throw them away. It seems sacrilegious. I do lose them sometimes, but I try to take a picture if it’s something I want to remember.
Here are a few I memorialized:
This one came along when I was floundering, trying to convince myself I could still write:
And then there was the time my fortune seemed to be hitting on me:
And finally, there was this one. It struck enough of a chord to inspire a poem. I thought it was a riddle, but when I did some research, I found it’s more of a philosophical conundrum. Fun stuff.
I have no idea what wisdom you can actually find in fortune cookies. Though Chinese restaurants adopted the cookie to appease Americans who wanted something sweet to finish off their meal with, no one actually believes they’re Chinese. In fact, though I did find some evidence in a quick Google search that fortune cookies originated in Japan, I’m pretty sure my fortune cookies are very American. And yet, I’ve found that the Universe can speak in many different languages, and English is definitely one of them.
WHAT HIDES IN AN EMPTY BOX?
We puzzled over the fortune cookie
long after dinner was done
and the dishes taken away;
the check was paid
and you and I were on the way home.
Darkness, you said, that’s what hides there
and I figured you were right
because if you open the box
and let the light in,
the darkness can’t be seen.
But later still, lying awake
with darkness pressing on my face
smothering me
like your apologies
I wondered if we had been wrong.
Maybe the darkness didn’t hide
when you opened the empty box.
Maybe when the light chased it out
it roared and screamed
and lashed about.
Maybe what hid there in its place
was my heart.
Yep. I had my live this morning at 11 a.m. I had a couple of people on it. I read a few poems. I mostly embarrassed myself. And to make it all better, I have preserved said live as a reel on Instagram. You can view it here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CvC2kWGuEQY/
BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye 