loose threads

a smattering of things

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Jo McCrory is a writer and artist living in northern California.

  • Backyard delights

    Backyard delights

    a woman’s laughter rises to the stars a breeze ruffles the hem of my skirt my arms come alive with goosebumps
    a woman’s laughter rises to the stars
    a breeze ruffles the hem of my skirt
    my arms come alive with goosebumps
  • May I?

    May I?

    her shoulders supine in warm grass the sea salt air and pennyroyal their perfume mixing like the harbor meeting the ocean open-mouthed, eager, teeming with want
    her shoulders supine in warm grass
    the sea salt air and pennyroyal
    their perfume mixing like the harbor meeting the ocean
    open-mouthed, eager, teeming with want

    While nosing around the internet last week, I read about the Sarah Orne Jewett house in South Berwick, Maine. In addition to photos of her book cover designs (which sparked their own project in my mind), I was reminded that I freaking love Sarah Orne Jewett. I’ve been reading The Country of the Pointed Firs this week, and friends, my soul is drinking it up. The narrator rents an abandoned school house overlooking the town/harbor in coastal Maine for fifty cents a week and spends her days there writing undisturbed. There are pastoral landscapes and so many seafarers and a tragical love story (it seems, I’ve only just got there!)

    This excerpt is one of several drafts I’ve started inspired by the book. They’ll probably become one piece in the end but it’s nice to leave April behind and start May still feeling inspired (despite the odds).