Meeting My Child Self at the Trauma Play
A strangled moan escapes my lips, twice, maybe three times. Instantly, I am in a tight feedback loop of visual stimulation and swirling emotions. Later that night, I write words that will become this:
fear horror grief grief grief horror mercy for
husband for driver horror horror horror don’t
think don’t think don’t think shut down shut
down don’t shut down hold on feel feel feel
horror fear grief & fear & grief & horror &
photo by Terril-NeelyDig Into Genre
Pick a genre, any genre.
I sat alone, reluctant to decide which genre to put on my Antioch application. For a few years, I had been studying and writing poetry. I’d also taken one creative nonfiction class just before applying to Antioch. Before that, I had only written fiction (short stories), but that was back in college, when Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie ruled. I graduated in 1980, before most of my fellow Antioch students were born.
Tale of the resistant apple tree
He hears of war and inflation
speculation and high prices
The world shattered like a pomegranate
its grains blood-red
I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard
My father never drank except at Christmastime, I’ve
never seen a brown bottle drain until I was seven, stayed
at my grandmother’s house and knew the skank smell of alcohol, in
winter where cigarette smoke looks ghostly, the
ash tray a black patch of night, he sat on the steps in front
