new edits of these old awful things

 [[here are two pieces i wrote several years ago, condensed from their original length.  i thought i might be able to combine them somehow but i haven't been able to work that out. maybe connect them with some statistics or more of a big-picture view somehow? any insight about that would be great. and even though this writing is old, it still feels vulnerable and i've had to work myself up to feeling like it's worth sharing and not just emo navelgazing journals. so really any feedback is appreciated!  content warning: substance use + nonconsensual sex]]

shapes that pass in the night

we drank half a 30 rack and smoked at least a half pack between the late liquor store walk and the sun coming up.

 

when we sat on the bench where we'd painted the bedroom trim, i was wallowing and you said you wanted to help, held me, till your lips pressed my mouth free of words.

 

(in what moment did this become inevitable? this last beer, or the first? meeting your gaze in the warehouse kitchen? your drunk flirting, the night you don't remember?)

 

this night too is only pieces: chainsmoking and natty bo in my unfinished room, top floor of middle house, perched on the roof to watch dawn creep over the highway, wearing just jeans and a hoodie. i don't know how i lost my shirt.

 

we were too many beers in to be doing what we did. we crashed to the mattress tangled kissing and i fell into a dream: walking to a job interview at the neighborhood grocery. to apply i had to get fingered. 

 

your hard soft body on mine, the sweetness of skin on skin, how we ache for this dance. suddenly your soft hard cock inside. if i wanted it, i hadn't said so, i wasn't ready and no protection. (you're lovely but i don't want your babies or infections.) what stops me from stopping you? caught in old patterns–drunken jumbles, wanting without understanding, not safe enough to speak.

 

they have said: cmon. please. you're nothing special. just hold still. shhh.

and they have said nothing as they put themselves inside me.

and they have said how much they missed me, how they love my squishy softness, i'm not like the other girls, i'm good enough, i deserve it.

 

and i’m disgusted with myself but i want and i want and i want to break myself apart and unlearn all the untruths they pressed upon me.

---

sometimes i think i ought to charge

lately, everywhere i go, all these men's eyes.

at east wind, there's a male majority, and the closest bar is 20 miles away. commies in the ozarks get lonely too. from out of the autumn night rain, i shuffled into the cramped sunnyside commons, bumbling with my bags and beer and too many coats, sloppy smiling, and i became meat. the freshest sort, from one or two communes over, but as yet unclaimed. a dozen people crammed in this smoky room, and i felt them mentally undress me, i saw them puff up against each other for a piece. but it was so far under the surface that maybe i'm the only one who saw, because they were really all so kind, not creepy at all, just starving.

could i blame them?

i don't know what to do with men's interest in me. i guess i'm a little flattered but mostly confused by it. they all like my dimpled smile, they like that i “think” and it's cute that i'm awkward, they always like it when i'm nervous.

do you think your presence caused this? your power?

my confusion takes the lead in the dance of the flirt. i don’t understand what’s happening, i thought we were friends. i didn't expect him to take it there.

how did i end up again against some him?

his room is its own circular structure, right by the dribbling creek, falling down, half whole, mysterious, broken. is this how you saw me? how did you see me at all?

i will entertain the conversation, i will drink his dandelion wine. i'm a sucker for the bottom of the barrel, let me keep going till i find it. finally i'll stop my babbling long enough for him to ask to kiss me.

thank you for asking.

for a moment everything feels sweet and giddy, almost innocent.

why not say yes? why not anything? why not see if i feel?

the first kiss is always the best. (maybe i am better nervous.)

start on the couch with our mouths until his hands start to wander, why not? he will want to move to the bed or turn out the light, why not? he will squeeze my tits like lemons, kiss suck pinch pull push hard harder hurts.

most of this will be uncomfortable.

i will go into a certain type of subspace: silent, riding, object, use me.

some things feel good but others i will just let happen.

what's the point in trying to correct his too tongued kissing, his hard hands?

what am i doing here, where have i gone?

what can i ask for that i will get?

he won't know whether i like pain or what kind. he will have already had his hands in me and will have bitten my meat until the blood vessels pop and the bruises flower up.

week 7 friday prompt

Today's prompt is adapted from a book called Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. This collection of 'tips' from assorted authors includes a chapter on revision, and though we're focusing on micro editing this week, I think John Smolens' contribution "On the Wheel: Revising the Personal Essay" fits our needs nicely.

Using the first draft of an essay (or a previous response to a prompt) you've already finished, write a second draft without going any longer than eighty percent of the number of words used in the first draft. "The intention is to provide the reader with the same experience as in the first draft, only in a more concise fashion."

He suggests eliminating modifiers, of course, and using the active vs. passive voice and also to edit one paragraph, "...distilling it until you've said the same thing in one sentence."



[[i turned in the first half of what i posted on saturday]]

hungry scene draft 2

[[Experiment with punctuation today. Not usually a fan of commas, semicolons, colons, or dashes? Find a way to make them an interesting/artistic part of a new or old piece. Comma crazy and dash happy? Find a way to remove them from your work by shortening sentence lengths or using a different tone or point of view. Let us see two versions, (one with punc. and one without or vice versa).]]




No one would diagnose “trauma.” Not at intake. Not when discharged. Maybe acknowledging it would’ve kept me there longer and they had to keep the doors revolving.

I’ll never know if my therapist lied on purpose. She said they’d let me keep my phone. My paper and pens. Zines and herbal tinctures.

Nope. My bag of goodies turned out to be full of danger. Pens could be used as weapons. I might self-harm with the staples in the zine, apparently. And they do take your shoes. The best part of the loony bin is wearing socks and pajamas all day. I couldn’t believe I got free underwear. Two pairs! Blue and pink.

I didn’t recognize my hypervigilance. One of the aids convinced me to take a shower. It would be safe. What a relief to finally be alone! I would’ve stood forever under running water. Count my veins and scars. Blue and pink.

I learned which staff members would give me pens, and which would take them away again. But I couldn’t argue back my tinctures. I’d been using them for months to regulate my mental health. St. John’s Wort and Valerian root. The alcohol base rendered them illegal. So they kept my botanicals and put me on pharmaceuticals.



When you’ve been depressed for decades, you can’t know what you look like on the other side. How it would even feel. You try SSRIs and MAOIs and the whole gauntlet, always reporting back to your doctor, “I guess they’re helping?”



This time, the little fuckers worked. Maybe too well. I hardly recognized this energetic person. The ward turned bright and hard. I used the hospital phone to quit my job. Instead of sleeping, I read YA novels and made up plays. I’d been resigned to spend the rest of my sorry life here, but now I burned for freedom.

bit from "witness" draft 2

[[Revisit a paragraph or two from a piece you are feeling good about. Search for your verbs. How many of them are state of being vs. active? Swap out as many is am are was were words with mood setting active verbs as possible. Then, go back and look at your nouns. Are there any you could make more concrete and less abstract? Lastly, search out all adjectives and adverbs. If you remove them, does the meaning of the sentence change? Usually once I edit out the static verbs and swap in the concrete nouns, the need for modifiers disappears. Please post the before and after results.]]







At the reception, Tyler's relatives unloaded gag gifts and toasts that drooped like eulogies–all past tense, they released him to a life of sin before an eternity of hellfire. We did not witness the same flame.




Honest to goodness, I couldn’t believe so many conservatives showed up, anti-vaxxers and Mormons, their love expressed as presence. Cousin Mary offers a plastic pail and shovel, with a memory of playing on the beach as kids puncutated by the unspoken, "Before you made us bury you." Before the waves engulfed the castle.




Brock's father had terrified teenage-me with his half-empty mansion, grill pit tongs, and his god's judging eyes. A rigid man, sure of his status, followed straight the path laid before him, unaware of who bent to build it. That night in the Eureka Springs Community Center, he uncoiled just slightly, the tiniest detour.

performance review

[[Yesterday we attempted the six-word memoir. Today we take on the six sentence paragraph. Here's the catch: you must not repeat any words in all of these six sentences--not even a, and, or the.

I have found that this exercise is easier when approaching it as a painter might. Find a subject to study and draw inspiration from it (a bowl of fruit, a melting mountain of snow, a nude model, etc. :).]]



Aldous, whose wide mouth wears many flavors, entrances enchants inspires with each waving sound. Falling effortless into clown, queen, prince, voice of a kiss finds its meandering way through almost-honesty, closest thing to true. See how meaning clothes her body? Intentions become actualized as gesture, squint, breath, weighted vibrations, spun song. She straddles beauty and terror; we adore this – held captive like the towered princess reaching toward mother horizon, untouchable.

I try writing about music but can’t not be floated away; you just must listen.

6 word memoir(s)

pale blistered changeling, birthmarks still itch.


come out bloom whisper worlds awake.

UNCENSORED OUTTAKES, WHICH I DID NOT POST IN CLASS BUT HERE YOU GO.

• born blistered, brown birthmarks still itch. 
  
  
  mama said i was a changeling.
  
  
  come quick, you gotta see this. 
  
  
  wake up, ghost, burn this ship. 
  
  
  fight for the labels you deserve.
  
  
  hush puppy, dirt dobber, bloom sideways. 
  
  
  crawl through mud, swell onto shore. 
  
  
  see the world worth fighting for. 
  
  
  look toward the So Much More. 
  
  
  
  
  see the affiliate link for details.
  
  
  see more through my affiliate links. 
  
  
  
  
  selling labor is hiding the clown.
  
  
  hide the clown, sell your labor. 
  
  
  
  
  money is salt to my slug. 
  
  
  a slug in a salty sea. 
  
  
  
  
  sorry, my cat did my homework. 
  
  
  well, I don't see why not!
  
  
  tickle me Elmo, end of days. 
  
  
  that rat crawled over my foot. 
  
  
  my head is a bone brick. 
  
  
  head my head a bone brick 
  
  
  
  
  love as often is safely possible. 
  
  
  out for smokes, gone for good. 
  
  
  
  
  come out, bloom, whisper worlds awake. 
  come out. bloom. whisper. worlds awake.
  come out, bloom. whisper, "worlds awake"
  come out. bloom, whisper worlds. awake!  
  
  
  
  
  
• honey's ideas
  

  - born on a Friday! what's today? 

  - you never do know, do you? 

  - who packed all this bean dip? 

  - join me round these flickering sticks

  - feed each other, eat each other. 

Temporary Resistance to Abnormal State

 [[Okay I dug up this old thing from May 2020, about 8 weeks into COVID lockdown. It is a ramble that I lost the reigns on and never finished but I thought it might be informative to get feedback on a piece that is 1) an extremely rough draft and 2) a different style from my other submissions. I never really figured out who the audience was supposed to be, so sometimes I use gamer speak and sometimes I translate. Could be fun to write a version with a glossary. But also this little guy prob lost all relevance a long time ago and has no home in this world anymore, so maybe this is just a death rattle. But it's all I've got this week so... read at your own risk / enjoy!]]

TEMPORARY RESISTANCE TO ABNORMAL STATE

In battle, character is temporarily immune to all status effects (ex. poison, slow, blindness, silence, confusion, etc.)

 

CONFESSION: Other than Super Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country series, I had absolutely zero interest in video games until my partner and I started living together a year and a half ago. At first my interests were incredibly specific -- I want good dialogue and interesting characters, I want my choices to have an impact on the story, and I don't want to feel like I am battling a machine hellbent on making me seasick as I drunk-walk through a 3D nightmare world. We started with narrative driven, queer or queer-adjacent, indie titles like Gone Home, 2064, and Life is Strange. Night in the Woods, be still my heart, rekindled my love of "JUMPING ACROSS THE SCREEN!" (otherwise known as a side-scrolling platformer) and meanwhile held my queer, adult-adjacent attention with clever, poignant storytelling and all the NPC dialogue a pal could ask for. 

 

HOWEVER. 

That jumpy bug bit me. The whole deal bit me. Sick in bed after a bizarre fainting episode last year, I played my first RPGa cloyingly sweet (the whole thing was written in RHYMING POETRY help me) E-for-Everyone game called Child of Light. At first I was confounded by the turn-based battle sequences, which produced in me an enormous amount of stress, until my honey finally convinced me that I could consider about my choices rather than my THE WORLD WILL ALL EXPLODE IF I AM NOT MASHING BUTTONS approach. The bug bit me bigger when I won the final battle (the titular character vs. a shapeshifting DRAGON) with next to no health and only one ally still standing by the end, ENTIRELY DISMANTLING my honey's expectations. "This doesn't look good, Baba. You might want to...." Of course they gave me some reasonable advice, of which I took no notice, and rather ploughed ahead on my course to TOTAL VICTORY. 

The bug had won. I was got.

Still, until recently, I felt like I had pretty specific tastes for what would actually engage my interest enough to play. Certainly I can't handle any kind of blatant racism or sexism, let alone cis-heteronormativity, and I couldn't care less about a gun or a punch. In fact, any kind of violence would make my skin crawl, and the one time I tried to play a "horror" game, I shrieked and threw the controller across the room... So that was never going to happen again. 

 

HOWEVER. 

 

You may recall that currently we, all of humanity, are attempting to survive a global shutdown due to a deadly virus, of which we know next to nothing about, full stop. Like I suspect you might be, I am fully boxed up, a sardine in its tin, stewing in its juices and growing ever stinkier. At the start of this thing, I was full of plans to "make the most of it." Or even, to attempt my flailing, artist-adjacent version of "helping." Ho ho wouldn't it be fun to post a video to the instant internet every day. Oh ho ho no it would not you could not be more wrong. 

 

So we are gonna play games. We even splurged on a second controller (aka PS4 DualShock aka that buttons thing) and purchased some games from a suspiciously timed "spring!" sale. We are gonna play some games and listen to some new music and hear some people talk on podcasts and watch some shows and try to make the best of it, and maybe even do some productive stuff with the time, why not. 

 

And then I come in there and honey says "Hey honey I downloaded a couple new games and thought you might like to check them out, and this one is free and probably bad lol but w/e we can check it out or not, it's w/e we can also just delete it, but idk, what do you wanna play honey?" I'm looking at it–you know, the menu picture, basically a VHS box cover, and it's some blonde anime lady in an armor shirt and idk i'm like, let's just see, let's just get it overwith now and then we can move onto the next one, i am genuinely curious about this multitude of new games we have to try out!

 

The beginning is not promising. Is this a phone game? we think aloud to each other. Ha look at these cheap graphics. What is this long narrated “world building” history lesson at the start, that is our least favorite thing in all of storytelling. Now I have to pick what "race" I want to be? Orc, obviously, because obviously all I want to be is someone who gets to see a giant woman, a giant woman. And so it starts with fighting and it's boring and bad but for some reason we are sticking it out because we want to see what the gameplay is like.

 

I don't know about y'all, but this is how it went for me–over a week or two, my normals were disappeared one by one, roughly in this order: public-facing job, seeing friends, seeing family, gigging job, regular check, leaving the house at all, wearing anything other than pajamas, not turning very nearly fully feral. (I mean, who wasn't at least slightly excited for that part?)

 

It's not like it came out of nowhere. I had gotten back in the habit of listening to Democracy Now! every day, which always feels very smart and politically important at first, but after awhile ends up making me feel helpless and small.

 

My anxiety was becoming unbearable. Even though I was no longer going to work, I could not shake the feeling of being constantly at risk. Every time I left the house, to walk a dog for a client, or pick up prescriptions, I spiraled into a sea of unshakeable panic. Shallow breath, tight chest, prickly skin, out of body experience of daily living. I felt like I couldn't leave the house anymore at all, not in a safe way. I was afraid for myself, but I was more afraid for everyone else–what if I've already got the bug, and I'm bringing it wherever I go? There were fewer and fewer reasons to leave the house. 

 

I never expected this outcome. I'm fully addicted to a real dumb MMORPG. What started out as a 5-minute "okay let's see what it is, have a laugh, and never think about it again" joke has turned into an all day every day habit. And I have no intention of stopping. In normal circumstances, this would be a problem for me. Then again, in normal circumstances, this wouldn't happen. But in this reality, this timeline, Caravan Stories is the only thing staving off a constant state of panic and anxiety, and I will thank the gods that I am lucky enough to have access to such silliness in my increasingly tiny world. (And increasingly embiggening on-screen world!)

the walls stay wet.

Write a piece that includes repetition in a meaningful way.

[[cheated on this one and used something i'd already written. not sure that i even edited it.]]

my honey bought a dehumidifier just for this dilemma, but the damp still clings to everything. you'd think this would be mostly a summer problem for memphis, what with the humidity and all, the heat a huge hug, all things sweating and stinking, but no. the humidity lasts year round, whether you’re sweating buckets or cold to the bone. in this lockdown box, aka our home, 1/2 of a duplex rented at a price too high for what it is but thanks gentrification, they can do that because of the zip code and even still, much cheaper than what we'd pay in any other city, though it's debatable whether memphis is a city or just a stretched out hambone, but no matter how you sing it, winter or summer, rain or shine, in this house, the walls stay wet.

our coats all mildew in the closet. the dryer spins 3 cycles per load. we stack towels along the baseboards and toss mothballs like confetti. moisture pushes nails up and out of the floorboards, snagging socks, drawing blood. doors expand into their frames, wood kissing wood sloppy till it splinters, then seals, vowing never to part. the cracks where the wind used to blow, where water rushed in when the landlord, a genius, powerhosed the porch, where the cat pressed his nose in hunting pose – these slits’ cement assures our sequester.

we certainly won’t be getting mail anymore.

honeydew, don’t be blue. if this consumes me, i will consume you.

first the food fuzzes, then calcifies, the pantry petrified. and us, old cheese, hardening into the soppiest mantras, "i don't care" and "never." not to be outdone, the faucets creak and drip incessantly, the basins overrun, so every step's a splash (but no one's having fun / life’s a gash!)

honey i can trace your footsteps along the dark indentations in the floor, how we slush and lurch toward comfort, the dream of self and temperature control. the walls stay wet. old paint cracks, flakes, falls, joining the flood and exposing ugly plaster, as we see it should. forever fixed to armchairs and countertops, beads of bright dew commune. every sodden thing reaches out, connects, spreads, like a fungal network except we have to sleep here. except it rejects us.

honeydew, reach out too, let’s let the great wetness consume me and you.

if anyone had tried to look inside, past the permanent condensation between the window panes, through the cloudy ripple where the heat rises from the vent, over the mountains of moldy linens, if you wanted to and tried, us slugs shouldn’t be hard to find. when the windows fog up for good, when we forget our circling rituals, when the air finally settles into stillness, who can say, honeydew, how long we won't last as two?

witness

Define Love. If love were an essay, how would you classify its structure? What do its beginning and ending have in common? What are its classifiable parts?

[[i guess i kind of ignored this prompt actually.]]

In the glass chapel in the autumn Ozarks, with the trees encircling our strangerness into family, you declared your love by sharing its hard birth, in the form of years-old journal entries–you stood on the shore, felt love lapping at your ankles, the pull of the waves, but withheld the ocean from yourselves. Your resistance reveals its depth.

Our two-pew crew grinning glistening, recall how we stood tall twenty years ago outside another church; in its twisted belly our young friend confined with adult addicts, told "finding freedom through Jesus Christ" would cure his "same sex attraction addiction." Lauren Henry's protest sign quoted 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, "Love is patient, love is kind." Decades later, her hand in mine at the wedding, a miracle.


When I met Brock in 2002, he was "bisexual" and this was the "progress" he'd made in "Christian" therapy.


At the reception, Tyler's relatives gave gag gifts and toasts that drooped like eulogies–all past tense in their conviction that he was doomed to burn for eternity. We did not witness the same flame.


Honest to goodness, I was surprised so many conservative family members showed up, anti-vaxxers and Mormons and all, their love expressed as presence, tight-lipped applause, a plastic pail and shovel–a memory of phantom purity, nearly knifing, "Before you made us bury you." Before the waves took the sandcastle away.


Love too brittle breaks.


Brock's dad always terrified me with his grill pit tongs and assured masculinity, judging with his god's eyes. A rigid man who knows straight his place in the world, not seeing how it bends to him. That night in the Eureka Springs Community Center, I saw him moved to bend.


Tyler's dad toasted ice and nothing. "We're glad we met this righteous family." Tried to shake heaven's men's hands over the heads of his son and new son-in-law.


Mr. Terwilleger gripped the mike and a handkerchief crumbled as his face red silent cried whole minutes before mananging, "I love you, son, and I know you love me too."


And all of us in the Eureka Springs Community Center loving your love built a new church to your love and its tough birth and its eternal fire and shoreless sea, raised a monument to acceptance even when we cannot see.

first-aid training

MACRO-EDITING
We are storytelling animals. We relive our days around the dinner table through story. We set the stage; we build suspense; we instinctively know when to shift gears; we pack in the sensory details; we build toward the inevitable conclusion. What we don't do is fret over the order of the story. We don't hit backspace. We don't overthink, and somehow everything that needs to be said gets said!

For today's prompt, let's attempt to transfer that innate storytelling ability to the page by writing a letter. Write this letter as if you were telling someone about the thing that happened to you in line at the bank (or whatever you want to talk about). How would you instinctively begin if you were telling it in person or over the phone? Let your fingers take dictation, and I bet you will manage to include every necessary component without even being conscious of it.



I got this email from Quamesha about how all the "forward-facing staff" have to get first-aid certified in case I guess someone has a heat stroke, which has happened apparently, or like falls down the stairs, which I'm always worrying is about to happen on those narrow stairs–did you know that building is from like 1870-something? It's the last one left from the original marine hospital, well plus there's a little one behind that apartment building, where they used to do laundry i think.
You know before the hospital, it was Fort Pickering and that was a fort but eventually became its own town, separate from Memphis, and it went all the way to Beale Street! And obviously before that the Chickasaw or maybe Cherokee lived there, apparently there's a dispute about it between the tribes, which is supposedly why we don't have a land acknowledgement in our history brochure, at least that's what Brooke told me and I half believe her. She used to work at Chucalissa, which would've been like a suburb compared to the land with the ceremonial mounds where the museum is now. And one time someone visited and pointed to Brooke and asked "Is she real?" aka they were asking if she was indigenous but what a weird way to do that. We gotta get our shit together. Whiteys i mean. I know i know.
So I had to do this virtual CPR training and now I feel like I need to buy first-aid kits for everyone I know. What if we have a kitchen accident! Or the ceiling falls in! I guess I am supposed to know CPR now but we don't even have a tourniquet for fucks sake how am i gonna stop any kind of "life threatening bleeding" which is the same as half a can of soda?? Yes, this much!
But the in-person part of the training got cancelled so I guess I'm still not technically certified but I did take a lot of notes and I feel like I should get credit anyway. Plus I had already decided I wasn't gonna put my mouth on that dummy.

body story

What is it like to live inside your skin? Do you avoid mirrors or look forward to your reflection in every storefront you pass? Do you live with pain? Do you bite your fingernails? Do you have a curve you admire? A Romanesque nose? A frog in your throat? As you consider today's prompt, try not to describe your body as an outside observer: I am 5 ft. 2 inches, etc. Rather, concentrate on one aspect of your body and write about it as if it gave you the exclusive rights to tell its story.



As a kid I loved folding myself into cupboards and under tables.* It all went wrong in 1997. I had slithered under my bed, whether to hide or just relax I can't remember, but next to the missing socks and plastic figurines, I lay on my stomach and experienced a sickly new soreness that drove me to standing, to sleeping on my back.
Sarah Lipski got them first. Mostly I wore baggy clothes so I escaped notice until Mark Jones' end of the year pool party. Why did I choose a bikini? At a sleepover, when I started changing into pajamas, Lauren Dunn screamed, turned, and hid her face.
My high school friends loved lingerie shopping and removing shirts at every opportunity. I found safety in their silliness. Laylee pressed me to a corner in the school hallway, squeezing, "You're not wearing a bra today!" I loved this attention.
But in almost all other contexts - cut them off. In my way. Decades spent flip flopping between baggy/binding "don't see" and braless challenge "fuck you."
I picked up the cat unprepared, he clambers up my shoulder to jump to a chair. I look down at the thin pink line puffing up on my skin. Ellie rushes for the neosporin. "My perfect titty!" Softest skin.
A far cry from too big, too saggy, too uneven, too pale, too strange,** unwieldy annoyance. We've come a long way together, but most of the time they're still too much.
At work I want them flat but it's hard to find a good buttondown without "boob gap." I still get ma'amed but that's not their fault.
I wonder, if I didn't have them, what my softest spot would be.


* I still love it, but it's harder now.
** I was born with a rare genetic condition that results in, amongst other things, whorled birthmarks.

the choice

Elizabeth Bishop's poem "One Art" could be interpreted as a call to take up our pens in order to gain control over the 'disasters' in our lives. Write it to right it, in other words. But I also find meaning in the opening line: "Lose something every day". Considered in tandem with Hemingway's ghostly remnants, this proclamation could become a mantra for writers. Is there something in your work that would be better felt as a reverberation than the cymbal itself? Is there a shadow waiting to emerge? Or perhaps you might approach a new scene by defining what it is (was) not. It was not spring. It was not love. Not an e.e. cummings' poem. etc.

Writing is a permanent road trip, one that does not include GPS. We will inevitably get lost before we find our way. Read Ms. Bishop's poem, and either a.) lose something from a piece of writing, showing us the 'before' and 'after', or b.) write something that approaches/defines a moment in terms of what it was not.



You might already think you know exactly what you'd do, if the choice came to you. You may even have a speech prepared. "I'm supportive, but I would never do it myself." You assure your friends that you have The Right Opinion on this matter. Right Side of History, hmm, sha sha.


Today, expecting certainty, touting your Right Opinions about what Those People do, you cannot imagine yourself among them. Why not?


But, just roll with me for a moment here, say you find yourself in just such a situation – the choice. You're forgetting that you'll be in shock. "This wasn't supposed to happen!" You're caught unprepared. You'll be forced to consider your family, your finances, your health, your future. And taking all this into account, what choice do you really have?


When you come to accept that you must join their ranks of Those People who Do That, you'll be outraged by the obstacles: the red tape, the tests, the money, the waiting. "I can't believe this is such a mess!" You'll moan to a friend over manicures, but she still has the Right Opinion and little need to listen.


No one warns you how to be in your body in those weeks, how to carry the pain along with the knowing.


It might not even hurt.


It might be just like getting a haircut. Shed what weighs you down and emerge refreshed, a whole new you!



Anyone can try it!

hungry scene

Consider Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as you approach today's prompt. We spend most of our time eating, drinking, sleeping, etc., but often we forget to include these seemingly mundane activities into our writing. When these needs are not met, we can't achieve all of the lofty things to which our great minds aspire. Go back into a piece you've been working on, and re-see it to include some bodily functions. Or create a new scene that centers on a meal or the absence of a meal. What does hunger feel like? Or cleanliness? Thirst?



No one else diagnosed it trauma, but you knew from its numbness - the ice water shock state that left you inert in the sterile twin bed. You forgot hunger, desire, love - all eclipsed by fear - is he here?

“You know, they won’t let you out unless you eat something.”

Well I didn’t know. Treatment happens at and around you, never with or through. Livid, lose the long days layed out in unrest. Someone reminds you to bathe, offers soft fresh cotton and yes standing under water brought you back to yourself, a bit. (Though admit it, you loved hairy pit stink skulking to the wall installed phone to take a call from Mama and swinging filthy feet at phantoms in the night.)

The meds you fought kicked in finally and swung you back to yourself so hard, you whiplashed out the other side as someone you’d never met - someone brave and wanting. Meanwhile, the nutritionist prescribed Vitamin D and Ensure and you’re so full of chocolate corn syrup you don’t even mind not sleeping. The halls and machines take shape out of what was permanent fuzz, a bleary blindness layered over living that serves to separate You from your present state, a fog that thickened over years, protection from violence that wouldn’t go away. And you too stayed.

Now knee jerk restless nights and you can’t stop looking toward the window, just in case. What if…? The door opens every fifteen minutes and they’ll mark on your chart that you’re asleep unless you wave. Hunger claws up with visions of a stage, the sharp cramp reminds you it’s hard to be brave.

snapdragons discover each other

WEEK 5 – REVIEW REMIX REVISE
Write your autobiography (not memoir but the entire story of your life) on one page, in ten minutes. Seriously, set a timer.

What are you surprised you left out? What are you glad you left out? What frightens you? Now, pick one detail from the original piece, and let it be the point of departure for a second draft of the same length.



Once the clouds came, I could not see my way out from under them. Maybe they'd been gathering all along, but at 13 dark shapes blocked the sky entirely, and 16 raged full hurricane. By then at least I'd found kindred spirits to weather the storm with. Outsiders called us "the emo kids," sensing some of our emotional intensity, but not understanding our shared sensuality, vulnerability, sensitivity, queerness. I put my every everloving egg in this friend basket, a wreck without it. Sometimes I even shattered in the safety of the nest – hiding in the closet with the cat box at my costume party. But when we were good? No lunch table laughed louder. Underwear dance parties, rolling down golf course hills, making music + movies, cigars at the diner, a home in every park + parking lot. No romance ever punctured the sanctity of our circle, and we prided ourselves on silliness in sobriety. Key word "sincerity." We found each other in the fortress of a public institution, improbably, when many of us were at our lowest. All our eggs riding in that collective basket. Nested my confidence + capability atop them, our strength woven into a community. (I'd argue this was our queerest characteristic at the time.) And even knowing all this, the immense love and shared support between us "snapdragons," I never realized how lost I'd be without it.

part one of the above assignment

~This is how we do it!~ 

Memphis mud raised your blistered body little mammal. They sorted you out a sister, these stupid hobbitses, the sweetest kinds. Take them under the table. Grumpy from the start, curious of letters + making nonsense of sense. Circle the family of colors. School, a disaster. Friends turned populuar while you mudlark wandered tree bark scars. When the clouds came, you could not see a way from out under them. The dismal grey stretched forever, school a prison, teachers torture – truly did feel this extreme, poor thing. Not much to compare it to. When you "finally" found friends you pulled them tight to you, maybe scary in your wanting. Only knowing all or nothing. Prided yrself on sober fun but New Orleans didn't let that last, sometimes you think it all got lost, left like Mardi Gras trash in the street – but try to make it beads in trees, gleaming plastic. You were still learning, the booze did take you down some strange streets. You wonder how you stayed alive – unknown magic + clown gods carry you through – but why? What awaits? You survived confused consent + not knowing you could say no. Flower petal scarred. Bloom sideways softly into queerness finally find the words, the love. Get the labels you deserve. Diagnosis, partnership, community. Crawl back to the mud, hush puppy, dirt dobber, swell onto the shore. See the world worth fighting for. Look toward the So Much More.

bless the decomposers

River Teeth Journal accepts submissions for a weekly column called "Beautiful Things." It asks for flash CNF, 250 words or less. Here is a sample: What I Made

Feel free to visit their archives and review the types of work they've published, then write your own potential submission to the "Beautiful Things" column.




To hear Lula Mae tell it, you'd think that old wood shack sat near paradise, rather'n some backwoods holler. Now this would've been before a kitchen fire took that old house like tinder. They hardly got out the door with their britches and Grandma Janie's portrait.

Even before all that, there weren't much to it, other'n a shack to sleep in and a crick to spit in. Tough times yield tough folk, they say, but sure did have the nicest damn outhouse in all Brantley County– corn cobs and sears-roebuck catalog right up there by the seat. Lula Mae swears those amenities meant the Jacobs never had trouble with hemmorhoids– even their assholes were tough. And if that weren't enough, God sent dung beetles. What a blessing for someone else to do the dirty work! Lula never spent a day turning the latrine, thanks to those bugs carrying off what we can't keep in. In fact, she sat on that throne, just smelling the partridgeberry, till somebody caught her and set her back to chores. Least that's how Lula Mae tells it.

Well, I'll be! Almost makes you miss somethin you never knew you had a want for.

I'd rather be on tour - open/closed

After reading about open and closed texts, write two versions of the same moment/emotion/memory. The first version should be a closed text: the characters are placed in concrete settings with concrete circumstances surrounding their existence. The second version should be an open text: the characters and their settings are abstract (be sure to read the examples provided in Cunningham's essay). Language will be the distinguishing factor in these pieces, where the open texts invite lyricism and the closed texts embrace clarity.



petalled out the bayou loaded down with oversize eyes blazed up with whisky cigarettes and hope. how could we not. we could not not. tied together time again toppled over tricksy grin rough cheek touch chin when whispers teach lips how to bend.

glow west spun clown, spell pan's peter to prairie stars, four score lightnings, hit high bars. come quake awhile mischief moon pull cards swoon whisky fool drop to marsh bed know thy sting, uncrumple toward my shoes and feet.

swell baby say's not morning, never not night, don't shrug me onto cali tides- trade forest kiss for memory misplaced, how hard i hid from day. onion mouth swim south bayou-bound sweet fae we caught vision gleaming sparked it up in flames.

When I took the gig in California, I brought Tom with me. Just for the ride. I'd never been further west than Dallas and that was a middle school (i.e. miserable) band trip. Turned out Tom wanted to catch up with friends out that way, so we made a two week road trip out of it. When I arrived in New Orleans to collect him, I slipped into step with my Aquarius twin, and we abruptly turned nocturnal.


We missed the Tumbleweeds on St. Claude's but Sam gave us their album anyway and we played it through 5 states. Staying with friends saved money for alcohol, decadence. We were not good house guests.


We reluctantly rolled into Humboldt on my birthday, 6 days before his. I didn't want him to leave, I didn't want to stay. Any time I'm on the road, I want to live there–the brightness, the immediacy–the precious hours of moored friendships. But this time, whether in spite or because of the excess, especially so. He felt magic.


Don’t leave.


Our closing night playing invulerable intimate might stand in for the whole trip: we got beer and burgers at the local pub, shot pool, made out, found a liquor store, attempted to find the ocean, waded into a marsh in the rain and Tom had to slap my face to keep me from sleeping in the muck. We probably shared a bed one last time but I was too drunk to remember.


Looking back it's clear–half that magic was mine.

to start the work of unlearning is to see the cycle

WEEK 4 - Stretching our limits must begin with where we draw the line. What details are you leaving out? What observations or thoughts are you withholding for fear of appearing unlikable? Today's prompt offers two options: 1. Go back into the previous weeks' prompts and rewrite a response to include the detail that frightens you. 2. Write the scene you believe your family or significant other would least like to read. The goal is not to create shock value nor to feel pressured into picking open an emotional scab. Simply let yourself be round and full and fantastically human.

"What the fuck is wrong with everyone!! These fucking brights!" I growl into the glare behind a stoplight.

"Honey, they probably don't know how to turn them off." Jerel's voice a balm to my burn. The coolness makes me squirm.

"Well someone needs to tell them!!! It's ridiculous." I flash my brights back at them, frantic, useless.

"They don't know what that means, it's probably stressing them out. And it's not helping anybody to get so angry about something you have no control over."

"I'm not angry! I'm just annoyed." My toes curl as I lean into the steering wheel. Pulse against the tension. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. 

"Okay, you're upset. If anything, focusing on other people instead of on your own driving makes everyone less safe." They've withered somehow in the passenger seat, a thousand miles away. 

My softest sweetest one. I've erased the hope of safety, what else have I shattered?  

Remember how you suffocated your fear, tried to magic it into excitement and pride when Chris would blitz the 695, blast off east coast needle roads, this very same vehicle, but you in the passenger seat–cringing, calcifying–absorbing, uncovering. 

You'll bleed and bleat "toxicity" "insecurity" and "men" but can't unswallow all you drank. He may have punched the wall, but it was you who pushed the table, toppled bottles off the trailer deck, threatened the tulsi and thyme. 

Even now you blame this man when you know full well you practiced all along. Slam the door, dishwasher rack rattle, stomp and shake. 

You stare straight the halos of approaching light, forcing the worse worst. Seeth small. Simmer. Settler. You wear whiteness, wield it as your white hatchback, allowed to curse at cops, colonizer. Pave the road to meet you, expect doors to open and lights to shine correctly and when they don't? 

What might have been relief (how Ellie reads this little bicker "anger" when you aren't even screaming, maybe you could even turn that story true) collapses into horror that they knew its size before you let yourself see–the source, the cycle–learned supremacy.

the good dentist

At this point in the week, hopefully your brain has been good and fooled into thinking you have abandoned the writing ship in favor of loftier pursuits, which means it's time to get serious. If you've been stuck on a piece of writing you started a month ago or last year or in a previous decade, it probably means a.) You are married to some portion of it you fell in love with the moment the words left your fingertips, but now you can't stand to look at it. You want to make it work, but in the words of Janis Joplin, "Honey, deep down in your heart you know it ain't right." b.) You are writing about something that isn't true enough yet. You are avoiding the thing that will make it true, and up until now, you haven't been able to talk about it, let alone write about it. c.) The story you are telling is not fully in your possession; research is needed to add credibility to the subject.

Open the file of an old, unfinished draft, and come at it from a new angle. Consider a different point of view. Be liberal with the delete key. Don't hesitate to dive into the deep end or to make a phone call to confirm expert details. Writers know that the real magic happens in revision, and you are a writer. You are a writer. Say it with me...



“It’s 99 degrees, but feels like 106 out there!” My dentist starts things casual.



“Can you turn toward me? That’s perfect.” In his chair, everything I do is perfect. I don’t know what he looks like under the blue face mask, but his young eyes are kind and his gloved hands are gentle. I want to have sex with my dentist.



I point to my aching molar. “Yeah, you’re riding it pretty hard.” He warns me before he inserts the needle. He explains everything as he does it, thoroughly, carefully. “Let me know if this is painful, and we’ll stop.” My dentist would never hurt me.



Every minute or so, he eases up to let me rest my jaw. I’ve never known a man who offered that. Most move harder. But my dentist says, “We can go as slow as you need to.”



He offers me a foam cushion, meant to help me stay in position longer. “Some people like it; some people don’t.” He sees my hesitation. “Okay, let’s try without it.” We try without it, and stop each time I need a break. My dentist is infinitely patient.



Later, he brings it up again, shows it to me–a soft tan block. I don't love the look of it, but why not try? I can be kinky. Once it’s in position, I instantly hate it. I don’t have to speak, just shake my head. He apologizes and it's gone for good. Unlike former partners, he won't ask me to contort around his desire. My dentist is sensitive to my needs.



I wait for the familiar pressure of the drill. “Is this okay?” My dentist will fill my every cavity and I will become whole again.

letter to the editor

Read the editorial page of your local newspaper. Find something to agree or disagree with, and spend your lunch hour writing a letter to the editor about your informed and passionate opinion. Again, this is not really a writing exercise, per se, but an opportunity to exercise your civic rights and participate in public discourse.



I request that your news organization immediately begin a PSA campaign concerning a matter of utmost importance. Your recent "Stop Buying Massive Trucks" editorial missed a key component in the battle for our city streets–people need to turn off their brights. You need to tell everybody to turn off their brights, especially those luxury trucks. Why not hire Big Ass Truck to compose a jingle? If they sang "Everybody please switch off your brights!" I'm sure people would get the message. And for BAT's next reunion show, they can change their band name to something more reasonable.


While there are countless reasons to support this cause, I will only share the top three, as I'm sure you have important barbecue reviews to write.
Light pollution harms the local fauna. Surely you've noticed the lightning bug population shrinking. I think it's bad for bats too. Anything nocturnal probably hates it when people drive with their brights on.
Nobody needs to use brights unless they're illegally driving with a busted headlight and/or MLGW failed to address another streetlight outage. If you made it to the depths of the suburbs, maybe you can turn them on. But in town? No.
It hurts my eyes and I hate going out at night now. My parents won't drive after dark anymore either, so I have to do it for them. I can't see with all these brights in my eyes, y'all. I'm driving here!

My partner assures me that most people don't know they're turned on. And I calmly respond, "Well obviously that's why I'm siginalling them!" as I rapidly flash my headlights into oncoming traffic. My partner believes people don't know that either. Well then what DO people know?!


I look forward to next week's editorial and prime time radio ad please and thank you.