On the Road . . .

Well, this coming week, it's on the road up to Provincetown and the Fine Arts Work Center for a week of poetry with poet Cleopatra Mathis and many other writers and artists.

Don't tell anybody that I picked the workshop because her name was "Cleopatra." I figure when I'm 90 I can freak out my great-grandchildren by telling them I studied poetry with Cleopatra. Think glittering barges on the Nile.

I got a little nervous when I found out we were supposed to bring a copy of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry but my friend Cynthia assured me that this won't really be a "class."

I sure hope so.

Cynthia is my best friend from high school. We reconnected when we both decided to skip Classical High School's multi-decade reunion, and we found out that we're both writing poetry.

And yes, of course we have day jobs (for now).

She and her hubby actually have a summer house right in P'town. And this will be our first class together in years and years and years since we were both working on the senior play, "What a Life!". I'm lucky I have friends who love poetry.

Last year at FAWC, my workshop was with Gail Mazur, a poet recommended by my dear friend and brother in spirit Richard McCann. I wrote a long poem one morning about my dad's passing that April.

That class included 8 or 9 other women who wrote wonderful poems that week, including my long-time pal, Riggin.

I love being in New England, and I'm looking forward to driving up there with Riggin, an amazing writer and long-time pardner in literary crimes. She published three of my stories in an anthology she edited in 2003. Actually she's working on getting her Web site up sometime very soon.

Riggin thinks my family tried to poison her on one trip up there for my dad's 80th birthday bash in June 2000.

We arrived late, and she ate some steamers from a bowl on the big picnic table in my sister Vanessa's backyard. Unfortunately those clams had been out there in the sun for a while.

We won't talk about what happened in the next 4 hours. Ick.

That year we were heading for a week of writing on Block Island with a bunch of writer friends. One of those dear ones has since passed on -- Joan Dickenson, a brilliant writer and columnist from upstate New York.

Now there's a woman who should be famous . . . and she will some day.