JP Reese earned a BS in psychology and an AA in Health Sciences from The University of Bridgeport in 1979 and 1980.
After winning second place in the fledgling IBPC for her poem "A Letter From Your Sisters," Reese applied for and was accepted to The University of Memphis' MFA program in 2000, from which she graduated in 2002. While a student at U of M, Reese won the 2002 Creative Writing Award and was published in The Pinch. She's been writing her little fingertips off ever since. Her work has won awards online and been published in earthbound lit. mags. over the years. She has creative nonfiction forthcoming in Connotation Press, has fiction forthcoming in The Smoking Poet, and has recently placed poetry with Silkwormsink. Reese currently lives in Plano, Texas and teaches at Collin College where she is an Associate Professor of English. She recently won an award for Associate Professor of the Year. Her favorite gig is teaching an undergraduate poetry workshop, and she has recently taken the leap into flash fiction and creative nonfiction.---------
June, Texas, 1993
My father kneels on the St. Augustine,
hands braiding in green and white repair of a torn lawn chair.
His fingers thick, right thumbnail puddled with a blue bruise.
Head tilted, his eyes focus on this morning's work.
A wasp swings its glassy wings beneath the eave
to daub more mud on the coned dome it fashions
which we do not destroy. Its brown husk will remain,
dry and solid, long after my father's return to clay.
And still he kneels, fearless, and weaves.