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.

lost thought trails

Well this morning, i spent an embarrassingly long time debating whether to start a Patreon or Ko-fi or something, and i still haven't come to any conclusions except for that maybe my anxiety meds aren't very effective.

Last week an anvil of a thought dropped on me–heavy, sudden, impossible. "What if I wrote about Marianne?" I wondered out of absolutely nowhere. And just now, I lost an hour plodding through why I should or shouldn't write about Marianne before I realized i didn't want to share all those reasons with y'all, and encouraging responses would only make the decision more difficult. So maybe I'll work up to giving it a shot and seeing how that feels... But i'm not there yet.

I don't want to go into work on Friday but it'll be nice to have the extra green beans. My birthday is Sunday and I don't want to see anyone. Or I've convinced myself that I don't want to because I don't know how we'd do it safely and ethically. I'm having weird feelings remembering a road trip I was on exactly 10 years ago.

Now I'm hungry and writing is a great way to procrastinate cooking.

Just kidding, trying to write while hungry is a great way to get absolutely nothing done.

I'm overthinking this. It's sorta funny how suddenly there's nothing to say, as soon as the prompt is as simple as "say anything."

Honestly I'm still stuck on reliving that road trip. It's...trippy. How Tom and I were so close, two Aquariuses at home in our season even as we bumbled across the country. We drank too much and became nocturnal, but that only heightened our bond, its magic. It's still crushing, how easily we let that bubble burst.

lament of ineloquence

If you are anything like me, you devote a solid portion of every week to thinking about assorted family members. They are always in your head, and haven't you been bringing them up at the dinner table? Let your fingers take dictation and type the gripes or anecdotes while you talk. Since you're at the computer anyway, segue into a memory and rewrite (revise) it. Change the season of the event. Create a new climax. Let it unfold into a new and desirable outcome or vice versa. The idea is to imagine the answer to "What If?" Set the stage using scene and exposition, and after you've rewritten your past, include your present feelings about the alteration.

"What did you think of the song?" 

After moving back home post-breakdown, I rejoined my old theatre troupe, and with a new lease on life, I'd grown temporarily fearless. No one asked me to do this, but I wrote an a capella lament for the finale of the show, a retelling of Hamlet with Trumpism as its source of tragedy. 

"Well... it was pretty repetitive." 

Take my ashes / Take my ashes

Thanks, Mom. "I guess I was trying to express being at rock bottom. You know, when you're so low you can only feel that one thing? Haven't you ever felt disenfranchised?" 

Did you think you had a voice? / No one can hear you, no one can see you 

Dad looks blank. Of course not, culture has curled around his desires–everyone a Marvel fan. 

Did you think you had a choice? / You've been bought, you've been sold 

I'm lucky to have parents who love and accept me unconditionally. So why is it impossible to share?

This is the part where you give up

This time, you find how to say what you mean–not in lyrics, but now, on the couch. They turn off their screens to listen, attentive, without wearing their skeptical eyebrows. Steady breath, not impatient sighs.

By the end of your speech, peppered with their thoughtful questions, you have successfully conveyed generational mental unwellness as a condition of capitalism and climate crisis, the consequences of liberalism, queer time theory, and how every superhero movie is a cop movie. Maybe they won't, or can't, agree entirely. But through their love, they make every effort to understand, and if, and when, they don't, they lift you higher because they know you have to tell these stories, and they know there's someone who needs to hear.  

If only. 

awaken the crepusculator!

Before bed, spend a few minutes thinking about your morning routine. Then, close your eyes and imagine how you might weave elements of the fantastic into the chronology. Be sure to make notes on your imaginings before you fall asleep, and don't forget to share your final results...



when the last light flickers shut, the scent of cedar candle turns the loudest thing in the bedroom. tomorrow has to come again, so wake me up in the woods.

when a sip of sun spills over the trees, i'll still not want it. nuzzle further into the pillow pile of my soft siblings as they're yawning into consciousness, as it dawns on them, day/light. their hunger rumbles them toward mama bear, though weaned means tracing her lead to the river, the out of bounds, the beyond the cave mouth, unknown. how could anyone be ready to go?

what i know is dark, cold, i have not needed day.
though i am loath to leave my hole, my kindred will not wait.

touch your paw pad to the dewy dirt.
let's give that a minute to take.

i come crepuscular.

now– assured, surround the careless air, become covered in the hum of honeybees, notice how your gait changes when the light and leaves conspire to gift you with a dappled coat–how you feel now your fur is armor.

the sleuth of us all lumber long the river bank river bed disarming doe commandeer their roughage acorns clover clean canines fell beehives wink sleepy chuff ready den bound bear family, all of us me.

in my short leg curvy fit black skinny jeans and button down, mr rogers sweater, medicine worn and written and swallowed, with my paper water wallet phone keys mask LUNCH, ready to do day, i say ursula lead the way.

restaurant review

"..if you can't make something out of a little experience, you won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not be merged in it." ~Flannery O'Connor

We need not feel limited by geography nor our financial ability to accumulate passport stamps. If you've eaten a meal at a restaurant recently, you've earned an experience. The same is true of your healthcare and consumer experiences. For today's prompt, review an experience you've had in which the service was remarkable (good or bad). Imagine this less as a Travelocity review and more as an expert critique that might appear in a newspaper or magazine.



In times like these, when we must abstain from feasting at our favorite restaurants, we must bring the fine dining to us. Yesterday I had the pleasure of "calling in" and "picking up" from one of the most well-established establishments on Overton Square.


As I waited in the Curbside Pickup Lane, "10 minutes only," I had the opportunity to observe a photographer in her natural habitat, willing any kind of inspiration to appear in her subject's head shot - apart the turquoise wall of her backdrop of choice, the dreary suit's LinkedIn profile would be identical to the next. Cringe.



Before I knew it, the graceful and talented Vanessa appeared, heaving a large bag and two plastic cups through my passenger seat's window, just as I managed to clear all the paper off the seat. Although I cannot see her smile, I perceive it twinkling behind her mask. Ah, the service of an angel. "Y'all have a great day!" Alone again, I lingered a moment to absorb the bouquet of greasy aromas pouring into every crevice (and immediately escaping through the ineffective sun roof) of my chariot.



Once back home, I had the pleasure of spreading my delectable spread across the coffee table, whilst only knocking over one or two of the tchotchkes that reside there. As I folded into the deep, fraying cushions of my sofa and tucked into my banquet, I had the presence of mind to remind Dr. G. Willikers of his place at the table. "Get offa there, Willie!"


Before I could comprehend what had transpired, I found myself clutching the dripping remains of my Beyond-veggie-burger-with-avocado-and-roasted-garlic-aioli. The bun in tatters, my fingers soused, garments dappled, it finally dawned on me how this enterprise earned the moniker "Belly Acres." I highly recommend the peanut-butter-milkshake.

overtime in ATX

....Think about the jobs you've held over your lifetime. Which one would you want to pull back the curtain to show us what's going on backstage? Set the scene and give a little background information (research) on the industry via exposition.



I'm not a morning person. My best-friend-turned-coworker Laylee usually arrives first, and I stay late, after she's caught the bus. But today is my morning. Laylee warned me, but how bad could it be?


Well, it's bad. I left Hercules out overnight, hoping he'd catch the rats that keep chewing the food bins. He may have had... too much fun. There's spilled kibble everywhere and tufts of hair from apparent scuffles. Somehow (mystery of the day) room 3's door unlatched, so "The Frat House" boys tracked litter mud across the floor's chipped paint.


Aaaaand there's rat turds on the printer. Again. Thanks for nothing, Hercules. Your hero's name does not suit.


When it's time to open, I've only managed to scoop about 1/3 of the ~75 litter boxes in the cattery, and I haven't even gotten to ISO yet. Sandy and Qalla are on ringworm watch, so they have to quarantine, and I'll have to spray myself with bleach after interacting with them, to kill any potential fungal spores. I can't leave the cattery unattended, but I know without looking that they've made a mess.


Visitors start to trickle in. Plastering on my biggest smile, I give my practiced speil to two UT students. "Welcome to the cattery! You're welcome to visit with any of the kitties, but please read all the signs, and sanitize your hands between cats so we can keep everyone healthy."


I want adopters to see personalities before judging, so I casually mention, "There are more adoptable cats in two other buildings, so you may want to visit the FeLVies first." Cats with feline leukemia2 are susceptible to illness, and I don't want to spread URI because, wouldn't you know it, everyone and their cousin caught the sniffles this week. There's always something going around in here. But visitors will consider the residents of the Ringworm Ward and FeLVieland "sick" without even taking the time to meet them.


But these two aren't adopters. I already know the question about to rocket out this sorority girl's mouth."Do you have any KEH-ENS?" My teeth clenched inside an exhausted smile, I lead them to the wrestling mass of kittens in the last group room (yes we DO hide them on purpose) who immediately begin to scale my threadbare jeans. Yowch. Keep smiling. I leave them to it, their coos following me back to my scooper. The day has only just begun.

tuesday 2 galloped off without me

Instead of surfing or scrolling, journal while you wait to have a cavity filled or for your stepson to file out of the locker room. Don't think too hard about what you want to write; just put words on the page. Find a point of departure in your surroundings (the shadow of a tree branch, a whiff of burning wood) and follow the stream of consciousness to its conclusion.

It's been a long time since I said it out loud, so I can't remember if I told you. Light shines through me and I don't feel the rain. Things that go bump in the night? I am one. I can squeeze a scream out of any body. "What IS that thing?!" Shifting shimmer, ghoulie glimmer. Can't pin down what you can't catch. Touch. Look beyond the outline, the person-shape show, what is found there? (I can't tell you. Either you don't, or you know.) 

LISTEN hear a howling see me scowling and you think I'm hear to haunt you when I offer you a piece, just a morsel, just a crumb of what brought me to the brink – I'm the one who's haunted, can't unsee what I have seen, can't erase the knowledge that to believe is to perceive. And don't you find it frightening if you ever stop to think that if we built it, we can break it, we can all rewrite the scene: won't sell our labor if you treat us like we're cogs in the machine.

OKAY so it's cliche, rhymes are crimes, but here's the thing– when you're haunted + you know it, you'll try anything to reach the ears + move the feels of everyone you meet. so remember: dusky shadows, muffled moaning, that door too slowly creaks open on its accord were all messages from me–soft reminders to lose yr blinders and remember what you see is just a fraction of a world trapped by rigidity. But if you want it bad enough, it doesn't have to be.  Imagine you're beyond all this, that you finally get free to do just what you want to do and be a ghost like me!

letter to them that lost belief

....Consider what you might say now to the person you were when you were 17 or the person you were yesterday: the one who believed it was "too late." Write a letter to that version of yourself, incorporating the techniques you've practiced in each daily prompt: the language you unearthed in your "Where I Come From" piece, the concrete nouns and action verbs you unleashed in your song analysis, the sensory details of your observation, and the lyricism of your ekphrasis.



Honey, you who lies facedown in the ditch, don't eat that dirt. Oh i'm sure it's full of nutritious minerals and worms, but what about the toxic chemical plant just over the fence? Cmon now, up.


Come inside, warm yr Self in the honeyed glow of teatime lamplight. Breathe cool over the hot mug before you kiss it. There. Let the heat sink to your bones. Now do you remember? Your warmth is your strength; your joy, radical, blazes.


Times you'll forget but: the loonier you be, the easier they'll see, and idnt there room for more fools at the party? Don't make it harder for them to find you! There's enough suffering in this world such as it is!


So, spin song out, put dance down. Get pen on paper. Your loud love spills over all containers. Let it. Honey, glow. Do, and you'll--

inside the violet boudoir

....Find a painting or a sculpture or any work of fine art to admire online and write an ekphrastic response. Ekphrasis is simply writing about art, and I encourage you to write in the form that comes most naturally to you as you study the work.


[content warning: slightly erotic, i got carried away! [also i have no idea if i'm doing this right. [also i cheated and kind of used 2 paintings.]]]

The Interior of the Boudoir by Lily Elbe as Einar Wegener

What violets dropped their petals here? A trail of femme jewels, from the dainty teapot to the gilded mirror. You left hints, scattered as shawls on chairs, but the world at large didn't see you yet. Sure, everybody loves a painting of a nude woman–reasonable and healthy desire, quite. But you echoed a secret in the wallpaper woods: these naked ladies are a mirror, not a window. The Buddha with his back to them must have had a front row seat for the real deal.


You danced home from the party, giddy and spinning, warm with kisses and wine. Not ready to let night's magic slip away, you strummed a tune on the lute while Gerda undressed, until her beauty and smoky sweet scent overcame you. The lute's strings still, you unbuckled your boot, its high heel pressed gently to her clavicle. She finds her way back to the flowers below the skirts. You are no longer "cousin," no longer "husband," just yourself, coming undone, petals. These ruffles form a vignette of the clandestine music you'll one day play for all of Europe: when the Fairy mouths a secret to the Jester, strums the hidden, till she puts her lute down.


NSFW: erotic scene by Gerda Wegener

park notes

"The question is not what you look at, but what you see." ~ Thoreau

As you wait for a bus or stand in line at the grocery store, imagine that later you will be asked to describe the people and setting surrounding you. Keep a notebook in your pocket and jot down the mannerisms of the cashier or customers beside you. Far more interesting than a person's height or hair color are a person's nervous tics. Body language speaks volumes about character, and like a signature, it is a distinguishing feature. Most importantly for writers, this kind of detail allows us to simultaneously engage our readers' imaginations and reveal truth through our observations. Record the sounds and smells, the feelings and sights in your notebook then tuck it away until you have to time to savor and immortalize them in scene.

Peabody Park speaks through yelling fans + screeching tires + booming (hot) box + shrieking children.


Tracksuit Mama tugs the leash of Reluctant Puppy; he won't leave the parking lot. When she lifts him by his front legs, he looks both miserable and stunned.


Sport, is that any way to carry a football? It falls to the yellowed grass.


Dad meticulously wipes down the minivan's interior windshield. Folds the rag. Little circles. He exits, one long headphone cord draped over his shoulder, forgotten, and reaches to scratch the place where it bounces against his back.


One-handed, Lipstick Mama pushes an empty stroller, Big-Bow Baby on her hip, walking westward, eyes squinted against afternoon sun, intent on the nearest picnic table. Baby starts crying.


"Take me home"


Sport walks pressed against Coffee Dad, travel-mug in hand and phone to ear.


Moms wave, but don't talk. An intermittent squeaking from the rusty swingset.


"David! Up! Look up!" Lipstick Mama calls towards the horde of children scuttling along playground equipment. None of them is looking up; she says it straight: "Airplane! Up!" and back to changing BBBaby.


Social Butterfly, tired of the younger kids, spots an opportunity. He deftly runs to the field, not-so-deftly attempts a cartwheel, and positions himself hopefully in a triangle with Starbucks+Son. They manuever south.


Car Dad again wipes the windshield, a green rag this time.


"Nice catch!"


Puppy doesn't wanna leave. Tired Mama leans against the gazebo.


Butterfly returns to the fray with a freshly donned facemask. Again, Sport tackles the ball and won't get up.


The hot-boxers turn down the music and the window. Above the tint, all I see is a red cap.


A garbage bag waves like a flag, dangling from the veiny Oak. Ellie takes my picture from a distance.

the knife - tooth for an eye

....After reading "DA ART OF STORYTELLIN'", spend some time listening to music. Find a song that sounds like what you feel but have difficulty articulating....

....When you've settled on a song, try describing the feeling it conjures using concrete language. (Rather than abstractions like beautiful, sad, happy, etc., strive for sensory detail. Use as many action verbs as possible. Create a movie for the soundtrack.)

time travel to 10 years ago, "january 2012." jangle into the routine of ["the state of living death routinely called"] our "real life."* fold into the monotony of modernity, its loping pace, the high hat, the wood block. let the steel drum peal signal the singer, the story teller, the truth sayer, whose keening call pierces through the walls of drumbeats, of hearts. we are cracked open.



this voice hollows/ hollers/ holds/ and won't let go. "look what we have got"– own our privilege and witness disparity. shake our heads at someone else's "bad luck," but secretly believe it will always be this way–the rush, the crush, routine, bleed, forever, "even in the suburbs of Rome!" from wail to screech to pigeon somehow, suddenly buoyant. grief can't land here long.



sway into stacking rhythms, loping forward always, leaning towards next. overworked, micromanaged, drums pounding, on track, see nothing beyond what the algorhythms allow. "release my eyes"–climb above plastic stacked shelves, psychographics, disney abroad. tune into the lifestream, seek human connection, trills–"tell me you." beg to know and be known, swing together brief, somehow be persons.



bass and drum thump/ cut/ gut/ relentless, frantic–try to dance, feel the shift between syncopated beats. can you breathe? this loop is useless, "picking piles of flowers for the flowers' pot" — scooping, grasping, desperate – "it's all that i've got." see the cycle, know its net. despair, rage, yes, but believe.



rhythms slam against each other, crescendo to cacophony, it can't be loud enough. "a tooth for an eye" is a sorry bargain. a child's frustration: overlooked, unheard, clutching tight their knowing, pleading, "i'm telling you stories, trust me."* cling to their trampled truth: "borders lie," no one owns the land, "drawing lines with a ruler" arbitrary, gatekeeping.



stagger toward the roar, revive the steel drum call to arms, revise the line between need and desire. “open my country.” dance toward revolution.




*Jeanette Winterson quotes

southern soup

Read Sally Fisher's poem "Where I Come From." Consider where you 'Come From' and write a prose poem (a paragraph) using words that reflect who you are.


grandma from the Mountains, papa from the Swamp - appalachia and okefenokee white poverties, both their mamas gave up, stopped talking. imagine 11 kids and no indoor plumbing, no options. to heck with this! i oughta give em credit for all they'done but selfish, all i see is me - how it woulda been had it not been this - what if i was a child of a civil war soldier (deserter after he got bayoneted in the head and took for dead - he walked home) and had nothing for me but marriage and babies and 'parently hereditary chemical depression. already! how far back, ya think? and when did the anxiety get worked in? did it start when granny's italy-to-mississippi immigrated dad, a barber, got given the wrong heart pills by the pharmacist, a drunk, and it killed him? or did it come by way of a ranger's watch tower, granddaddy alone in the woods in the high humid air of old natchez trace, spyin for a sign of fire? if they learnt it, did i get it? or was it in us all along? they say how you were in yr gramma - how yr mama's fetus grew its eggs, the only ones to last a lifetime, and one of em was you - so what did grandma learn me then in 1955, not 2 years since the drunk doctor miscarried her child during labor? i tell it like the drunks are all Those'uns, but truth be told, we got em too. and when and how does that start, and when and how does that end? misuse of alcohol, depression, GAD, PTSD, OCD, ADD, all those damn abbrevs. as far as i can see, the only way it ends is me. rest easy y'all, i set you free!

introductions forum

hey there buddies


i'm a busted queer millennial fool, hunkered down in my hometown of memphis, tennessee, though i have previously lived in baltimore, ATX, humboldt county, the blue ridge mountains, and nola. all along, i've been pingponging the pendulum of art and activism, with the attention span of a fruit fly on the produce aisle. one day i hope to figure out how to do both at once.


i've got a lot of words: scripts, lyrics, lines (hardly passable as poems), blogs, 2 published movie reviews, and 2 many journals. as a young adult, i had a whole philosophy about why i wouldn't take a writing class, but luckily that guy's a ghost now and we figured it's high time to bury the hatchet. also i would like to establish a ~practice~ as they say and maybe even finish something! or start something finishable.


i confess i am more a fiction reader, generally, but recently i've enjoyed cindy crabb, kate bornstein, and eileen myles. i also love the memoirs of maxine hong kingston, patti smith, and jeanette winterson.


typically i prefer writing like this, sans captials, but i understand that it's harder for some folks to read so i will try to get over myself and tell my pinkie that it must shift. once it understands what we're doing here, i think it'll be just as excited as everyone else. the tactile joy of typing! i could go on! but probably i should use this energy for the prompt. i wonder if i can edit this.


anyway i'm happy/nervous/bumbling to be here and i'm looking forward to diving into everyone's work!


EDIT: i wanted to add this piece by daniel lavery as a favorite, even though i personally love possums.

personal essay week 5 - folks i might have been (unfinished)

CHANGELING

because i took too long and came out wrong. a dry birth. then blistered itchy angry. hold me heal me never leave me. “didn’t i come to bring you a sense of wonder?” doctors said marble cake and mutant. Trina Schart Hyman said i looked like a fairy baby and mama said she was right. after all, she should know, go and see. but i didn’t, couldn’t know, not yet. i only knew: lesions, discomfort, this world wasn’t made for me. 

WATER SPRITE

CROUCHED in moss and caked in mud and soaking sprouting to the sun

BRING the hose over puddle the clover  fountain spray and rainbow days

LAUGH the salt sea through yr nose wriggling tickling pond minnows

moisture pleasure gangly dancer 

ropes of water twist and wind

sit in trees on rainy days

watch the stream run down the drain

a whole world in the moss 

sometimes flying!

MONSTER

oh i only grew smaller. everyone else got taller. lonely little mutant. never knew what went on at parties, never made friends easy, and then i stopped speaking. i missed all the teachings, both classroom and playground, how my breasts would grow round, too soon and too much, examining tufts of new hair down there and compare to the diagram to see where i stand -- is this when i’m called woman?

and then i stopped speaking.  undiagnosed anxiety, depression, and ADD, unrelastic expectations, abstience-only sex education, pimpled lonely and confused, i came to the conclusions that i was built wrong, that i would never be loved, but most definitely never make a baby. i won’t continue the cycle of genes that make me want to die, pitted skin and missing teeth, monster mutant coward creep. 

 

HYDRA

we roared to life in the mid-early aughts, all fire and spit, chomping at the bit. our ideas, countless and unrestrained. you'd think it would be difficult for us to bite off more than we could chew, between three mouths. maybe we just didn't have the stomach for it. 

we slid into a story: built the world so we could tell it, lived in it so we could share it. meanwhile, made out, tripped out, fell down, banged about, raged, and connived, in various configurations of one and two and three. always a party. well, until

i can't go on like this. it's too much it's too much. i can't breathe through the poison. i can't see the swan. 

"OH YES YOU WILL AND YOU HAD BETTER SHIP SHAPE SOON" came the voices of my like minds, one in each ear. i had fallen, shriveled, i'd been cut off. they wouldn't hear that i was done. like rising from the dead, like Euripedes said, when i came back up, now i was two heads. once three, now four, surely we could tell the story, if we put our minds to it, even bigger than before. grow the world, live the tale, multiply each time we fail. 

(when you fell, we pretended not to miss you. what's just one head, anyway? we are legion, leviathan, unstoppable by now. it was as if you were merely sleeping. maybe that was true, but the balance was askew, and the remaining first two couldn't manage without their third. the same poison slithers through our shared blood. you couldn't stay down long. up you sprang, a lucky thing, with two new points of view.)

a polycephalitic wonder, from three to one to hundreds, we forged ourself when we attempted creation. all we wanted was to bring out a story's essence, to see our hero's life through. to make it real, we lived it -- and its completion meant our end. the hero found our weakness: she had been our only purpose, but we made her independent. when she was done, she didn't need us. the hero had the better story. the story finished us. 

 

 

TRICKSY PISKIE // GOBLIN??

whisk up the biscuit mix spoon it out in shoes 

fridge door open

oops wrong room

paw through tumped out trash crash into every owl

smoke butts, only 

butts taste awful 

late night possum pizza party where were you?

dawn wants squatters

bed loves noon

don’t talk about next week, it’s only saturday

some thing wicked? 

come this way

climb up the mountainside, never reach the top

they blew it up 

to reach the rock

pissed in jensen in the stall wide open

bird bone rotten

oak leaf awesome

french broad river

ice white soup

cows’ calls penetrate walls, sing up to the moon

pick through pasture

trip on shrooms

cows low solo sows’ woes good luck sleeping through it 

show up christian 

go home druid

 

WITCH

and i don’t mean some instagram crystals manifest #blessed self-serving bullSHIT. leave me out of it. i wonder if anyone’s ever been scared of you. “why should they be? i’m one of the good ones!” pshhhhh you are the ancestor of colonizers. you are the product of genocide. and when you talk to your spirits, you ask for MORE?? do you ever consider what you could offer? not the wine and herbs on your table, not the exchange you make for your own blessing. what are you willing to sacrifice?

when i crawled out of the bog, and i saw the world i’d come back to, i cried. the ache of emptiness overpowered me. i wailed as i pulled sticks out of my tangled hair, grieving for the barren land. palms and forehead pressed to the earth, i moaned, drank dirt, made mud of tears. here, sing a song to soothe, find ways to patch the wounds. comfrey and yarrow to mend, fire and smoke to clear. implore the elements to guide me, make me strong, so that i might return their strength threefold. 

i see far and wide, it’s too much, all wrong. 

take the day off and put the night on. the moon’s familiar face warms, reminds me that we will keep moving, we have to. we are not always getting better, bigger; we grow in all directions. i love the moon, and the moon loves me back: knowing this sends me spinning through trees, a drop of ink spilling into the night, hungry, ready, ((holding space and growing power))

GHOST

SHOWED UP 

WHERE THEY SHOULDN’T 

WHEN YOU COULDN’T

GIVE HEART OF STRONG TRUTH

GET HEALED ON SILLY THINGS

GO HOME OR STOP TRYING

personal essay week 5 - moment of bravery quick-write

CARE ENOUGH NOT TO CARE

it was some of the worst anxiety i’ve ever felt. why on earth did i think i could do this? what had possessed me to sign up for this course? eight weeks of commuting to another state and living in a tralier with my toxic boyfriend to study… clown through mask? what does that even MEAN? this had to be one of my worst decisions. the class wasn’t what i expected at all. i’m happy to walk a color through my body or make blobs in the space, but… i was not prepared to…. share. 

it’s your turn, baba. everyone has taken their turn except for you. it’s monday night and class is almost over for the week. maybe if you shrink yourself in your chair, they’ll forget you and you can just go back to baltimore and maybe just quit the class and be done. donna won’t let you. 

“if you don’t do your turn now, you’ll be walking around in that mask all week! you’ll be stuck!” 

oh gods i can’t carry such heaviness for so long. i have to take my turn. i can’t. but i have to. 

step behind the curtain - a sheet between two lamps. in unison the rest of the class begins singing “entrance of the gladiators” and clapping in time. breathe the red nose on. breathe through your mouth. shake yourself out, let the mask flow through. 

when you step out from behind the curtain, the singing will stop abruptly and you will have a conversation with only breath and eyes. oh and the worms wrapped up in your bandana. 

you were ready. you weren’t funny. you were poetry. when you weren’t looking, you found the clown.

personal essay week 4 - caught shining

the waiter set my plate down

"thank you" as i'm contemplating

what the fuck i ordered

i rotate the plate to see if this

creature

is more manageable from another angle

mom is smiling secretly

she reveals that

she knows

she is okay with everything

like i knew she would be

but over lunch because of one

silly mistake my sister made?

while she's sipping brown ale and

i'm trying to figure out

how to bite into my sandwich

funny because nothing has happened

we are just doing what we have been doing

plus talking

it's just a proposal

i am insistent.

mom says

"my january baby's growing up

my little girl's in love"

but she's always been

such a silly woman

and hopelessly romantic

so i don't know how to act around my family

they have never known something so big about me

i am so good at keeping hidden

and when this was right in front of them

did they see?

No.

it took a little nudge from a poem

that accidentally got left in their line of vision

not even my mistake

because i know how to wipe my tracks

as i'm running away backwards

so i'm on stage melting under bright lights

EXPOSED

performing a facsimile of my life

i have forgotten how i used to be

i have forgotten my act

i'm trying to seem normal as usual

i have forgotten how to be around her

and i know they can see it now

when i lay against her shoulder

i hope at least they have a memory of who they think i am

that they can reteach to me

so "hi mom!" here's a shoutout to my family

the nosy noisemakers discovering me in here

back again? who let you in?

we'll get a bouncer for this haven

-- my former self, March 2003

I have always given myself a hard time for writing about writing, even though sometimes it’s the only thing I have to say, and probably writing about writing is better than not writing at all. Maybe.


In middle school, I read constantly, and in high school, I wrote constantly. In 2001, my best friend and I started a poetry blog together, which evolved into a writing and art blog with 36 members before fizzling out in 2008, long after Brittany and I were officially BFFs no more.


In general, my focus is terrible. I know a little about a lot, and I’ve quit nearly everything I’ve started. But for a few years, my blog -- writing, reading, web-master-ing -- gave me purpose. Confidence, even. And community! Something I’d been craving, and still crave. This group knew all my truths (even if they were told slant) thanks to my feral free verse. I had no training; I was a runaway train.


These things come back to haunt you, don’t they, the train loops back around the track. My younger sister, also a writer, artist, and steadfast member of the blog, accidentally left the website open one day over spring break in 2003. Of all the damn poems she could have read (we had hundreds of posts by now) my mom found a love poem I had penned just a few days before: “i am wearing your jacket / because it smells like you” etc etc you get the jist.


Mama invited me out to lunch at Boscos, the only local brewpub at that time. I should’ve known something was up, since it was just the two of us, but the thought didn’t cross my mind. I wore the aforementioned jacket, as I had done every single day of spring break, feeling cozy and brave all at once. After the monstrosity that was my sandwich arrived, Mama let loose that she had read the poem.


"My little girl's in love!" Her eyes sparkled over the beer glass.

"We're just talking, we haven't decided if we want to do anything or just be friends. Nothing happened."

"Okay, okay... I just can't believe it, my little January Baby is all grown up."

"Nothing happened!" I picked at my sandwich.

"Well... I just want you to know that I love you and support you, whatever you do. And it’s okay to be gay.”

"I'm not gay, I'm bi."

"But are you more attracted to men or women?"

"Neither! I’m… I'm right.. in the middle." I tried to show her with my hands. 50/50.

“But I want you to know that being gay is not easy, it can make life harder. There's a whole different set of problems..."



This was the extent of her speech. Whether or not she said it out loud, she implied that, if I were really “in the middle” I could choose to only date men, and that would make my life a lot simpler, safer, and happier.


Of course, as soon as we got home, I scratched out yet another poem about the discovery of the first poem, the subsequent conversation, and the acknowledgement that my safe space was no longer private. But even that poem is not the whole story. It doesn’t mention those difficult parts of the conversation, or that even as she verbalized that she was okay with my choices, she implied that they were somehow wrong or would end up hurting me. It doesn’t even mention that I was wearing the jacket and how embarrassing that felt, in the too-big booth at Boscos. It was not a vessel of pride now, but shame.


What the poem does say is that Elise and I were not actually romantic or dating.


~~~~~~~~~~


"It's a perfect day! A perfect day, Elise!"



I liked her as soon as I saw her. Comic book cover printed t-shirt and close cropped blond hair. I thought she would never see me but somehow she did, and my shuttered world blew open wide.



Theatre friends, gay BFF, cool-dork boyfriend (1 year older), and in the fall, a CAR. Decent-ish music tastes, but malleable enough for me to work with. Cruising immediately improved, which was good because that was pretty much all we did. Drove around town and stood around in various parking lots. What else is there, then? Suddenly somehow we had become a true GROUP, the first one we belonged to that we had chosen by ourselves. (At least that's how it was for me.)



It would go like this: Elise would already be with Kevin, so they would pick up Brock and Laylee in East Memphis, then head to midtown to get me, blast Violent Femmes on the way to the Media co-op for indie movie night, then stand around in the parking lot for 3 hours afterwards. They'd drop me off first, which made me sad but gave me time to start blogging before everyone else got home, at which point we would often continue hanging out virtually, via AIM. And we kept on going and growing.



Somehow Elise saw me and now: belonging, mobility, support, identity, self-seen-ness.



It wasn't long before I was smitten. Our group had developed a language of physical affection, dancing, and inside jokes that continued to grow our intimacy with each other. Our vulnerability allowed us to share mental health struggles and tap into half-conscious ideas about sexuality and gender and identity. Oh all the typical teenage things, really! But in this case, practically no one was straight, and if they were, they inhabited omega spaces in some other sense. (We later learned that our classmates called us "the emo kids" even though not one of us ever went through that black eyeliner stage. I decided they were just jealous that we were so full of love and having so much fun.)



Kevin and Elise broke up eventually, and I was there to support her, as I had through her previous break up. I was sleeping over nearly every weekend. Morgan Fox, our friend and mentor, gave us a copy of his first feature film, Three Minutes (Based Upon the Revolution of the Sun), after he found out we had been renting it from Black Lodge Video every single week. The movie is very DIY, very autobiographical, and very gay, and it gave us an opening and a language to start talking about our sexualities. Turns out, pretty much all of us were identifying as “bi” at the time. Elise and I watched Three Minutes while cuddling on the couch at her parents’ house. At play rehearsal, she'd lean into me and I'd stroke her hair. We had been talking about bisexuality for months and eventually started considering whether to let our relationship flow in a more romantic direction.



It was probably my idea, looking back. I was elated, walking on air. She went out of town for spring break but left her jacket at my house, and I didn't take it off for a week. And being what I was back then, I wrote a love poem and I posted it on my poetry blog, of which Elise was also a member. It was a missive, an arrow, supposed to make her swoon. It was an error.



After spring break, after the Boscos incident, I stopped wearing the jacket. Elise and I kept cuddling, but I felt different around my family now. Estranged, even though Mama said I wasn't doing anything wrong. (I wasn't, was I?)



One day Elise called me, so excited, she had just come from from Music Fest where she ran into her ex (GAG) and they ended up hanging out and having so much fun and they MADE OUT and isn't that the best?? I was floored. Had she not received any of my love arrows, in all those months? My sweets and songs. My hugs and hums. I probably pretended to be happy for her, though. I guess I had it wrong all along. I hid the hurt, but the damage was done. Six months later we had stopped speaking. A pitiful fizzle. And it would be years before I felt I had earned the right to call myself queer.