My grandson burnt his hands Sunday. Not horribly, but badly enough that he cried inconsolably for hours. Today? He’s his usual sunny self: slapping the Cheerios on the highchair tray, pulling my hair, and laughing at nothing at all. Why can’t I be like that?  Why can’t I let go of yesterday/ last year/ some…

It’s easy to forget that every day holds poetry. Especially if you’re hectic: packing, moving, cleaning a new house, unpacking… Soothing a disolocated dog, holding a curious baby. Eating out of cartons while you locate the dishes and pans. All of this can make you forget the whole point of the exercise. New house! Beautiful…

Today’s poem is actually a three-fer. I’ve been writing to prompts from NaPoWriMo, one of the national sites for National Poetry Writing Month. The poem today is written from yesterday’s prompt, which asked writers to do a riff on a poem (Black Stone Lying On A White Stone) by César Vallejo. To show those writers…

I grew up on haiku. It’s popular in school classrooms now — fast, and relatively easy to teach — but I don’t remember there being a lot of my friends who learned it as children. My familiarity with it — and subsequent fondness for it — may be due to my father, an inveterate reader…

Britton Gildersleeve
about

Britton Gildersleeve

Britton Gildersleeve is a 'third culture kid.' Years spent living on the margins - in places with exotic names and food shortages - have left her with a visceral response to folks ‘without,’ as well as a desire to live her Buddhism in an engaged fashion. She’s a writer and a teacher, the former director of a federal non-profit for teachers who write. She believes that if we talk to each other, we can learn to love each other (but she's still learning how). And she believes in tea. She is (still) working on her beginner's heart ~

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