Shirley Menendez grew up in Staunton, VA, a small town located in the Shenandoah Valley. It was named one of the best small towns in America by Smithsonian magazine, one of the great small towns near Washington, D.C. by Washingtonian, and one of America’s greatest main streets by Travel...
The following poem, a villanelle, won a prize in a poetry contest sponsored by Montgomery Magazine and the Maryland Writers’ Association. Villanelle means country house in Latin and is traditionally about everyday life. A Villanelle poem has 19 lines, divided into five stanzas of three lines each, plus a...