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Michael Cunningham on Virginia Woolf’s Literary Revolution

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Michael Cunningham on Virginia Woolf’s Literary Revolution

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I find so much resonance in Cunningham's reading of Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway."
He writes:
"Though seldom discussed as such, “Mrs. Dalloway” is one of the great novels of World War I. Woolf always intended it to be set in London just after the war — in an England that had lost hundreds of thousands of people; in a London in which, partly owing to new weapons like mustard gas and flamethrowers, the streets after Armistice were crowded with sons, husbands and fathers who’d returned from combat alive but so maimed as to be unrecognizable. "

At its heart, my forthcoming novel Nermina's Chance, strikes at the same theme: War sears its imprint on the human spirit in infinite ways.

#author #writingcommunity #novel #war #trauma #PTSD

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Obama, the Best-Selling Author, on Reading, Writing and Radical Empathy

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Obama, the Best-Selling Author, on Reading, Writing and Radical Empathy

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Oh, how I miss this articulate and steady voice!

Read Michiko Kakutani's NYT interview with Barack Obama about the writing of his new book The Promised Land.
#memoir #SocialJustice #democracymatters

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From Wilmington writer, Bobbi Coppock
[Vintage cartoon art by Mark Bagley]

Fourteen years ago (not to the day), my middle child, youngest son, had a seizure, in the middle of a movie theater, in the middle of a movie.  One of the Spiderman movies, the one, I think, with the Green Goblin.

We were sitting there, watching the movie.  My daughter, who was 10, me, my son who was 12, and my oldest son, who was 16.  I remember my oldest was wearing a huge winter coat that almost drowned him, and my youngest son had just turned 12, so I think it was March or April.

So...  we were sitting there, watching the movie.  It was the part where there were red bombs going off all over the screen and Spiderman was dodging them.  To this day, I can't watch Spiderman movies without some anxiety, but for some reason, the new ones with Tom Holland I really want to see.

My brain doesn't want to type this.  It's trying anything to distract me, to keep me from remembering that day.  I'm watching an old Holiday Baking Championship that I have seen before, and someone is talking about their batter not being cooked all the way through.  I keep thinking about Tom Holland and Spiderman which makes me think of the Avengers, and Captain America which makes me feel safe.  Because that day, I didn't feel safe.

Anyway, we are in the theater.  It's dark.  There are bombs going off, on screen.  Red ones.  (pausing, taking a deep breath).  My oldest son leans over his brother and says "Mom, something's wrong with Michael."

I look over.  He is lying down with his hand in his brother's popcorn.

"Michael, get up!"  I hiss, hoping no one hears me and gets their movie enjoyment messed up. I thought he was messing around and trying to steal his brother's popcorn.

"No, mom, something's wrong with him."  I look at him, and notice he's shaking.

Mom.  There's something wrong with him.  I can still hear those words, even today.

"Michael!"  Suddenly, I didn't care whose movie enjoyment was messed up.  "He's choking!"  I yell.  "Someone please! Call an ambulance!"

I stand up, and try to get him out of his chair to do a Heimlich maneuver, but before I have him halfway out of his seat, a group of men had swooped in from somewhere, and had begun to carry him out of the theater.  My heart sank.  I followed, making sure my daughter and son came with me, saying "Is he ok? Is he OK?" over and over.

They laid him out on a bench in the lobby.  A man was sitting next to him, holding his mouth.  He was still moving, making weird motions with his mouth and his arms.  A man approached with some lemonade and tried to give it to him on a spoon, and was told not to. "Is he ok?"  I asked to no one in particular.

"He's having a seizure," someone said.

The paramedics came in, and was astonished to see that they were walking.  They should have been running, running as fast as they could to get to my son.  But they were walking over.

"C'mon, people let's move out of the way and give him some space to breath." one of them said.  I looked up, and for the first time notice the crowd that had gathered.  Oddly, there was no one in line for a movie, no one at the concession stand, and no one else in the lobby except the crowd, watching my son.  I guess we were between movies or something.  My oldest son and my daughter were standing behind a rope.  My daughter was crying, and my son was pacing the floor in a way he always did when he didn't know what else to do.

"Back up."  The paramedic said again.  I dutifully started to back up and go over to my other son and daughter.

"Are you the mother?"  he asked, looking at me.  I nodded.  In my lifetime, I had never experienced that intense fear, coupled with intense and utter loneliness and helplessness.  I could barely speak, and I felt totally lost.  I wanted to just shove my child to the paramedic, knowing they could do more good for him than I could at that moment.

"Not you then, you stay here."  The paramedic said.  They started asking me questions.  How old was he.  What was his name.  Had he ever done this before.  Was he on any medications?  Did he do drugs.

"Michael" said one, talking to my son, "Do you know where you are?"  he asked.

"Uh, Virginia..."  he replied, groggily.

"How old are you, buddy?"

"11?  11."

"No! " I said.  "He's 12.  He just turned 12.  Maybe he doesn't remember because it was only a month ago...."  I caught myself rambling and trailed off. I felt like my brain was somewhere outside my body, and I was running on pure adrenaline.

Eventually, they put him in the ambulance, and I started to go with them, then remembered that I had a car in the parking lot.  And two other kids who couldn't drive.

Once I got in the car, I started the panicked round of phone calls.  First my parents, who for the first time were out on the Potomac river somewhere on the dinner cruise ship, Nina's Dandy.  My father was driving the boat.  My call wasn't getting through to my mom.  I called one sister, and she started crying and hung up to try and get through to my mom and dad.  I called my other sister, and she came to the hospital.

I got to the hospital before the ambulance.  That made me more worried, but of course, they showed up eventually.

There was a round of tests, accusations of drug use, and proclamations of hunger before it was all over.  Michael sat up, announced he was hungry, and said he didn't remember anything that happened until he after he woke up in an ambulance.

For me however, I remember everything.  I remember the pink Jacket my daughter was wearing.  I remember the theater manager telling us we could come back anytime for free movies.  I remember the face of the man holding my son's mouth open so he didn't bite his tongue.  And I remember the intense, crushing, heartbreaking feeling of being powerless and small in the face of storm.  An electrical storm in my son's brain.

I have told myself over and over, that, one day, it will be funny.  A woman standing up in the middle of a fight scene during Spiderman, yelling, "Someone call 911!  Please call an ambulance!"  But so far, it's never been funny.  Maybe it will one day.  I hope so.

The next few years were really rough.  On him more than me, as Doctors tried to find the right medications.   He still had some seizures, but he never remembered anything.  I was always the one who remembered, who called the ambulance, who sat in the hospital with him until he woke up and came out of the post ictal phase.   But he had to cope with the headaches, the extreme exhaustion from the meds, med changes, doctor visits, blood tests, and being home schooled for a year.

His sister was also somewhat traumatized, taking years before she would allow herself to go somewhere and stay somewhere without me.

He's ok now, he graduated from college (made the Dean's List the first semester) with a double major, and is working and has more money in his bank account than I do.

But to this day, I still have problems watching Spiderman movies. Maybe Tom Holland can change that.

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CAM Writer Kathleen Tyler: What Shadows Eat & Other Stories

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CAM Writer Kathleen Tyler: What Shadows Eat & Other Stories

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I'm so thrilled to spread the word on Kathleen's newest publication, a stunning book of short stories.

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A Stunning Essay on Climate Change by Thomas Belton

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A Stunning Essay on Climate Change by Thomas Belton

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READ IT HERE

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Yael Gold, PhD - Insights on the Psychological Effects of COVID-19

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Yael Gold, PhD - Insights on the Psychological Effects of COVID-19

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READ HERE

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Thinking We Could All Use a Little Push About Now!

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Thinking We Could All Use a Little Push About Now!

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Read J.L. Akagi's posti on Submittable

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Jessica Lee's observations are spot-on! Read her wonderful poetry here.

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A joy to read! Jamie Lynn Miller reminds us we’re never alone: nature is a constant companion—and source of entertainment.

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A joy to read! Jamie Lynn Miller reminds us we’re never alone: nature is a constant companion—and source of entertainment.

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"Spring in the Green Seat" by Jamie Lynn Miller

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"Spring in the Green Seat" by Jamie Lynn Miller

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Take a breath. Read this light-hearted and poignant missive. Laugh a little! Repeat.

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by Larry Winters, July 3, 2020

Our politicians take oaths. Our doctors and nurses take oaths. Our soldiers take oaths.

It is now apparent many politicians have broken the oaths they have taken. A blatant example is that high officials of our government have known that Russia set a bounty on American soldiers lives and have kept it hidden. Killing our soldiers was successfully accomplished by the Russians and the Taliban and our political leadership has done nothing even after the public knows about it. The moral injury this event is causing is undermining our military and all true American patriots.

An example of the dedicated oath takers are the two hundred doctors and nurses who have died of the Corona virus, to date. We should be making plans for building a memorial right now for these health care workers who saved millions of lives.

Soldiers take oaths but they must be placed in a different category, because breaking their oath can be followed by execution, or prison and public shaming from receiving a dishonorable discharge and court martial.  So, compare our soldiers with the politicians who have broken their oaths and have not even lost their jobs for making the decisions to allow our soldiers to die without their family’s knowing the truth.

Why do we have oaths? Some say they provide a moral guidepost for how to behave in times of life and death. When politics enters the arena of our current wars and the pandemic, our leading party is distorting our nation’s understanding of the sacrifice individual oath takers make. Politics has prioritized capital over human life. With rhetorical lies, the American public is being told our constitutional compass is set to true North, where in reality our setting is magnetic North, which leads directly to the banks of our wealth. carried upon the back of our oath takers.

An oath is sacred because it often involves life and death. Politicians have taken the oaths they’ve sworn away from the sacred relationship it is and engaged in an intellectual jousting match to hide the fact they are using human lives as a commodity, “So help me God.”

From, Watergate, to Whitewater, to the Ukraine, our country's highest-ranking officials have been breaking their sacred oaths. The consequences for these acts have been minimal because they get swallowed into the bowels of our judicial system. All those oath takers in that judicial system were appointees working to protect those politicians who appointed them. These politicians’ infractions once may have been seen as crimes against God and our nation but not now.

Today we watch our oath breakers harvest their notebooks for their next career of writing books to collect financial remunerations. While those who held true to their oath continue to die while protecting those who are manipulating their destinies. “So, help me God.”

As a combat Marine in Vietnam, I felt that the oath takers would not leave me behind on the battlefields. What oaths are you living by today?

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Visit Today's New York Times for the complete collection of poetry, articles and photos.

The Stuff of Astounding: A Poem for Juneteenth
By PATRICIA SMITH

Unless you spring from a history that is smug and reckless, unless

you’ve vowed yourself blind to a ceaseless light, you see us. We

are a shea-shined toddler writhing through Sunday sermon, we are

the grizzled elder gingerly unfolding his last body. And we are intent

and insistent upon the human in ourselves. We are the doctor on

another day at the edge of reason, coaxing a wrong hope, ripping

open a gasping body to find air. We are five men dripping from the

burly branches of young trees, which is to say that we dare a world

that is both predictable and impossible. What else can we learn from

suicides of the cuffed, the soft targets black backs be? Stuck in its

rhythmic unreel, time keeps including us, even as our aged root

is doggedly plucked and trampled, cursed by ham-fisted spitters in

the throes of a particular fever. See how we push on as enigma, the

free out loud, the audaciously unleashed, how slyly we scan the sky—

all that wet voltage and scatters of furious star—to realize that we

are the recipients of an ancient grace. No, we didn’t begin to live

when, on the 19th June day of that awkward, ordinary spring—with

no joy, in a monotone still flecked with deceit—Seems you and these

others are free. That moment did not begin our breath. Our truths—

the ones we’d been birthed with—had already met reckoning in the

fields as we muttered tangled nouns of home. We reveled in black

from there to now, our rampant hue and nap, the unbridled breath

that resides in the rafters, from then to here, everything we are is

the stuff of astounding. We are a mother who hums snippets of gospel

into the silk curls of her newborn, we are the harried sister on the

elevator to the weekly paycheck mama dreamed for her. We are black

in every way there is—perm and kink, upstart and elder, wide voice,

fervent whisper. We heft our clumsy homemade placards, we will

curl small in the gloom weeping to old blues ballads. We swear not

to be anybody else’s idea of free, lining up precisely, waiting to be

freed again and again. We are breach and bellow, resisting a silent

consent as we claim our much of America, its burden and snarl, the

stink and hallelujah of it, its sicknesses and safe words, all its black

and otherwise. Only those feigning blindness fail to see the body

of work we are, and the work of body we have done. Everything is

what it is because of us. It is misunderstanding to believe that free

fell upon us like a blessing, that it was granted by a signature and

an abruptly opened door. Listen to the thousand ways to say black

out loud. Hear a whole people celebrate their free and fragile lives,

then find your own place inside that song. Make the singing matter.

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Jaclyn Adomeit's isolation comics

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Inspired by non-profit organization  Taps for Veterans,

CBS News “On the Road” correspondent Steve Hartman joined retired Air Force bugler Jari Villanueva to promote Taps Across America and keep the spirit of the Memorial Day holiday alive since it looks different this year due to COVID-19.

MARINE VETERAN LARRY WINTERS responds with his poignant essay: "Taps"

Read it here:

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PROSE AS POETRY in Brian Turner's "Anna Maria Island"

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PROSE AS POETRY in Brian Turner's "Anna Maria Island"

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This exquisite work of creative non-fiction takes readers deep inside this memoirist's soul. Turner chooses the common house fly as a poetic device depicting the many refracted aspects of grief. READ IT HERE.

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Janine Certo's "HOW TO HAUNT HUMANS (FROM THE COMPLETE ANIMALS’ GUIDE TO SPELLS, POSSESSION AND PARANORMAL ACTIVITY) " AT SPLIT ROCK REVIEW

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SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITY: CALLING ALL POETS!

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SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITY: CALLING ALL POETS!

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Lucky Jefferson seeks new poetry!

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A GLIMPSE INTO THE BRAIN OF AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR DAVE THIESSEN 

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A GLIMPSE INTO THE BRAIN OF AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR DAVE THIESSEN 

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We're so grateful Dave has given us permission to share his uniquely crafted work!

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Poetry by Rob Shapiro and more in Nashville Review.

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From Electric Literature
How to Turn Real-Life Isolation Into Fiction

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Electric Literature | Reading into everything.

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Electric Literature is a nonprofit digital publisher with the mission to make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. We are committed to publishing work that is intelligent and unpretentious, elevating new voices, and examining how literature and storytelling can help illuminate social justice issues and current events.

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by Patricia Bergan Coe

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At Eastern Iowa Review

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Hello fellow writers,
I know it's difficult to begin something new now!

Here's an essay whose simple but brilliant format you can follow.

If the author is now just 26, he is indeed quite gifted and insightful. Notice the themes he's entwined here.

I hope you'll try (and post) a "reverse chronology" essay of your own.

Just click on the essay below to read.

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This is part of my photo series entitled "Drift." Until March, we'd walk up to the inlet on Wrightsville Beach and--depending upon the tides--find these magnificent striations in the sand. I miss doing this now!

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By Dory Mann.

The world
Stopped

Cars
Stopped

Trains
Stopped

Work
Stopped

People
Stopped

Life
As we know it
Stopped

The World
Stopped

Pandemic’

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"Filmed Vignettes"

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I'm so pleased that Patricia has agreed to share this piece, begun during a creative writing workshop at The Museum School at CAM.

And while her modest introduction might lead you to expect a bit of a "puff piece," Patricia imbues this brief reflection with deeper elements, too.

Filmed Vignettes by Patricia Bergan Coe
This is a story about one of my favorite necklaces and how Sami, my cat, knocked it off the dresser and broke it, made my day. Really.

Residing somewhere in the recesses of my brain are canisters of memories filmed in full color seemingly since the day I was born. I can play many of these films at will, but others simply appear unbidden, triggered by some unrelated event in the present. Many of these memories seem to revolve around how I sound or how I look. I can recall vignettes about opening my mouth on stage to sing or say lines and nothing comes out-leftovers from my Gilbert and Sullivan days. Other canisters contain real or imagined events aimed at how I look. The contents of one such canister remained a mystery to me until many years later when I was much older:
I'm walking along on a sidewalk. I am quite young, probably somewhere in my late twenties or early thirties. Many people are walking in both directions. It is quite crowded. I see a pretty older, more mature woman coming toward me. She is staring at me with what seems to be a sad or wistful smile. I watch her watching me as we pass each other on the crowded sidewalk, and I am perplexed; I don't understand why her smile is sad.
I now know, intimately, an older, more mature woman who, when she glimpses a young woman with lovely, tight, unlined, unmarred skin on her beautiful face has an "aha" moment and quickly smiles to mask surging envy!

Along those lines, another canister's film rolls:
I'm not quite twenty-one wearing a white designer dress I shopped for days to find that caresses the curves of my lithe 112 pound 5'5 ½" tall body with my 1950s eighteen-inch waist. I'm dancing with my husband at the country club gala when he says, "You are the most beautiful woman here," as he holds me tighter to his body. Success! The dress worked! Finally, he notices me. I can almost believe he really loves me.

The screen dims, and I go about my day, wondering what triggered that old memory.

A particularly vivid film I can screen at will:
It's about one month after giving birth to my first child, a girl. I'm walking somewhere on a sidewalk; it is warm so I'm wearing a light shimmery dress with spaghetti straps, which seems strange because my baby was born two days before Christmas. I feel myself striding along with purpose, shoulders back, breasts thrust out, head high, when suddenly a pickup truck is passing and the driver leans out the window and sends me a loud wolf whistle! Wow! I am thrilled. I smile a big smile, tighten my flat stomach even more, and walk on-happy.
Despite these filmed archives, I would like to believe how I look is of less importance to me now that I'm more mature-or at least "older." Surely taking care of oneself is important, not just for looks, but for general all-around health. I don't know exactly where this need to "look good" comes from. Certainly, I've spent enough 50-minute hours on various couches throughout my life to figure this out. Right?!

Well, maybe not.

Just the other day while talking with an artist in her jewelry shop about repairing a favorite necklace of mine that Sami, my cat, knocked off the dresser and broke, the discussion turned somehow to the ages of other creative women she and I both know, and she suggested that her age and mine were similar! Well, I'm clearly at least twenty years her senior, so I had to tell her may age (not that I'll tell it now...), surely with the hope I would hear her say what I haven't heard in a while. She did not disappoint:

"Oh my gosh! You certainly don't look it," with just the right amount of emphasis.

She made my day.

Published By

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"Filmed Vignettes"​ by CAM Writer Patricia Bergan Coe

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I'm so pleased that Patricia has agreed to share this piece, begun during a creative writing workshop at The Museum School at CAM. And while her modest introduction might lead you to expect a bit of a "puff piece," Patricia imbues this brief reflection with deeper elements, too.

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https://www.facebook.com/PoetDavidWhyte/videos/vb.213407562018588/469467607104905/?type=2&theater

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Passage of time seeping like sand

Grain by grain through her fingers

Passage of time quick fleeting arrows  piercing the air

Young man leaves  his home

She stays behind

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(27) "The First Letters"​ by James Eldridge | LinkedIn

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Our words matter.

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While most of you are no doubt Padlet savvy, it took me awhile to figure out a couple of things and I've been asked to pass them along for what they are worth.

1.  Logging in has been simple.  When I click the login link, I get a dialog box offering me different login choices.  I click on the Microsoft option and I'm in every time without having to enter an email address or password.
2. My posting is limited to uploading Word Docs and that is a simple process once the pink button in the lower right-hand corner is clicked. Where I got hung up is how small the font appeared on the pad. That is not a problem once you click on the upload and it comes up as a Word Doc.  The margins of that window threw me until I clicked on the "view full post" link and then everything was fine.
3. My biggest issues, and the ones which ended up being the simplest to resolve, were how to substitute my photo for the "avatar" and how to enter my name in bold when posing a comment. For the photo, just click on the avatar and a file box should show up. Go to where you store your images, pick the photo you want and double click it to substitute that photo for the avatar. So, I had my photo and I wanted to add a comment. Adding the comment itself was easy...once the cursor is blinking on the comment line, just type. What threw me was that my name did not show up in between the profile pic and the comment. That is, however, until I clicked the right-hand arrow (on the right of course!) and presto, there was my comment with my name correctly set out in bold prior thereto.

Hope this helps any of you that need help.

Thanks, Jim

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Excerpt from Susan Polizzotto's hybrid essay: "Overflow"​ | LinkedIn

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Flash.  Here is my 9 word (not parts) CFF.  Extra points if you catch the literary reference.  Thanks, Jim

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Flash.  Here is my 9 word (not parts) CFF.  Extra points if you catch the literary reference.  Thanks, Jim

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The photo below is one of many I've taken since moving to Wilmington--close-up shots of the Bottle Chapel at Airlie Gardens.

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The photo below is one of many I've taken since moving to Wilmington--close-up shots of the Bottle Chapel at Airlie Gardens.

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I'm pairing it with the beautiful poem: The Art of Being - George Cassidy Payne

We do not paint.
We are the pigments,
resins, solvents and additives

the soft animal bristle and
hand-assembled metal bands.

We do not write.
We are the molecules linked
together in crystalline structures,

soaked into paper, allowing
our thoughts to bleed at the edges.

We do not make music.
We are strings vibrating,
communicating rhythmic visions hanging

in air, that feeling of wanting to be
thrusted towards the chorus.

We do not build architecture.
We are the triumph of imagination
over materials. Rising out of empty space

into those impermanent
dwelling places we call home

We do not sculpt.
We are the molded clay
welded into three dimensions

with our fingers, holding the carver’s
knife like a butcher hacking beauty out of wood

We are not illustrators.
We are the bare metal plates dipped
in a bath of acid, exposed, leaving

behind sunken lines, a soft material
smudged into soft shadows.

And we do not dance.
We are releasing energy, simply taking
delight in the movement itself.

Unable to separate our limbs from life,
a natural order that we all belong to.

Nor do we love. We are love.
The eyes and hands and ears and lips of God.

George Cassidy Payne is an essayist and poet from Rochester, New York. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, MORIA Poetry Journal, Chronogram Magazine, Ampersand Literary Review, Allegro, Red Porch Review, Tea House, The Angle at St. John Fisher College and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, The Buffalo News, Syracuse Post Standard, and Rochester City Newspaper.

Front Porch Volume 12, April 2020 Copyright © 2020 by Glen Phillips

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You've heard me talk often about flash fiction, a genre that incorporates poetic devices (e.g. imagery, metaphor) but, above all, must be short (word count typically  from 50 to 300 words) and potent.

Read Scott Garson's  It’s Getting Harder to Pretend the Earth Isn’t Flying Around.

The author has chosen to structure the piece in nine parts. How has he threaded themes and imagery throughout? What do you think Garson is trying to say here? What do you think of his conclusion?

Try to write your own nine-part flash fiction OR creative non-fiction piece.

Please share!

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This article appeared in my in-box this morning. I've shared many like this with you over the years but it's always worthwhile to revisit "the basics." Hope you find somethin g here to nudge or inspire you!

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Ridin’ the Rails

by Stephanie Schreiner

Clickity-clack clickity-clack

ridin' the rails, taking me back

engineerin' my memories to ease my soul

ridin' the rails taking me back

clickity clack clickity-clack

Slipity-whoosh slipity-whoosh

sledin' on the snow avoidin' a spruce

wishin' on a star that my pa wasn't dead

ridin' the rails, taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

Tapity-tap, tapity-tap

dancin' on the boards in my ma's big hat

crying at her casket now  she's dead

ridin' the rails, taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

Hoppity-hop, hoppity-hop

jumpin' to numbers on a concrete spot

wonderin' where my brother is to turn the rope

ridin' the rails, taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

Sippity-sip sippity-sip

drinkin' down gin with a sandy slip

givin' up my soul to the demons of sin

ridin' the rails taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

Splishity-splash, splishity-splash

swimmin' in the ocean quick as a flash

watching my babies swim in the sea

ridin' the rails, taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

Rockity rock rockity rock

sittin' on the porch mending a sock

breathin' in peace and breathin' out pain

ridin' the rails, taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

clickity-clack clickity-clack

ridin' the rails taking me back

taking me back

taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

[END]

Pandemic

Empty roads lead to

parking lots stuffed with people seeking salvation in toilet paper on empty shelves

A silence so profound you can hear birds sing just outside the mall

The drone of electronic information at home meant to inform drives

you to watch cartoons to regain your sanity

only to find anxiety

and yet

People reach out to people offering a hand or a can of soup

Restaurants offering drive up service or delivery to survive

Social media exploding with connections,

advice

anger

prayer

love

and a whole lot of stupidity

but

connections aren't there anymore to talk

to touch

to laugh

to drink

to walk

with

everyone has become an introvert

still

it is some how peaceful not to have to be

anywhere

or keep up the chit chat

make a decision

you can see the attraction of  disconnecting

and yet

others are losing jobs, staying home with children who have no schools

forcing families to talk to each other, call each other connect  with purpose

what are we losing really besides distractions?

Mother nature feels none of this

fat squirrels stuff acorns into their cheeks and run along fence tops

birds sing,

wind blows

sun shines

and goes down and up and

the earth still resolves around the sun and

the stars come out at night and the tulips push up through the earth

to continue their dance of spring

what have we lost except distractions

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Local production of the Nutcracker ballet

Bird’s eye view, first balcony

Beautiful, but

Dad was disillusioned

There’s tape all over the stage

Of course there is!

One hundred school children

Dancing their hearts out

Don’t break formation

Don’t get too close

Enter stage left

Exit stage right

I see taped stages everywhere

Six feet

Don’t break formation

Don’t get too close

Step two, three, four

Humans approaching stage left

Quick

Pivot

Exit stage right

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Very excited to post Jim's prose poem!

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Welcome all. Here is the first weekly post- a Prose Poem by Kristen Holt-Browning entitled "Ineffable."

In light of the radical change in our lives...see how this prose poem resonates now.

Reflect on your own routines and how they have changes in recent weeks. Feel free to add a poem of your own to our page.