2009

Dear All,

Since today is my last full day in the city in 2009, I wanted to think through some things, if you'll allow me. Wow! What a wonderful year this has been, what a ride! Some recaps:

This spring, around March, was exciting because I had what I called a "life transplant". I remember sitting in my first apartment in Harlem and trying to find a new apartment, and I received a phone call from an unknown number, and it was NYU telling me that I got in to the MFA program! The next week, I received my keys to my first studio apartment -- in Harlem. It was a dream of mine to have my own apartment, much less in Harlem. A few days after I moved in, I got a box at my door: first prints of my new book.

What follows is a whirlwind of a year: book tour with Raina Leon including readings in Chapel Hill (where I got to watch the NCAA basketball championships with some old classmates. a plus!), in Raleigh, NC, in Washington DC. And about 15 other readings in the New York City area. Summer came and I still had readings and chances to meet beautiful people along the way. Then a month in Ithaca just resting and thinking and dreaming about the projects I will write and want to write. I came back from Ithaca and hit the ground running again:

Book Launch party in Columbia, SC. This was especially great because I got to share my poems with my family -- the people that comprise 75% of the subject matter of my book. Then school started, and I was back down to SC to do the South Carolina Poet's Summit with Sharon Olds and Rosanna Warren -- a treat!

The rest of the fall was a blur with MFAing and working part time and interning at the New Yorker Magazine! I'm so grateful for solid friendships and companions that helped me stay grounded and sane in a potentially crazy period. Moreover, I'm super excited about my new poetry project, and can't wait to see what happens with it next.

So. 2010 has some big shoes to fill, but that's part of the excitement, right! Seeing what bigger and better things come around.

On the plate right now: I've been commissioned to write some poems for the Ackland Art Museum. This spring they're hosting Jacob Lawrence's "the Legend of John Brown" series. They want me to compose some original pieces and come back and give a reading and possible workshop. I'm excited for this exposure and opportunity.

other events in 2010:

Feb 21
Reading in South Brunswick NJ with Metta Sama

Feb 26-28
South Carolina Poetry Book Festival

April 16-19
Alabama Poetry Book Festival

April 23
Syracuse YMCA Reading

and sometime after that:
Reading and Workshop at the Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC.

Hope to see you around!

xoxo

It's been a while

I've been a bit busy with life in New York to post. I would look at my blog and think: man, I haven't posted in a long time....and then go on to do the various things that someone going to grad school and working two part time jobs and internship and fellowship has to do. yes. busy.

That is also to say, save for my two pretty big readings earlier this semester in South Carolina, readings in the city of my poetry have also come to a stop.

Just some information to pass along:

Constance Saltonstall Foundation: www.saltonstall.org for NY residents. A four week residency in bliss. Really.

First book prize for Asian American Writers: www.kundiman.org

Give to Soul Mountain: http://www.firstgiving.com/smretreat a residency in Connecticut, with the lovely, lovely Marilyn Nelson

And, I suppose, because I am an author, I must support giving books for Christmas presents. They're great ideas, really. You should do it. And gift my book. hehe.

Look for a better update soon. On the horizon. Also, maybe some glimpses at some writing and audio recordings!

Radiator rattles in the corner

Today, I was sitting in my apartment by my window that overlooks Saint Nicholas Avenue. Beside the table where I do some work, I heard a hissing noise. My window is open behind me -- I'm actually not facing the window, as sometimes I get too distracted by the goings on in upper Harlem. The cars and trucks and people provide an interesting background soundtrack to my work. The noise is unfamiliar to me. I realized, my radiator started emitting heat. I moved into this apartment in Spring, so I've never experienced the radiator music. But it is saying: Fall is here. Fall is here.



I want to write a more writerly post here, since that is what I sort of started this blog for. I mentioned last blog that I started this bigger project at school, and I'm most excited about it. Books I'm reading that are inspiring me:



Lorca's Poet in New York (and indirectly, Reyes' Poeta en San Francisco)

Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah (most of all the books)

Sanchez's Does Your House Have Lions?



I've done probably more prose writing around this project than I have poems. Here's a list of poems (titles are stand-ins, maybe. I might keep them.)



Gryphon's mother makes a promis to God

Gryphon & the flashing flames

Gryphon as a young boy

Gryphon's mother: dream one

Gryphon & Toby & Tutu



I recognize that these titles mean nothing to you right now. Who is Gryphon? He is a young boy coming of age in Charleston, South Carolina. He and his mother are fighting this battle, concurrently, against each other, with and against the world. It is about a house and a turtle and a young boy and his mother. The rest of the family is second to this storyline.



About the prose writing: I'm finding that because I sort of have a larger story that I'm trying to break into smaller poems, I do a lot of thinking. I decided to do my thinking in one journal, the same journal where the poems originate. So I have one journal that has my notes, my thoughts, my connections, my questions. It is serving very helpful to my busy lifestyle, also. This new life I've been given has forced me to stretch myself in new ways. No longer does my muse speak to me in whole poems in one sitting -- as it once has! -- rather, I am never really sitting around in one space long enough (in truth, I called out of work to have a few moments to sit down) for a poem to come. So I get glimpses and snatches and write them in this one journal. So all of my thinking that I would do in one sitting, I sort of dump into my journal and then when I sit down the night before my class to write the poem, I don't feel overwhelmed at the blank page, rather, I find I have pages and pages of notes to cull from, and starts and images. And a poem soon emerges.

Columbus Day

Today is a little bit of a holiday for me because my part-time work is so closely related to NYC Public schools. The students get the day off; I get the day off. So, I'm taking the little bit of time I have to update a bit on my life.

NYU -- I started the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program this fall. It's been an interesting ride. I came to the program on the heels of a month-long residency in which I sort of rested a lot, edited...and just dreamed about what I might start writing at school. I got in my workshop - working with poet Sharon Olds - and between being in her space and talking with a friend, I started this project I've been dreaming about for years. Years. I'll just say, it's about creating a family myth...and a turtle. and a little boy named Gryphon.

How God Ends Us -- the book is out in the world and circulating. Last Monday, I visited Adelphi University's Creative Writing program because one of the graduate classes read my book. It was my first time doing that sort of thing. Just the month before I flew down to South Carolina to give a talk on "The Art of Risk in Poetry" with poets Sharon Olds and Rosanna Warren. It's been interesting that my position in the poetry world is shifting: to one of teacher, to one of I have something to say, and folks want to come hear my say.

Internship -- so, as if I were not busy enough, I took an internship at a really cool New York magazine. I don't want to put my whole business out there, but it's a pretty big deal. I get to sit hours and hours and read slush and hope to "discover" a poet...although, who knows.

Gym & Life -- I am finding that the busier I get the more I need something to stabilize me. I've turned to the gym. I find a time to go at least 5 times a week, and that has been an important component to my survival -- just giving myself an hour at least to just do things for myself, where I don't really have to think about much except for maybe counting numbers of repetitions for crunches, or turning up the resistance knob on the spinning bike. Also, another mainstay for my stability is Sunday. I get up and go to the gym, then church, then come home and cook a Sunday dinner. Most times, I invite people over. Come and eat and break bread with me, and let's usher in a whole new week.

Updates!!

Hello out there in TV Land....



I am currently right in the middle of my residency here. Here are some pretty cool happenings:



Here's a review of my book by the SC Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth.



Metta Sama interviewed me for the Torch poetry blog.



ESSENCE Magazine published my poem "Lament" from _How God Ends Us_ in the September issue.



Upcoming: The State Newspaper will run a small story about me & the book & the official book party August 28 in Columbia, SC.

Forced reprieve

Last night I dodged a thunderstorm in the mountains. I heard stories from a friend who was here before I was who lost her laptop to the thunderous rains. She was trying to wade out the storm on her laptop. Her laptop is dead.

Thinking that I was smarter than that, I unplugged my laptop from the wall the two hours that the storm was passing through. You should know that my AC adaptor, for whatever reason, was already on the outs and I knew any extra electricity could possibly kill my computer or worse.

So, I tried to move my computer to a different part of my studio. This meant unplugging then re-plugging the laptop. My ac adaptor made a hissing noise then stopped working. Luckily the residency has a group computer for printing....but as of right now my computer is out of commission. I guess I am just blessed that it wasn't my hard drive.

30 days

Today is my first full day at the residency: The Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. I left almost immediately after I finished my summer program for my regular job. It was a whirlwind, really. And a lot of debriefing that needed to be done, but I couldn't really do because I was trying to pack and clean and get ready to uproot myself for 30 days.

I have no phone reception here. That can be either good or bad.

I've decided to not stress myself out on starting new things. But I am also not closing myself off on the possibility of something new. However, I've come to the conclusion that I need to really dedicate some time to revision, to re-visioning certain things: namely my two manuscrips of poetry...and I would like to see a more solid "draft" of my novel. So I will have my editorial hat on for the next thirty days.

Look for minor updates here and there.

Best,
DeLana.

_Cartographer_ edit #1

While my mom watches the MSNBC tribute to Michael Jackson in the background, I'm going to update a bit bout my progress on Cartographer.



I had two epigraphs. I cut one. I believe this one standing alone will mean more. I then proceeded to read each poem out loud in the coffeeshop, listening for wording and phrasing. Trying to capture line-breaks in the right places as well as punctuation.



Here's the breakdown of the manuscript so far. There are four sections in the 4 cardinal directions. One section is a long poem (hence the big difference between page count and number count):



Page count: 51 pages.

# of poems: 31.



I didn't take any poems out this round (that happenened in the previously mentioned post about manuscripting). I have one poem that I re-made drastically, I believe in an attempt to salvage it...to keep from cutting it.

Here's a look at an evolution. I'm still undecided if it's going to keep its place in the manuscript, however, I'm enjoying taking the stretch...recycling, if you will

draft (a)

A quarter's worth
"Let me say this to you before my quarter runs out" - man in nyc

It is dusk when I pace Broadway -
Spanish a backdrop of syncopated noise.

I curse myself for having no desire
to learn, yet yours is the first distinguishable

voice, inflected English a torch
against midnight. I see you, duffle bag

slouched over your shoulder, back arched
into the cubby-hold of the telephone booth.

Such urgency in your ocmmand. I pause
to let you speak - I want to know what

you can say here and now. What do you have
to say from a payphone where passersby

can eavesdrop, stop and listen? You slam
the phone down, let curses slip from your mouth.

I try to imagine myself in your place, try
to think how much time, how many words

can a quarter buy you after all?
------------------------------------------------
draft (b)

Analog

Your cell phone is lost and you dare search your purse for a quarter. Spanish a backdrop of syncopated noise, his inflected English your only torch against the night. Despite his huddle, you hear threats from the body of the blackened phone booth that holds the man like a hug. He screams into the receiver for his quarter's worth of time. You wonder how many words the silver coin can purchase. Evolution: You divvy up your allotted minutes among your dearly beloved; text messages taught you economy of language: fifteen taps to get the point. And the mouth never utters a word.

Manuscripting

I'm in Columbia, South Carolina. I've reached a place where I no longer refer to it as "home"...rather, my parent's house. Whenever I do come to South Carolina, I find being uprooted (interesting, returning to the South is now an "uprooting") from my dailyness of New York City life (or lack) gives me a certain perspective, and allows me to do a certain work. I came down with some goals in mind: editing.

I've got two "complete" drafts of things I wrote in 2008: my novel, a second book. I've spent a lot of time on others' blogs where they discuss their methods of revision. A lot to soak in; a lot to learn.

So. A couple of weeks ago, out of frustration and maybe a little bit of insecurity, I moved around my manuscript, Cartographer. I moved poems from the front to the back, from the back to the front. Took some out. Then, I let it sit. Now, I want to believe I'm ready to go back to it with a different eye.

Reading this book, is also helping me in a lot of ways.

Maybe, too, I'll chart my progress here.

Saturday afternoon musings

It's raining another day in New York City. I am a bit upset. I need sun, people!

So I've been thinking a lot about poetry lately. I suppose it's because I'm not really writing poetry, so I'm thinking about it at least, believing that I'm still being productive. What am I thinking? I'm thinking about several conversations I've had with other writers...most who are where I am, with one book out and another in-tow...and trying to figure out this world of book publishing in a world (the US, really.....why can't we be in the forefront here?) that could care less, really. But anyways, on more than one occasion have I heard someone say they were trying not to write the same book twice. One writer even went so far as to say he was holding his manuscript from publication because he doesn't feel he's been changed enough by it, or that it is different enough. I've been fighting with this. I have one full manuscript, and one that I believe is almost done, and they were all written in and around each other. In truth, some poems that appear in How God Ends Us could very well be poems that could work in this other manuscript. So, what does that say? That my writing hasn't changed enough? That I am writing the same book?

So then I'm thinking about the positives and negatives about this idea....I think a look at music could give us bigger ideas as to why this approach (changing our poetry game each book) could hurt or help us. Erykah Badu could be a good example. She came out with two albums that were similar in feel -- Baduizm and Mama's Gun. Though, without a doubt, in Mama's Gun, she had hints at a change, at something coming -- take the opening cut "Penitentiary Philosophy"....hard core jamming on the drums -- several levels up from "Rimshot", right?

But she still had some of that familiar. Some of that slow groove that everyone liked. Quite possibly my favorite song of hers, Green Eyes contains a lot of everything -- more bass & kick, slow and mellow....great vocals. Something for everyone.

She came out with World Wide Underground and folks were grumbling and mad and about ready to kick her to the curb. Folks bought it out of faithfulness, but I know many folks who don't know the album as they could talk about her live album or any of the other two. It was definitely a change, something different. She definitely didn't "record the same album" again. But at what cost? Folks just coming to her at this album would be taking a risk. Do they love it? Do they want to go back through her discography and see what else she does? If they love it and go back and want to hear more of it, they would be disappointed to find that because she changed her game so, she is not the same artist they fell in love with. Folks coming to this album from the start with E. Badu and with support for her growth would maybe understand that it is a door opening, that maybe, just maybe, whatever comes after this would be a nice balance. She was just going through musical puberty....

So then you get New Amerikah. And I think without songs like "Telephone" -- it would still be unbalanced...very much like a "better" World Wide Underground with heavy background stuff and not as much of Badu's vocals. She found her balance. A balance I think could only have happened because she remembered this past musician she was and gave herself room for this new musician she wants to be. I think if folks come to E. Badu with this as their first album and go back through her discography, they would not be alienated.

Back to poetry and writing and books, now. I am thinking about poets like Lucille Clifton. I am thinking about older poets, poets that we love, poets that we use to build canons and create syllabi for writing courses and literature courses and write whole theses about the arc of their work charting from beginning to end. I think the love of Ms. Clifton's work comes from this unchanging simplicity in her language and poetics...the constant that stays from book to book. Would we still love ms. Clifton as Ms. Clifton if she changed her game up every book? Would we still have the same feelings for her as we went from book to book, looking for those short, imaginative narratives, if she, say, were to switch it up and become a language poet? Would she still be Ms. Lucille Clifton? In name, yes. But maybe that's all.

Not to say something is wrong with becoming a language poet. I'm not going down that road. I've been reading some interesting poets as of late, trying to stretch (read: not change) my own strict-narrative bend. Matthea Harvey's Modern Life has been an interesting read, and only because I am coming to it with this open-mindedness about really trying to figure out what she's doing has it spoken to me in a most real and quiet way.

So there is this tug between wanting to do something different. I feel like I've told most of the stories I have to tell in my life, and find myself writing some of the same things in different ways. That is something I do not want to get locked into...There are some poets who tell the same story from collection to collection. That I am trying to avoid. But why re-invent myself each time I come to the gathering table for a collection or manuscript? What will I prove?

Any thoughts?

The Rest of My Yesterdays..

I'm listening to Alana Davis and trying to get motivated to start my week with a clean apartment.

I bugged my friend Mitchell Douglas to do a poetry challenge, thinking that I would be up for it -- that I would want to write a poem a day for a week and found that not to be the case. I wrote two and a half poems. The challenge ends Monday. I have been reading furiously. Does that count? Thinking about poetry instead of writing it?

My friend said something profound today that sort of eased my "I'm not doing anything productive" anxiety. The conversation went something like this:

Friend: i'm so not in the right writing space.
5:37 PM me: yeh, i hear you
5:38 PM Friend: lol
you hear me?
me: yup. loud n clear. i've not in the right anything space right now
6:07 PM Friend: maybe this is a season in which you are supposed to enjoy life & what God has already done
6:08 PM "How God Ends Us" really is a lovely, palpable, quietly powerful piece of work.
Bask in it!
6:09 PM Don't sweat the next thing. God will bring "Cartographer" and your Palestine project to pass. & whatever you're to do after them, well, it'll come, too.
Who knows how they'll coalesce & evolve at NYU.
Feel me?

--------

So that calmed me down a bit. And I should not feel like I'm not doing anything. I mean, since March 29, I've participated in 14 readings. This Wednesday will be the last appearance of the Spring and will top me off at 15 readings. I've been busy. It's been exhausting. But still, a part of me, the busy-bee part of me, the worrying-because-I-feel-like-I'm-missing-something part of me still feels unease at the pending lull in activity.

Here's a preview to the Fall, however: (this is in addition to going to school and working!)

**August 28, 2009 -- South Carolina -- South Carolina Poetry Initiative will host my SC Book Launch
**Sept 11, 2009 -- New York City -- Bryant Park Reading room with Cave Canem's Nehessaiu DeGainnes and Charles Lynch
**Sept 19, 2009 -- South Carolina -- SCPI Poet's Summit with other poets: Sharon Olds and Rosanna Warren
**October 15-17 -- Lowell, Ma -- Mass. Poetry Festival

I'm hoping to get a few more readings for the Fall and Spring.

Book Opening

May 31, 2009, I had a reading/celebration/opening for my book *How God Ends Us*. It was fun and nice and elegant. It was at this place called the cell in Chelsea. I had a friend from middle school and high school visiting and it was great to have new and old loves gathered under one roof.



I started the night with the poem by lucille clifton: "won't you celebrate with me". It is - as with a lot of other people i know - a favorite poem. Also, because I believe in the spirit of celebration, I wanted to open up my reading with these words:


won't you celebrate with me
by Lucille Clifton

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

I had a chance to be a bit vulnerable at the reading. I talked more than I normally would have...but I knew without a doubt that those people in that room were there to support me.

What was really cool was several people came in off the street. Some women immediately bought the book.

Other people who celebrated with me on the mic: Roger Bonair-Agard, Patrick Rosal, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and John Murillo.

Here's a link to some photos:

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2357310&id=2702460&l=ba30dc00a0

Also, my friend Saeed Jones did a little write up about the event, too: check it!
http://saeedjones.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/on-delana-damerons-book-release-party/#comments

Broadside!

Tonight was a reading with Matthea Harvey. The reading was organized by Thomas Sayers Ellis at the Center for Book Arts. The series is called the Broadside Reading Series. The Center brings in poets and they choose artists to create original broadsides of a selected poem. My poem, "Knowing the limits of the earth" was put into another art form, a beautiful broadside.

The picture does not do it justice. Eventually the broadside will be on sale on the website. It's 10 bucks, I believe, and worth it. You can also look at other poets featured in the series.

Exciting, indead.

Next up: Book Party/Launch on May 31!!!!!!!!

Then three more readings and my Spring/Summer schedule is over. Then, summer?

The reading, a poem.

Pictures from the reading.

a poem: (previously published in Inch magazine)

Oyster and Pearl

I am trapped

in my mother's house.

She cannot dislodge me

but finds ways to smooth over

the friction between us.

------

The set:

Opened up with Lucille Clifton's poem, Quilting.

Some Beastiaries (with regards to Ms. Anne Sexton)

1. Small-mouthed Bass

2. Io Moth

3. Oyster and Pearl

4. Beetle

From Cartographer

5. Knowing the Limits of the Earth (soon to be released as a broadside!!!)

6. Respect the Spaces

7. Palinode

From How God Ends Us

8. Ode to the Camel-Hair Brush

9. Closer to Knowing

10. Diving

11. The Last Touch

12. Backseat Savior

Mother's Day and a Reading

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. Again, another Mother's Day that I'm in New York City, and my mother is in South Carolina. I hope she gets what I sent her.

Also, tomorrow, I have a reading. It's in a garden. I'm praying for sun and flowers abloom. And, of course, poetry.

If you're in New York City, come, check it out!

http://www.6bgarden.org/

4pm.

Happy Mother's Day; Happy May

Come what May --

I realize I sort of sprung the essay excerpts on my readers. That is, if there are any readers out there! Allow me to explain a bit -- only a bit.

I haven't been writing poetry for a while. That's partly a lie. I was in a workshop with Tracy K. Smith, and it was hard to put myself in a position of both writer and promoter of my poetry/self when the book came out, and so I decided to let my promotion self step forward. However, writing largely focuses for me as a place I go to (it is a place in my mind) when I am dealing with difficult things, when I want to be in a different world for a while.

In tradition with a lot of events in my life, the last couple of weeks everything sort of came crashing down on me at once. And I had to (continue to) keep up this public persona, and I needed somewhere to escape, because there were little places to escape. Too, I've been wanting to write some of these essays for a while, and had been spinning them several different ways in my head, this way and that, and decided: what time is better than this to just write them? I wasn't interested in journaling the week's events. That becomes tired an old. I just wanted to not think about them, brood over them, so I do what I do in times of crisis: give myself a project.

The essays, even though excerpts only are presented here, are largely still unfinished. What I hoped to do was get to at least the heart of what I wanted to explore, to give myself a good running start for several essays that maybe can work their ways into something grander, can maybe even live together. What I discovered in the process is I am most ready to embrace my southern self than ever before. Maybe because I'm an ex-pat of sorts? I can't say that I don't ever imagine myself living in the South ever again, but I know there is a longing in this distance that is finding, sneaking its way into my writing -- an identity that I didn't have when I was in the South.

In other news, it's May. It feels like Seattle in New York -- it has rained consistently for the past week. We have seen a bad winter, one or two really good days, and now lots and lots of rain. I'll be happy for consistent sunshine. For walking the city streets without a jacket. Even -- gasp! dare i say it? -- a little humidity and heat. Oh, summer. Be with us now.

Writing, day 6

an excerpt:

Just black, then


An overheard conversation of three of my students:
A: Where are you from?
B: My family is from Ghana
A: Nigga, you ain’t from Africa – look how white you are! Really, where are you from?
B. Ghana. (he looks to the third boy) Where are you from?
C. America
B. No, dummy, where are your people, your parents from?
C. Down South. I’m not sure exactly where.
B. Oh, so you’re just black, then?

I am afraid that since I have moved (or escaped from) the South, that most of my stories begin or end or travel through there. Even when I don’t want them to. Even when I try to forget it, the City puts a mirror to my face. There it is.

I wanted to start this essay with this conversation I overheard while chaperoning middle schoolers Upstate to pick apples. This was to avoid starting with an obvious statement like I’m from the South or to start again the endless cycle of comparison between the City and what I am calling home.

Back home, we are not so much occupied (that is, anymore. It is the New South) with this idea of ethnic identity. Blame it one its history. I do. Rather, we simplify into broad categories capable of containing many exceptions. We identify as either: white, black or mixed (added post-Jim Crow to accommodate an idea of the “other”). You can tell a non-southerner by their need to create sub-categories to this filing system. They’ll say: “I’m white, but my mother’s family is from Ireland )or England – whichever European country will allow such classification),” or they’ll say, “I’m mixed: my father is Indian and Black; my mother is German.”

If I was in the conversation with those boy’s I’d be just black, then. I learned this label several ways: first, upon playing on my daycare playground and being told that I couldn’t play games with them because their parents said they weren’t allowed to play with “Blacks.” Another time I learned was when we were vacationing in Washington, DC and my father was looking for a parking space, and we had entered into this battle with someone who claimed to have seen it first, and my mother leaned out the window, and the woman leaned and said we should take our black asses back where we came from, and my mother – self-identifying for the woman – said we were taking our black asses and parking there. So the woman did not get the park. We were just black asses and the woman had said it and my mother confirmed. There were no other questions.

writing day 5

who knew i could keep this up?

an excerpt (it's not titled):

Though I hated it then, the best thing my sister could have done for me was assume her elderly sister’s role and pick on me. She took advantage of every opportunity – once I lost both bottom baby teeth while trying to pull a too-small thermal shirt over my head so we could play in the once-a-winter South Carolina snow. They were already loose, but in keeping with my tradition of holding onto things for too long – way longer than they should be held – I refused to let anyone pull them. I have a constant reminder of this truth every time I offer a wide-mouthed smile: one tooth is exceptionally higher than the others because it refused to wait for the dead tooth to dislodge itself from my gums. I remember specifically during those times of no-bottom-front-teeth that my sister would sit at the dinner table and laugh as she watched me negotiate an ear of corn my mother had prepared.

Too, around the same time, I was her maid. We inherited an elaborate kitchen set, complete with stove, silver (not plastic) pots and pans. We were playing house one day and it was tea time. I was to set the table, including getting water for the tea. I approached the bathroom and noticed the missing footstool I used in the mornings to wash my hands. The sink was too high for me to reach then. Perhaps I could have tried the bathtub. Instead, I reached into the toilet bowl with the silver kettle and returned. She took a sip. Maybe it was because the water tasted weird, or because she had not heard any water running at all yet I had come bearing the thing she sent me after, but she asked me where I got the water. Because I still had not mastered the art of lying with a straight face, I had mastered the art of delaying consequences. I told her simply: the bathroom. She asked if it was from the sink and I said no, I couldn’t reach it. The tub? No. Not the tub. House was over. She loves to tell this story as an example of how evil I am, but I defend myself and say resourceful. I was using what I had to get what I was supposed to get.

Writing, day 4

an excerpt:

Epistolary to the Woman Across a Continent

Dear Eula,

You should know that we do not know each other. Perhaps you know it. Still, I am writing with the best wishes for your well-being. I am well.

I am writing because I want to know if you believe in fate. I need to know this. Often, I find myself sure of this idea that we are locked in life like a maze and there is only one correct path, despite the allusion that we have choices.

Allow me to explain. Once, my sister and I were riding in my grandfather’s green station wagon. He had picked us up from our house so we could spend the weekend with him. It was one of my favorite things to do. Anyways, we were riding in the car and I noticed that we were not taking any of the routes I’d known to get to the cul-de-sac on which my grandparents lived. I inquired our destination from the back seat. My sister, older and up front, said nothing – seemingly annoyed she’d spend another weekend on my grandparent’s couch.

I asked why we were going this way, and my grandfather said something to the effect of there being multiple ways to skin a squirrel (maybe I’ll tell you one of the ways I know in my next letter), and that all roads lead home. My sister told him she was familiar with this route, and that he was going the wrong way. Imagine that: two girls having never held the steering wheel of anything giving directions. We reached a stop sign and my grandfather acquiesced – she said fine, which way should I go? We’d look left, look right, and chose a path. He listened. We’d hit several dead ends and would have to turn around, return to the point we went astray. He’d go back to the last turn, and we’d choose another path.

I don’t remember how long this went one or if we finally found our way on our own, or if Grandpa gave up on the game we were playing and just drove us to this house. It was kind of like that maze I mentioned, like life, wouldn’t you agree? We think we should go one way and we do and then we reach the dead end and either choose to cast down our reigns and give up or we turn back.

Writing, day 3

an excerpt:
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Believe


I admit, I am more gullible than most. I am a cynic and skeptic, too. I don’t know how both sides of the dichotomy exist within me without some internal combustion, but they do. Most times, I believe what I am told.


I only knew my grandfather as a retiree. I’ve heard stories and seen pictures of when he was in the army or when he sliced open the dead bodies of mental patients. Maybe, looking back, these are selective memories, what I choose to remember or file away in the card catalog of memories and deceased family members. I am guilty of that. Choosing things I want to remember: mostly the positive things. Once, my family was reminiscing about him – noting his absence – at a cook out. Everyone was throwing around a series of “do you remembers” followed by nothing that sounded like the man I knew. I refused to believe that. Here is where my skepticism kicked in. I refused to believe that he was a drunk, or that one time he set his Monte Carlo on fire while driving down South Carolina’s I-20.


The James – we called him Papa James – I knew spent his afternoons turning his suburban backyard into a farm. For me. Everything he did, he professed, he did it for me.


In my grandparents’ back yard, around the magnolia that is positioned right in the center, were the following (not all at once, but some permeation of the following based on the season and availability): chicks; ducks; a pond with carp, goldfish and two small turtles (my sister named them Thelma and Louise; I named them Felix and Otis); rabbits; a “jungle gym”; a picnic table and grill made of cinderblocks; a storage shed; a green house; a house where he put a TV, bed, and rocking chair; cats named Tom and Jerry – none of the animals except the finches were allowed inside; Iguanas; a small garden with various fruits and vegetables; a barrel opened on its side filled with a strawberry patch.


Over the summers, I would spend weeks at a time there; my grandfather and I both needed something or someone to occupy those empty days. My grandmother was still working and would be up and out of the house before I woke up and I would hear in my sleep the faint sounds of some lawn mower or gardening appliance. I’d wake up and make my way to the kitchen where a ritual breakfast of fried eggs, grits and sausage were waiting.


Eventually, I’d make it outside. By then the sun was up and out and my grandfather was done with his work for the day. He’d come inside and take a nap. I’d romp around from sprinkler to greenhouse to chicken shed to rabbit cage to the strawberry patch.


It wasn’t until I entered the house one day – my fingers and face marked – to find Papa James reading his Bible, preparing for his Sunday school teaching. He looked up and asked me what I had gotten into. I was sure that he’d still be napping and I could wash my face and hands and settle down to whatever lunch he had fixed. I couldn’t lie; I told him I tasted some of the strawberries. That was a lie. I had picked all of the red ones and eaten them right there, hovering the barrel.


He closed his Bible and began to fix my lunch. I rushed to wash up. He entertained my desire to watch cartoons, and I remember this particular cartoon was an episode of Rugrats. The trouble-maker girl – Angelica (of whom I related to most at times) was tormenting one of the younger kids because they had eaten the seed of some fruit. Watermelon, I believe. She told them that they should know you never eat the seeds of anything. Ever. That to eat the seeds of something would surely mean that you’d have the whole fruit growing inside of you. And you’d die.


Papa James took this opportunity to tell me that it was true. You never, ever eat the seeds. You could die. He then asked me if I ate the strawberries. I said yes. He said, soon there will be a strawberry patch growing in my stomach.


Scared of what that could mean – that my small frame would expand to explosion – I wanted to give every strawberry back. It was too late he said. We sat and watched the end of the cartoon, and he cleaned up and went outside to tend to his garden.


How did one avoid eating strawberry seeds? They were outside of the fruit; countless numbers embedded in the red flesh. I contemplated the thousand seeds I had consumed. How each one would grow and grow. I hadn’t believed the cartoon. It was a bunch of moving pictures and voice-overs and extreme scenarios enlarged by childish imaginations. But my grandfather had confirmed its truth. I believed. I was going to die.