Introductions

Ok, let me try to get started here. My name is Alicia Winski. I'm a poet living in Seattle, Washington, home of good coffee, open mics, the Pike Market Place and the famous Space Needle. I'm also an editor with NightWing Publications, a venture I fell into in 2013. I'm originally from southern California, an area that I do, on occasion, miss greatly. I'd miss it a lot more if it didn't come with unbearable heat, crowds, traffic jams and smog.

 

While I've always had an interest in writing, i.e. "rants", articles, short stories, etc., I'd never wanted much to do with it professionally. As a matter of fact, I purposely stayed away from it whenever possible. My father was a writer, and I can clearly remember all the struggles for a story line, meeting deadlines, and worse, (at least in my growing up years), the struggle to pay the bills and put food on the table. To me, it was an unthinkable, and unacceptable way to live life. We all need money, right? One weekend, my father took my brother and I to a palm reader; he was broke as usual and it was his weekend to entertain us. As we walked into the storefront, we met an elderly bohemian type woman with bright red lips, inquisitive eyes and the energy of a young girl. She introduced herself as a gypsy; we didn't buy into that, but she was very sincere so we decided to play along. She stroked my hand for a while, and after much hmmming and mmmmming, and just when I started getting fidgety, she looked up and said, "You are going to be a writer. You are going to write books." Like hell. She was pretty started when I ran out of there, never looking back 2007, when after shaking off a vicious 2 year addiction to Xanax, prescribed to me for PTSD and panic disorder, I needed something to hold onto, something that might help me keep what little sanity I had left, intact. And one day, a friend murmured the few words which became my lifeline. Those words became my first poem, Skeletons. No longer addicted to Xanax, I became addicted to writing. In 2009, my first collection of poetry, titled Running On Fumes, was published. And since this blog is clearly heading into the confessional, I will share one of my first poems from which the title was taken for my collection.

 

Running on Fumes © 2008

 

find lines define this

road map etched onto my face

an atlas of information marked

by each & every turn
 

the single lane I started out on thinking

“this is going to be a fast-paced ride”

too often slow and torturous
 

unchartered country roads, merging

onto main drags littered with ‘Stop’ and ‘Go”
 

        [with many a stop sign run]
 

slick highways sending me speeding down

concrete signed with exits too often taken

only after I’ve entered the wrong on tamp
 

[paying a heavy, heavy toll]
 

it’s been a long drive consuming priceless fuel

tires deflated, chassis worn and weary,

I can’t help but wonder—
 

how far can I go before I run out of gas?