So I presented Breathing Lessons 101 for the first time as the multi-media project it is--well, with some of the photos I intend to use anyway--at the Bicentennial of the North American Review in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The two women on my panel were also multi-media artists, one a fiction writer, Susan Jackson Rogers, talked [...]
The grinning boy that never became a man represents so many soldiers that left parts or all of themselves on battlefields. I often say that I am happy to know my dad; honored I was chosen to be his. But I am fully aware that the man I know is not the one my mother fell in love with and married. That guy seems like a cool dude--not necessarily cooler than the man I know. But I would've liked to have known him outside of stories and pictures (and maybe gotten some of his speed skills--he was a track phenom too). But I was denied that. War does that. War requires that. Freedom requires that.
On Memorial Day, when we memorialize the physical bodies lost in service, we have to also remember that those who came back physically alive did not come back whole. And on Memorial Day, I memorialize them--and the parts of them we lost--too.
The Boy’s Girl
A Delta flight attendant
Valedictorian
An Alvin Ailey dancer—
Soul Train would do
Stokely Carmichael’s concubine (shh)
The subject of a song, a nice song
21 That sigh
Mama
Cover Girl
A broadcast journalist
on Walden Pond
Finally
A missionary
Carnival Queen
The Black Madonna
Damn
In long skirts
Dramatic
Always
Marva Collins, Assata,
or Maxine Shaw
A scream
Fancy
Encyclopedia Brown
Samba—just samba
Wealthier, selfish
A b-girl
Taller-shorter-skinnier-thicker
Someday (soon)
Bald
Drawn in black ink.
delivered at the Northeast Modern Language Association Conference Toronto, ON 2 May 2015 Slide 1: "How the Body Remembers" is not just a creative project but is, I guess like all my creative projects, a question I’m trying to answer for myself--this time about how our physical bodies perform traumas. The question came up after [...]
Breathing Lessons 101 is heading to Charlottesville Virginia on Friday, May 8th! I'll be reading as part of the Reading Series at the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative along with author of the novel Nothing Left to Burn, Jay Varner, and poet, novelist, and editor Brittany Cavallaro. Exciting times, y'all--be there and/or please share! https://www.facebook.com/events/346357012230460/
Ayyyyy new followers (and old friends)--I see y'all! Thanks for joining this conversation; hope things don't get awkward. But you know, I can be a little bit of a lot of that so-o-o-o. Stay awhile--it's gonna be fun!
She remembered holding his hand, thumbing the meaty part under his thumb. And she remembered how she hardly ever held his hand. Or smiled. She remembered how he smelled—soapy—and his minty breath. He said he brushed his teeth because he planned to kiss her. She remembered him fingering her eyebrows. And his eyes. She remembered [...]
I’m supposed to be grading papers but I can’t stop thinking about my writing projects [Breathing Lessons especially]…and my workout (which I’m about to miss if I don’t finish my work and go to bed). But, yeah, Breathing Lessons…
I make lists. It’s what I do.
I also take unsmiling pictures of myself. Shoot me.
I write a lot more journal-y stuff than poetry. But trust me: I’m a poet.
I have the binders. A degree. The tortured soul to prove it.
But back to this thing about lists.
I often think of young women; the lessons I think we fail to teach them and how we might better serve them and our world if we did. By we, I mean women who have been there and made it (somewhat anyway) through.
What ” to do” list could we give them to get them through that decade–what could I have told told me that would’ve encouraged me beyond my doubts? Probably nothing that I would’ve believed, but here’s a list I would’ve given my 20something self anyway:
1. Chill. I was serious most of the time. But the truth…
darlene anita scott 