So this is the wonderful world of blogging about which I have heard so much. Be friendly to your new neighbor.

I started this blog because I have an awful lot to say and figured somewhere out there in the internet there's bound to be someone who will listen to me ramble about poetry. I'll also use it as a place to post my own work, and hopefully get a little feedback.

I named this blog after a series of poetry I've been working on, the Hospice Poems. The word  "hospice" has a lot of meanings: it was first used to describe a place of rest for religious pilgrims, and it comes from the Latin for "host." Now it's used to describe a home for the terminally ill: essentially, a comfortable place to die.

All of these meanings contribute to my value of the word. I figured I'd use this space to expand upon the concept, posting poems by me and other poets that contribute to this really awesomely broad idea.

I write a lot about the body, its perfection and its shortcomings. I like the idea of my body itself as the hospice, a "host" to all the things that live inside it, literally and figuratively. A host to disease, to pathogens, to parasites; but also to ideas and memories and all kinds of incredible and unlikely things. The body is amazing, the body is disgusting, and the body is what we're stuck in.

On that note, a poem:

The Illness

It crawled about inside me;

all drenched in fever-sweat I dreamt I was

an anthill

I awoke knowing that every opening was a flaw

and it was right to be

limbless

enclosed

clean

as an egg

-Tessa Crosby