Tag / poetry

by booksoverlookedblog

FFM 16: How To Sell Your Home in 11 Easy Steps


Any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. I do not consent to this work being summarized or fed to generative AI, and anyone who does so is a big dweeb.

July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. I’m in the process of selling my home. Since I’m running out of time for a story today and don’t want to fall further behind, here’s a rant. Stick around after the story to read the poem I wrote on the same topic.

An Easy 11-Step Guide to Selling Your Home

  1. Get your house ready for showing. Purge every scrap of personality your home has. There can be no art on the walls. There can be no plushies on the bed. They don’t matter. Only your granite counter tops matter.
  2. Find a realtor you like. You may wish to meet with a few of them before you decide who to go with. The deciding factor should not be if your realtor has a cool accent or likes your cats. But if he has a cool accent and likes your cats, that’s a big plus.
  3. If your house is fit for a sexless robot to live in, it’s time to schedule showings and open houses. You must hide all evidence that a human lives in this house. Remove all trash cans. Make sure all the books on the shelf are non-controversial and for display purposes only. Hide all cat furniture. You have to pretend that the cats don’t live here, even though they will follow prospective buyers around for the whole showing and take naps on your realtor.
  4. Get kicked out of your house repeatedly so strangers can look at it and then tell you they hate your bathroom decor.
  5. Look on Zillow and secretly judge your neighbor’s houses that are on the market.
  6. It’s been two months, and this sucks. Consider buying a Saint Joseph statue to bury in your yard.
  7. Change your mind about buying the statue. If your mom found out she would think that you’re becoming Catholic again and would get too excited.
  8. Besides, you tried to throw out a broken Virgin Mary statue during the initial purge, but the bag it was in ripped and paint splashed everywhere on the newly power-washed patio. Decide it’s best not to mess around with more statues of holy figures.
  9. Explain to your non-Catholic friends why it’s not idolatry, not really, and that even ex-Catholics love a good religious statue.
  10. Just accept that this is a deeply weird and frustrating experience, but at least you got a poem out of it.
  11. But also if you don’t get any offers soon, you’re getting the damn statue.

Selling Your Home is a Deeply Weird Experience

We begged and fought
to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars
on 1,700 square feet.
We signed the papers. We laid a stake.
This is ours.
No one can take it from us.
This is our home.

My territory is 1,700 square feet
with high ceilings and beige walls,
nubby carpets, a creepy door.

My territory is new granite countertops,
a rebuilt fence
years of love and work
and every picture hung on the wall.

And now–
anyone can come into my territory.
I must smile and welcome them.
Hope that one of them will want to beg and fight for 1,700 square feet.

But all I want to do is snarl.

by booksoverlookedblog

FFM 13: Tasting Notes for a Bottle of Gin


Any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. I do not consent to this work being summarized or fed to generative AI, and anyone who does so is a big dweeb.

July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. More notes at the end of the story.

Tasting notes for a bottle of gin: juniper berries roll over the tongue, wash your mouth with a foundation that tastes of Christmas trees and better times. Citrus splash, the yellows and greens of summers left behind. Cinnamon dust, scraping around the edges of your teeth, grit on the tops of your molars, the small sins of the past you can never truly swallow.

Another challenge story!

Element 1: The form for today’s story must be Prosetry.

Element 2: Your story must mention at least THREE herbs or other botanical elements (i.e. chamomile blossoms, death caps, salt, sage, tobacco, pine, etc).

by booksoverlookedblog

Reason for Ban:

I like to joke that “I write gooder than I talk.” I’m very passionate about a lot of things, and when I’m talking about them, it can lead to some wild ranting. Anyone who’s been around me after a beer or two can confirm. Writing forces me to slow down, take a step back, and organize my thoughts.

This month, I wanted to write something about the alarming frequency of challenging and banning books. June is Pride, and some of the most frequently challenged or banned books in the past several years have been challenged for LGBTQIA+ content. It’s infuriating.

It’s so infuriating that every time I try to organize my thoughts around it, I see red and it all devolves into a rant that’s better suited to a soapbox than a blog post.

But I don’t think I can put it more succinctly than one of the kids at my teen advisory board did last night:

Me: A lot of books are being challenged or banned for having queer or DEI content.
Teen: What’s DEI?
Me: Diversity, equity, and inclusion. In book challenges, it’s usually related to race.
Teen: That’s stupid.

This is obviously something I care a lot about. I’m aiming to write something more in-depth for October, since Banned Books Week is October 1-7. Until then, I wanted to share a poem I wrote in April 2020 on this topic.

Reason for Ban:
by Kaye Norton

Banned for profanity
Our kids don’t use language like that.
They’ve never heard those words on TV.
We don’t use them at home.
Of course they don’t say them when we’re not around.

Banned for alcohol use
Our kids have never seen us with a glass of wine
or stolen sips from our beers.
They’ve never drank from red plastic cups at parties
or even wondered about the taste.

Banned for sexual content
Our kids don’t know what lust is.
Certainly, they’ve never felt it.
Never spun bottles,
laid in the backseat of a car,
or felt the breathless rush of young love.

Banned for bullying
Our kids have never thrown a punch,
or spread vicious rumors,
or spent a day crying in the bathroom,
and faked being sick to stay home
because someone threatened to kill them.

Banned for religious viewpoint
Because we have faith in God
But not our kids.