Words needed

In two weeks Community Building Art Works is having our Kickoff Celebration. The board has been hard at work and it’s going to be such a good party. We have things to announce and tacos to eat. Tickets for the Kickoff Celebration are available here. We have a bunch of wonderful programs planned, but we can’t do them without some support. So please consider attending and spreading the word!

I’ve printed out my sweet little book and am finding all kinds of little errors as I edit. I’m even hating some stuff, a few big glaring things I have to take a red pen and x through. But I couldn’t have found the right words without also writing the wrong words, writing all around them. I have to write the words, then change as a person, and then read the words again and figure out what must stay and what must go. It is one of the most stressful things in the whole world to me–how time is such an essential element in craft.

A couple of weekends ago, my homunculus and I went to have photos taken. Actually only I needed photos taken, but he came along for good company. The photo below is from that day, taken with film, and there are more to come from the stunning Kurt Heyde of TLR Fotografie. Check out his work and get in touch with him. He’s so so so great to work with. It occurred to me, looking at this photo, that in no time at all, I’LL be this kid’s homunculus.*

Anyway, read the below poem and write about “the god in your brain.” Whatever god means to you. See where it goes. You can always red X the words you discover you don’t need. There’s no way to do this wrong, except by not doing it at all (ffs). I love you guys.

Oracle by Donika Kelly

The god in my brain
is no god, only a homunculus
I recognize as myself.

The god in my heart,
the same. The god of my liver,
the same. The god

of my guts and thin skin:
me. The homunculus
guiding my father

bears his mustache
and heavy-lidded eyes.
Was it he who placed

the god in me that is me?
And what do I mean
by 9od, I wonder.

I take my questions
to the oracle, another
homunculus, and I say either.

Who placed the god in me?
What do I mean, when I say god?

The reply to either
being, Your father.

Stupid oracle, I think,
fathers are for children,

and I was never a child,
only a smaller image of myself.

*To be honest, I don’t know if that’s the correct use of the word. But I read this poem like 10 times today, and had to look up homunculus and wanted to use it in all my sentences.