Archive for category: Roots, Issue 1

It takes 5-8 minutes to read an 800 word story. Pretend this is an 800 word story. Take these 5-8 mins to just be. Just being is creative too. Just being is an art. You have permission to do nothing but breathe.

Was there an incident or story behind this poem (Dear Dad, published in Roots, Issue 1 of Temple in a City literary journal)? 

I’m adopted. I don’t really look like my dad at all. I suppose if you just saw me and him you could conjure a second parent in your mind that would produce me, but it would take a lot of imagination. And yet throughout my life people have off-handedly told me, “you have his smile.” And they’re right, I do. I like to think it’s because a small child learns by imitation; he sees an expression and makes the same expression. I learned to smile by seeing my dad’s shy sheepish grin. It reminds me that the disconnectedness I’ve felt from my family is not (necessarily) because I’m adopted; everyone is their own person, separate from their family. Likewise, anyone can be deeply influenced, shaped, and share lineage with someone through loving them.   

Describe your writing process. Are you a planner or a pantser, do you prefer to write in quiet or amid noise, do you write most effectively when you are working through a pain or sorrow or when calm and happy? Do you start with wisps or fragments or have a general sense of whole structure before going in?

I heard a lecturer say once that he doesn’t write, he takes notes and then edits. That’s my process. Especially with poems, something will arrive fully formed in my mind, usually makes me shiver a little, and I’m filled with an urgency to get it down. This initial idea usually goes into a notes app on my phone. Later, when I have time, I play with the words used to express it–my friends often hear me report I’ve been “tinkering” with my poems like Godfather Drosselmeyer in his workshop by candlelight. My poems take a long time to finish even though the initial sensation or kernel came immediately. Writing is putting words to universal feelings derived from specific, relatable experiences. Noticing the experience is the first step. Choosing the right words is the second.  

Even very successful writers get a lot of nos and discouragement. How do you deal with rejections? 

It is very hard, especially because I am still near the beginning of my poem-writing season. Mostly, I try to remember the first part of this question, that “even very successful writers get a lot of nos.” I also try to separate “no” from “discouragement.” Some of the most encouraging feedback I’ve gotten has been soft rejections or rejections with favorable comments. Those have often led to correspondence and relationships that later resulted in a “yes.”

For writers struggling right now with doubt, worry about being good enough or even the purpose of writing, what would you tell them?

Find other people to workshop with. 

There’s a lot of talk about reading for pleasure, with many not able or willing to do that. What has reading given you? If you were in a public service announcement for reading for fun, what would you say?

This question makes me weep. Reading has given me an entire universe of references, and a language for making peace in a fractured dissonant world. As a pre-teen, feeling isolated, detached, unconnected, discovering fantasy worlds like the Redwall or Tolkein set me to enjoying how vast our imaginations (with a little help from good writers) can help us to see the world around us as more coherent and beautiful, even in its misery. You can’t get that from your phone, you just can’t. 

New math

The boy jumped off the yellow school bus as soon as the old driver yanked the folding door’s levers revealing a tattoo on his forearm, a blonde woman with tomato lips in a short white dress with air pushing it up and out, but not quite showing her underwear. Some of the boys near the back had discussed if the woman even wore underwear, wondered if she was his girlfriend when he was in a war none of them knew about, and one of the boys said she wouldn’t look as good today, they all nodded, and other said the woman looked gross because the old man’s arm hairs, a mix of salt and pepper, came through the tattoo of the woman and made her look like a pretty monkey.

When he got inside the house, Sam made a snack of saltines and creamy peanut butter and drank a glass of cold milk. He knew to get his homework done before his mama got home from work and made him supper, maybe spaghetti, his favorite, or a hot dog and baked beans, the runner up.

The boy couldn’t say polynomial, let alone understand it, didn’t understand formulas that included practical signs like the plus, minus, multiplication, or division that he’d learned last year all jammed together with numbers, letters, parentheses, and even brackets. He didn’t think it made sense, and if he was lucky enough to run a cash register like his mama, formulas didn’t matter since the register showed you how much to collect or how much to give back. His mama didn’t understand the math either, said it was busy work no one needed, it wouldn’t help pay the electric bill, and he knew his friends didn’t understand it either. He wondered if his daddy knew math in jail, but figured it was no use to him either. 

About the only number he could think to call was on the fire department magnet on the refrigerator that read “911.” He dialed it with the black push button phone on the wall and stretched the chord to the table in the center of the kitchen.

“911. What is your emergency?”

“I need some help.”

The operator was trained to know voices. Knew he was a young boy. “I can help you. You hurt?”

“No mam.” 

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t understand this new Math.”

“Excuse me, did you say you are having trouble with Math?” She pushed the microphone away from her mouth and giggled. She’d done this before when a man said he’d shot his friend in the ass with an arrow while they were deer hunting and when some children had put glue on the toilet seat and their grandmother got stuck.

“Yes mam.”

“Honey, are you home alone?”

“Yes mam.”

“Where’s your family?”

“Mama’s at work.”

“Where does your mama work?”

“Kroger.”

“Well, 911 is only for emergencies.”

“I know. My mama said if I ever needed help, I should call.”

“Yeah, but it’s for serious emergencies.”

“If I fail, mama is going to kill me.”

“You just hold on. I’ve got an officer right here who is very smart. I think he might be able to help you.” The officer who was slurping coffee was telling the senior operator about his failed dating life, and whether the operator was trying to clear the line for a real emergency or give the officer something to do to, so she could stop listening to his shallow dating woes, wasn’t known.

The officer helped the boy by phone with the problems and told him a joke he’d read on social media that he didn’t think the boy got because he didn’t’ laugh: “Why is the Math book sad? Because it has so many problems.” He told him he’d come by the house and check on him in a while and did. When the officer pulled into the yard of the little house, an older Chevrolet was parked by the front steps, and the officer went up to the door and knocked. Sam’s mother opened the door, asked him if there was a problem. She figured the officer had come to report another fight her ex had in jail, or tell her he was in the hospital, but to her surprise, the officer was checking on Sam and shared why. Sam appeared behind his mother, she ran her hands through Sam’s hair, she apologized, and she invited the officer to eat spaghetti with them. 

She explained to Sam about 911 and told him not to do call again unless it was a real emergency, that homework was not an emergency. The officer told her it was the best spaghetti he’d ever eaten, and she told him he could come eat with them anytime. Neither of them had calculated those moves, but it seemed old math still worked, and they saw their problems as close to being solved.

Multihued feathers

My school friends display their jewelled hollow navels; diamonds wink and shimmy like owl’s eyes in the night. They must not find out about mine. It’s a tiny scar as flat as the plains outside my window. The navel-girls display their gaudy clothes. They pair off with navel-boys and they coo into their prams full of naked children. They ask me when it is my turn. I’m not broody, never hope to be.

I hide my scars with long sleeves. The navel-girls nod to each other; they think they know what lies beneath. The blood of plucked and waxed feathers on my arms makes the skin grow coarse with infected follicles and the bumps of buds. My shoulder feathers sprout in discrete patches. No one can see them there. Athlete’s foot and verrucae are my excuses for non -appearances at the lido. I hide the down and guard feathers, which ripple under my clothes with my long brown feathered hair.

My tracts of pterylae are few but irksome. I am thankful I am not full bird. Feathers require care and buds itch in places I cannot reach to preen. I am bereft of a beak, long gone from my genetic line. Grandma helps me with her back scratcher; it is old, wooden with a chicken wishbone at the working end. She mutters about ancient symbols and phoenix feathers as she works into my itch.

Grandma kept a memory box of my egg shell. The pieces are song thrush-blue, black dots pitter patterned around the wider parts. She said it was because my father was a warbler, a scoundrel who wooed my mother with his delicate song. After mother ran off with a goldfinch, who displayed his gaudy colour and entranced her, Grandma took me home. Here I have nested since, but she plucked me and made me go to school, as a pretend navel-girl.

One day the navel-girls will discover my secret. Grandma says I should prepare to fly away, and head out into the wild countryside and live in a forest. Grandma likes me to explore possible nesting sites and sanctuaries. But there are too many twitchers; they scare me with their lenses and their notebooks.

If I grow tired of plucking and waxing, the multihued feathers of my starling face will greet the sun. Navel-girls will shriek and hoot with laughter. Instead, I’ll keep my feather-secret and watch them push out more navel babies. I soar around, enjoy my time as I move to the beat of wings,

When Robin comes calling, trilling his sweet words into my ear, I roost with him in the tree in our garden. Grandma says nowt good will come of this, and her hawk eyes watch us from her window. He leaves when the days grow shorter and my clutch of powder blue eggs lies warm in my bed.

My hatchings are so beautiful, I feed them well with chips and flakes of fish. But I hear the call of the raven rise on the wind. The wide-open maws of my children demand more time than I can provide. The raven’s darkness haunts me; he wants me to be with him always, and I dream of his power.

Grandma says I’m like my mother, flighty, a bird of many hues, a navel-less hussy. She reveals her hawk talons and I take flight, cawing three times. Grandma takes my brood under her wings, her quills raised. I climb the thermals, my shrieks indignant. Another clutch of my eggs, a raven hoard, sit in his nest in the castle tower.

When Grandma takes my children for a walk, she says I’ve moved out of town for work when she meets the navel-girls as they push their prams. They smile and ogle at my chirping babies with their rosy cheeks and brown eyes. The navel-girls say nothing about my babies’ feathered heads, but they raise their eyebrows and whisper my secret.