On Monday, July 1st, in Freeport, Maine, I graduated with my Stonecoast MFA class. There were 21 members of the summer 2019 class.  As we crossed the stage to receive our diplomas, a line from our work was read by Justin Tussing, the Program Director.  My line: "Your eye a scar slants bird toward me winging in, and the corner of your eye became a bird" from the song "Birthday" co-written with Dave Tronzo. T. Fleischmann, author of Time is a Thing the Body Moves Through and Syzygy, Beauty was the keynote speaker.  They were also my 2nd semester mentor and thesis advisor. My thesis, entitled, Birdman and other essays and stories, will be bound and placed in the the University of Southern Maine archive. I will receive a bound copy in several months.

After the ceremony, we all convened at the Casco Bay Room at the Harraseekut Inn for a celebration and dance party.  My mother and sister and my dear friend Richard Cambridge and his girlfriend Elizabeth joined in. Good friends from other classes, and a few alums came as well.  I stayed till about 10:30 pm, dancing with T. and Robin Talbott and Emily Levang and Meghan Vigeant, to pop rap tunes and r&b classics. Then I retired to my room and read a novel by a Stonecoast alum I had won at a literary quiz event the night before, a great book called, On Hurricaine Island, an action thriller about a civilian detention center for terrorism on a small island off the coast of Maine.

At breakfast the next morning about six of us decided to form a Slacker site to stay in touch.  Sarah Mack, a pop fic writer, volunteered to set it up for us.  I rode back to Cambridge with my mom and sister.  I left my plastic cap and gown in the hotel room and said goodbye to the Inn which has served us well over the past two years.

I'm now preparing for a poetry reading on Saturday, August 24th at the Green Room in Somerville, organized by Lisa DeSiro as part of her Solidarity Salon, and also creating a map for a class on the lyric essay I will propose to teach in the winter at the Boston Center for Adult Education.