Dancing, a Poem

The girl across the street was learning ballet. I wanted to, though I couldn’t see. At the age of eleven, with a private teacher young and energetic, I learned to plie, sashay.   With a cassette tape she made that contained music and her instructions, I jumped, kicked, skipped across our Arizona kitchen floor.  

What Have We Been Up To?

And now for a look at what Writing Wranglers and Warriors have been up to lately: CHICKEN DIAPERS, PINTEREST AND RESEARCH, by KP Gresham KP Gresham writes about . . . chicken diapers. “Then I got to thinking. In a different Hardscrabble Homecoming book, a character (and I do mean character) has a pet chicken (which

Talking Dirty by Abbie Johnson Taylor

Thanks to the Magic of Stories for inspiring this post. Karen J. Mossman talks, in a way, about creating a balance between being realistic and providing an escape for our readers. Can you think of any scenes where people go to the bathroom? I’m going to be vain and tell you that in my memoir,

Where’s Your Happy Place? by Abbie Johnson Taylor

  Believe it or not, even though I live in Sheridan, Wyoming, my happy place is a beach in Jupiter, Florida, where my brother and I often go when I visit him. I sometimes swim but am mostly content to walk alongside the ocean and feel cool waves wash over my feet, cleansing them of

Our Buddy by Abbie Johnson Taylor

    The first vehicle I remember from my childhood was a white Mercedes Benz with four doors and a trunk. The interior seats were of a gray and white decorative pattern. Before my younger brother was born, my parents and I took many trips from our home in Tucson, Arizona. We called the car

Seven

 Written by M. K. Waller (and others) 23:59 hours. That’s how late I am in getting this post online. That’s how late I am in writing this post I’m late in getting online. Instead of belaboring the point, I’m going to do something I should do more often–remind you of some fine posts I didn’t

Running Through the Sprinkler, a Poem by Abbie Johnson Taylor

  The following poem was recently published in The Weekly Avocet. This is a haibun, a poetry form that combines a paragraph of prose with a stanza of haiku. You can click the link below to hear me read it. *** Running through the sprinkler.mp3 *** RUNNING THROUGH THE SPRINKLER I stand on the sidewalk,

My Most Precious Possession by Abbie Johnson Taylor

During a memoir writing workshop at the Wyoming Writers conference I attended a couple of weeks ago, one of many story ideas we were given was this. If your house was on fire, and all the people and animals were safe, what would you take with you? This reminded me of a conversation I had

Forever is Never Too Long

Thanks to Rhonda Partain for inspiring this. I believe that if you truly love someone, forever is never too long. Most marriages aren’t fraught with the turmoil that ours was. When my late husband Bill and I were married in the fall of 2005, I was in my forties, and he was nineteen years my

My Downtown Memories by Abbie Johnson Taylor

Thanks to Mike Staton’s post  here for inspiring this. When I was growing up in the 1960’s, my family was living in Tucson, Arizona, and a trip downtown was exciting because we had to drive through a large tunnel in order to get there. Dad or Mother kept honking the horn, as we drove through,