Creativeorner

What advice do you have for other writers?

Folks can get so hung up on making things perfect that they don’t ever finish anything. There’s no such thing as perfect when it comes to writing. And it’s much harder to polish something that doesn’t exist. Finish the story/book/poem/whatever. Even if it stinks, so what? It’s finished, and then you can say “I WROTE A BOOK!” Things get better during revisions. Then, when you go to write your next story/book/poem/whatever, you’ll have all the experiences and lessons from the first.

Where else can we read your work?

I’m ecstatic to have my first poetry chapbook coming out this spring, and my short story “The Butterfly Catcher” will be in “This World Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Horror Stories About Bugs.” (Can I just say how tickled I am that my first two creative pubs are a collection of love poems and a horror story about demons??) I also have poetry in a few online and print journals. The best spot to find all this is my website, jyogarver.com. a

l Like to Think God’s Telephone Cord is Obnoxiously Long

By Jaclyn Youhana Garver

After my massage, face down in the face cradle, for the first time in years, I prayed. I don’t think there’s a god who cares, who lays in bed on its belly, feet kicked up in fuzzy slippers, waiting for all its beloveds to call, that zippy thrill in the guts of knowing someone you want is wanting you, too, and right now. I don’t think it’s like that. I don’t know who or what or if is on the other end of that plastic coil that can stretch from the kitchen phone by the pantry into the guest bathroom down the hall.

But, after my massage, face down in the face cradle, for the first time in years, I prayed. It was a thanks for all the good, so much good, a good for every sandgrain or mustardseed, tear or hair follicle. And it was a plea to anything that might help or care, a request for reassurance. That I’m not bad. That I’m OK. That this is OK. That my wrong is OK. That I and my wrong mirror here, there, in Manhattan, Kuwait, Kankakee, Baton Rouge, Washington state and DC: a mustardseed of him and a mustardseed of me.