Inside & Meanwhile
Prompt from last week’s workshop. Trying not to be too precious about this shit. To be a writer is to make some messy sentences.
Prompt from last week’s workshop. Trying not to be too precious about this shit. To be a writer is to make some messy sentences.
The leaves have opened completely outside my window, and my neighbor’s honeysuckle bush expands over my deck, a little more each year, though he leans over his deck and apologizes and trims it. The first summer we lived here I think I saw a hummingbird come drink from one of the small white flowers, and…
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The headlines are apocalyptic: the subways flooding, the wind on fire, the heat, the drought. And also: this week I got a pedicure, kissed my son’s cheeks which he tolerates, sat by the pool with my mother and sister ate so much ice cream. I walked IN the river and got up the nerve to…
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It has been a long time dream/aspiration/goal of mine to perform at the Dodge Poetry Festival, To rub elbows with cool poets I love, to be in that catalog of (it seemed to me, all these years), who’s who. This year, I was accepted to present, and the festival launches today. I’ve recorded some parts, and will be live in some other parts over the next ten days. I am bummed to not share space with all those poets, to not rub literal elbows. But as I looked at the incredible, incredible, incredible list of poets, a knot formed in my stomach. Why was I included? I literally spent an entire hour scouring the Dodge site for information on what special program I might have been accepted under. Then I was so embarrassed by my lack of play-it-cool that I swore I’d never tell anyone. An hour later I told my whole writing group. And today I’m telling you.
What has been built in these six months was impossible for us to imagine then, and the magnitude of it is so difficult to articulate. Each week, unlikely groups of veterans, service members, healthcare workers, first time, and experienced writers gather on zoom from all over the world to create a sort of time-space. It is the epitome of reintegration, of overcoming isolation, of connecting across difference.
The poem I wanted to write is crouched in the dark under the table, it crawled out of its skin and curled its fist around a pen. Yes, the poem I wanted to write wants to write a poem of its own. I moved a sofa into my study so I can lie down and cry between line breaks. And now you are worried, want to know if I’m okay. No, I am not. But neither are you.
Last week a friend I met through teaching sent me a short essay about her time on an inpatient psychiatric ward, and I was struck by how familiar it was. And surprised by a longing so deep for entering that sacred space and sharing that muddy time with people so unabashedly human that I could…
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