INVERT SUGAR

Ever have your mom or gramma or other loving relative say to you: gimme some sugar? Maybe they don't do that in the North, but where I come from, we say it all the time. My grandma and grandpa, my favorite aunts and uncles were always after my sugar. Fond memories.
When migraines took over my life in 1999, yes they did, they took over my life, I eventually had to change every aspect of my daily living. In 2000, I went on the elimination diet and discovered that my main trigger for migraines was CORN and all corn products. Wow, are there a bunch of products that have corn in them, that do not sound like corn. Invert sugar is one of those products.
Invert also means homosexual. Did you know that? It's another old-fashioned word, like using "sugar" to mean love. I first heard it used when I was ten years old and read Radcliffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness." Yes, I was precocious. I read "The Well of Loneliness" at 10. I read everything I could get my hands on, and that happened to be in our bookcase. And then later on, I turned out to be an invert myself. Whoa. Do you think it was the book? or the sugar? I think it was the DNA.
So. Putting the words together: Invert Sugar, sounds like lesbian love to me. I'm giving that title to a mini-chapbook of my lesbian poems. Take that, CORN industry. :)

Writing success

How do you measure success? We all have our ways. For me success usually means either productivity or outside acknowledgement. This year, I'm achieving both. I've joined listserves to help keep me prolific: one in which I commit to writing 100 words a day for 100 days; one in which I commit to writing a new poem every day; one in which I commit to writing (and posting) 15 pages of work every week; and for my health a Daily Challenge that is related to health. I've belonged to the 15 pages/week for years, disappearing for months at a time, but have been active again now for several months again. So far in 2011, I have written over 60 new poems, which I will edit and polish next year, unless I decide to stop writing new work and start editing at some point this year.
Meanwhile, I continue to send out my edited work, and have had three poems accepted so far this year. One to Mom Egg, one to Stillwater Review, and one to be published in the book "paying attention: a river of stones."
On the days I have a migraine, I write migraine poems (3 so far this year). I've written with a temp of 102 when I had the flu. I wrote through the flu, an ear infection, beautiful days of sunshine when I could have been gardening, the weekends, and sheer laziness when I didn't "feel like it." Commitment is a powerful motivator. For me.