Dawgs arrive promptly at 7 pm

But it was (brrrr) too cold to sit outside on the screen porch, so we moved on inside. “Dawgs” is the name of a poetry group originally made up of folks who took a poetry workshop with John Rybicki. Of course the group has re-formed over the years, and new people like me are occasionally allowed in. Seven of us had wine and snacks and enjoyed each other’s smart company and looked at our poems. (And among these polite gals, none mentioned the cobwebs or the duct tape holding the toilet seat together.) Susan Ramsey brought her wild west romp, “My Grandmother in Support Your Local Sherriff.” I brought “The Last Fat Woman in Galesburg, Michigan.”

Marie Bahlke’s Mother’s Day poem brought us:
peanut butter macaroni and hatted boarders eating pork roast

Elizabeth Kerlikowske gave us a (sticky?) image that sticks with us
fish wrapped in maps and money in the glove box

Kit Almy’s sonnet-ish piece, “Miss Movie Star and Mr. Lumpy Mattress,” moved swiftly and logically from sandbox (and eating clover or peeing in the bushes) to sarcasm to death.

Margaret DeRitter did not have a poem but wielded a copy of the Tuesday Gazette and said, “Look! I’m writing again!” Highlights of her recent writing include her article about her French hospital adventure, “An Ordeal in Provence” which perhaps Margaret will condense into a poem that includes the line: Amy’s painkillers long gone, her anti-clotting syringes all used up.

Amy Newday’s poem featured a line I have been repeating to myself over and over ever since:
The brass of our ball valves no longer delights us.