ACJ Editorial Services

Happy Sweet 16 to my precious Nyla Rae! 🥳 She’s the heart of our family🩷 💕— our dream come true. 💫 💕 My little Leo.

📸 16 (or so)for 16 🩵

Had the best time celebrating my girl! 💕 Happy Birthday, Amber! To know her is to love her. 💕

📸 #5 humidity was out there trying to take us out.

Putting this one on the grid. 💕 Just a few Well-Read Black Girls. 📚✨💫

Book: Good Dirt by

We collectively agreed that this was one better for physical reading verses listening—lots of characters and lots of moving parts! We all loved it!

I gathered up a few of my poetry books (and Nyla’s too!) for National Poetry Month. Ahhhh, a book stack on my grid with a plant—I was due.

I included Bigger Than Bravery, an anthology by the late Valerie Boyd, that I was lucky enough to work on as the copy editor with and . It includes an essay by our very own Cato Fellow, ! Some beautiful poetry is sprinkled throughout these pages (by .moore.90, , , , and to name a few).

I’m dropping this sweet little springtime poem here by Maggie Smith, one of my favs! I included her book You Can Make This Place Beautiful in the stack—it’s not poetry, but she’s a poet, and it’s pretty. 🪴

The Wren by Maggie Smith

It’s an installation: Wrens pinned like brooches
to the trees, singing, their eyes glass beads.

Shake a branch, be wary of what falls.

In the unofficial spring, sunshine plays xylophone
on the lawn. The trebly notes are mouths

singing oh, oh, oh. A paper boat leads

the children downstream, through countless
shades of green—spring, grass, moss, forest.

Light plus one green makes another.

The exhibit rotates seasonally. Soon enough
the children will instead be foxes, the greens

will rust. Someone will strike the wren set.

But for now their songs saturate the air.
If the message is urgent, they’ll tell again tomorrow.

“Can you hear me?” by the immensely talented .

This magnificent piece is included in her solo exhibition “Between you and me” on display at in Charleston.

I had a wonderful first experience this week—being led through an exhibit with the artist explaining every piece along the way! Such a treat.

So much fun! !