No news today - Guest Post - Terese Svoboda

Auntie Blog

Where’s is that pointy thing that you hold over your head with ducks on it? Under the couch? Did I beat the postman with it? There—all splintery. We must’ve had quite a conversation. It must’ve been about Susan Daitch’s terrific post, about the zookeeper whose father (?) lets him keep a polar bear around the house and that makes him sensitive to animals in cages and there is this revolution in zoos. Talk about animal writes! Just like I was saying to the postman, do you think that my dog isn’t writing all over town, lifting his leg? Freedom of expression. Expressing freedom. Like my beau who spelled out my name that way in the snow. You don’t need Hallmark. He was an animal. And so was the postman, leaning in with beery breath to tell me I have to do something about my dog who had written on his pantleg a sort of cheery note Hello. I am sensitive to all kinds of writes is what I told him, and maybe a revolution is coming, especially in spelling. Lady! he said—I remember it clearly now because I haven’t been called Lady since I was a Little Lady—and he shook his pantleg and took a step into my house. That’s when the umbrella took a beating. How it looks like writing is going to fall out of the sky all afternoon.

Terese Svoboda's fifth book of prose, Pirate Talk or Mermalade, will be published in September a few days before Talk Like a Pirate Day.