He floated on the stream of consciousness,
narrating his way through choppy sentences,
dialoguing his way through longer ones,
becoming a playwright.

The Carol Joyce Effect
He was her rough draft when she married him,
her working draft during their marriage,
her final draft when they divorced
(& heavily edited at that),
for he was a man of much fewer words.

Every day is a poem,
every hour,
a line,
every moment,
an impression,
and oftentimes,
the title comes not
until the end.

She was given the crudest of pencils,
paper that was scrap;
she grew up hardscrabbling,
but what she could write was limitless.

Transcendence
Her birth was a drama,
her life, a comedy,
her death, a tragedy,
but her life after death–
that was the happily ever after.