Craft is what we use to make stronger poems—it’s the way we make these poems so they can enlarge and enrich our lives, open us up, and root us more deeply in our lives and in the world. If we just write in a journal or freewrite, it serves its own purpose, but I find what carries me further into the discovery is the actual making of the poem, the craft of the poem.
Calm app, chiropractic, codeine, Coke (the drink, not the drug, although Freud took cocaine for his), coffee, Compazine suppository (anti-emetic), counseling, craniosacral therapy, dairy-free, darkness, denial, driving myself to the ER with a barf bag, earplugs, energy healing, exercise, Fioricet (butalbital, acetaminophen, and caffeine), Flonase, ginger ale, gluten-free diet, hot bath with ice pack at back of neck, hot shower
This piece has been drawn with a gel pen. The drawing depicts Kolkata, India, my hometown, as it used to be when the British still ruled. The piece represents the city during the 1920s-30s.
It was now half past eight. I had stayed late at the office, finishing up an order for a client. I hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Hadn’t switched my brain off for the night when all I wanted to do was relax. But I had to pick up groceries before I could return home. And the phone was buzzing.
The baby was unexpected: a daughter born to my adopted son and his girlfriend. They kept the pregnancy a secret until the size of Tanya’s belly exposed their deception, leaving me shocked and conflicted, emotions the birth of a granddaughter should not bring.
“Why didn’t you tell us about the pregnancy?” I said, “We could have given Tanya a baby shower.”
They came to Restitution City for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the water that came up out of deep wells in the dry terrain was naturally fizzy, said to contain a higher degree of antioxidants and minerals than the average spring water. Plus, it was easier on the pocket than the foreign waters with the fancy names.
During that last year you had with them, you picked the boy up every day from kindergarten. You waited for the bell to ring under the yellow awning of an oak tree, holding his little sister’s hand. One bag of Cheerios for her to munch on, another to give the boy when he burst through the double doors, skipping, and carrying his latest piece of artwork.
On Friday, Elizabeth saw Grant in the hallway, and he nodded at her, friendly. She nodded back, navigating towards him. They would be walking in the same direction for approximately three minutes if she wanted to be on time to class, six if she was willing to be late.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Good, you?”
The chick crouches in the back of the nesting box, head bowed, facing the wooden panel furthest from the opening. Eyes closed, its tiny body sways amidst a cacophony of chirping. Siblings vie for top spot in the race to receive regurgitated seed, care of Mum and Dad. The budgerigar is three weeks old when I notice its parents ignoring it.
After my mom remarried, Dad bought an ice cream stand. It was the kind of place that was open only during the summer months and attracted the local crowd. I’m not sure what prompted him to buy this business. Maybe it was a tit for tat move? You know like, she got a new husband? I’ll get a new side hustle. He named it the Dairy Oasis, so who knows. Maybe it was more safe harbor than life well-lived revenge.
The week before you move away from home to attend graduate school, your father gets a tonsillectomy. You visit him with your mother and sisters at the hospital, and he speaks weakly with eyes dazed, his hand searching for your mother. She links their fingers together, and you avert your eyes. Public displays of affection always make you uncomfortable, and witnessing a vulnerability that you didn’t know was capable between them, especially from your father, unsettles you.
Ms. Finch always looked so clean, especially standing next to us. We were a rough bunch of kids. We combed our hair and washed our faces but were hardly as polished as Ms. Finch. On that hot September day, she wore a gray skirt with tiny silver buttons shaped like rose buds. I so wanted to touch one.
The moon has a face, but it is not one of a man.
The moon is a mujer, a woman.
I see her clearly for the first time in years of orbiting me. Two eyes. One nose. One pair of slightly parted lips. She rises quietly over the trees in Jay Ramirez’s yard and I perceive her.
My mother tossed me into Boy Scouts,
where I scouted the boys,
eager to rub sticks and start a fire.
I hated balls (sports balls),
but she wouldn’t give me Barbies.
Tilted back in her recliner, Rachel’s mother has the look of a petulant child. Feet up, arms crossed. Pouting.
Rachel closes her eyes, exhales long. She swallows her impatience, her anger, and reminds her mother what the doctor said. “If your blood sugar’s too high, you won’t heal.”
Her mother makes a face. “A couple pieces of candy aren’t going to kill me,” she spits.
only there is no guest, just you and this empty seat where your wife should have been and a pink-haired woman bunched into the window seat, eyes shut, lips moving as the jet’s engines rumble and thrum. Your wife would have small-talked her, showed her the funny picture of your son and the grandkids—tongues out, eyes crossed—
My work delves into the themes of impermanence, decay, and the beauty that emerges from deterioration. I hope to capture moments of transition, where familiar forms are altered through spontaneous and unpredictable processes of chemical disruption and physical manipulation. Polaroids, known for their instantaneity and clarity, are subjected to forces that warp, dissolve, and transform the images.
A drop of blood in the river fades,
red dusk falling beyond the water.
Remember how the moon threw silver
at our tongues? I loved you for the way
you cared for speckled things: our dappled
Manymuch people were lostmissedperished during the most recent fightquarrelclashes around and on the side inside of the hospital.
Collateral damageharm is expected; no biasedpartialunrequited damageharm was confirmedprovensatisfied on any particulardefinite side at all, according to unbiasedunbalanced indifferentunspecified observerswatchersspectators.
Bodies were buriedputthrown as respectfully as possible (it wasn’t possible).
Thursday nights are always a little tense, but especially now, less than a week before Christmas. We are on edge; the clots of snow in the road, the family time, none of it helps. We meet in a classroom in the community center at 8pm. The rest of the building is dark, yawning shadows cast over our faces. It smells like paint and gym ball plastic.
Lawani Sunday deals with important social issues with a strong emphasis on the subject of the position of women in society. His paintings tell stories that concern each person one way or another. Lawani’s art speaks directly to compassion and empathy in the depths of our soul. Thus, his work becomes part of the spiritual world.
As an artist, my goal is to capture the unique essence of each person I paint. As well, I bring their personality, emotions and expressions alive through portraiture.
My mom was a vivacious person. She had bright blue eyes that matched her personality, a roar of a laugh that could make an entire theater laugh in response, and compassion that spread to every person with whom she came in contact. She was only fifty-one when she died, but she lived a life full of love and laughter, sharing it with those she worked with.
All you need to do is marry some decent boy and settle down, is what my father told me every time I asked about college. There are no decent boys in this town, is what I’d answer. Then he’d call me ungrateful. Then I’d slam the door to my room, the tiniest space in the house—more an oversized closet than a real bedroom
The Singulartarian Mind-Uploaders might be onto something. Their name says it all: We will defy death by uploading our thought patterns, memories, and whatever else makes up the mind onto a computer, enabling us to live…virtually. But I’m picky and demanding it seems. I want to live IRL.
Through the tender bone
you only see a gaping hole,
point out just how hollow
this pelvis is—so full of sky,
the moon phasing,
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, the term “creative nonfiction” hadn’t yet assembled itself into a term, or at least I hadn’t come across it. In middle school, we studied autobiographies and essays by Anne Frank, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ben Franklin. To my young self, these writers came with a stamp of authority because they could say, “I actually lived this.”
At approximately 2:00 p.m. on June 18, 2023, I learned of something that I thought was certain to change the world forever. It began like any other paradigm shift in recent memory. I learned about it the same way I learned about COVID-19, January 6th, Russia invading Ukraine, etc.—the same way anyone learns about any breaking news nowadays—by refreshing my newsfeed
The first book I remember enjoying was Nose Is Not Toes by Glenn Doman. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was designed not just to teach you how to read, but as an aid in developing cognitive and intellectual ability.
Rx:
men’s daily multivitamin/one per day in the morning
Zoloft/100 mg per day in the morning, watch for signs of hypomania
Atenolol/50 mg per day, perhaps at night, for blood pressure
monthly massage membership: $60/one hour session, once a month
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