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Holy Cow

I am trying to make sense of things, which is why I find myself ruminating. Chewing like a cow on my thoughts. Cows also ruminate. Differently though. After ingesting lots of grass, cows find a place to lie down to more thoroughly chew their food. This process of swallowing, “un-swallowing”, re-chewing, and re-swallowing is called rumination, or more commonly, “chewing the cud.” Perhaps my mental cud chewing is some undiagnosed shit, as I have more than once been called a bull shitter. Maybe it’s some spiritual shit, as I have more than once been called a heifer.

During my ruminations, a thought from years ago or months ago or minutes ago, a sneaky motherfucking thought can get caught in an endless cycle that moves through my mind, down into my gut, up into my heart, and back into my head all day for days. This week’s rumination was on Bill Gates. When news first dropped of his divorce with Melinda French Gates, I couldn’t understand why a couple married that long would divorce. Just didn’t make sense to me in my naivety about relationships and such. But then I read he’d been a serial philanderer, and maybe something worse, for years. This took me back to my ongoing thoughts about John Tubman. I wonder what it felt like for Harriett to love a lover who betrayed her and still not be able to get him out of the rotation of her habitual thinking—looking for nutrients that were perhaps never there.

And that just sits me down in the grass with my questions, not about Bill or John or Harriett, but about humans, about humanity, about the cows. Is there a goal for reckoning with the atrocities done to the folks on this land, or is everyone just chewing cud, full of it. What would it take for folks to trust each other enough to confront history healthily on a massive scale? Is that ever going to happen or is it not even what people want? Are we out to pasture and don’t even know it? Being led to some ultimate slaughter because we’ve never stopped chewing long enough to digest what has happened here. To extract the lessons, expel the shit, and not lap it up again and again for no reason, no reason at all on repeat. How do we repair the harm of slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching? I grind these questions through my teeth, down into my gut, throw them up, lick them down, throw them up again, sleep with them on my stomach, wake up with them on my face.

I wonder if I, who unlike cows that ruminate out of necessity, am doing so as a trauma response? Am I eternally grazing? Do I get to have memories of my dad’s size 11 hooves stomping my mother’s face in my mind forever, forever ever? Oh, the amount of intrusive reviewing and revisiting and revising that I put myself through after a speech or a panel discussion or after I’ve met someone whose thoughts make me think twice. Always wanting to rewind the time, to break things down just a little bit more, just a little bit longer. I can lie paralyzed by thoughts of a single color, a silly word, or a fumbled phrase. Is this something that will eventually go away? Do I want it to? I think the older I get, it only happens more.

I ruminate over people too. I sit and think and think and think about Kanye or my Ex or my future love or my future Ex lover and wonder if they are ok and if there is anything I could do to help them or to help the people in my life who are like them? I even think about how their brains work and wonder whether they ruminate too? Do they reflect on circumstances in ways that require large swaths of energy—relive moments of emotional unrest or emotional bliss while waving their tails under the summer’s hot sun? Do questions about Malcolm and Mariama and Mumia know no end in their minds like mine? Do they get so lost in their thoughts that they see someone talking but cannot make out the words they’ve said with lips just flapping from side to side in the wind?

This Erykah Badu on and on and on-ism is also something I do with history. Sit myself in the haul of a ship tightly packed with piss and vomit and blood and death at my feet and at my head. I am Antoinette Sithole running beside a dying boy through Soweto. I am Winnie Mandela 491 days solitarily confined. I, too, chew with the ancient aurochs and swim with the ship jumpers.

Someone told me to practice writing the ruminations out. Not a therapist, just a fellow ruminator who reported to have found a way to reuse their unmanaged, unmitigated written ruminations to reimagine. To release them like an unruly herd. I want to reimagine what the American version of the Truth and Reconciliation Trials would look like? A social epic I suppose. Can we stand to memorize other people’s lines? Like future replay in reverse.

Rumination was originally defined as repetitive thinking about negative effects and their possible causes and consequences. But rumination can also be beneficial when it focuses on reckoning with an error—one’s own and those of others. Like spending hours thinking about what healing feels like in our bodies, in our minds. Rumination is also helpful for goal attainment rehearsing a task—seeing ourselves, smelling ourselves, in a future as we wish to see it. When was the last time you ruminated on a world repaired? A people healed? Remembering that finding social nutrients is an all-day job and gave yourself the whole day to do it. Write out your regurgitations, prepare for reconciliations that repair the harm because we can ruminate on the problems until the cows come home, but how much more can our minds really take and who is it actually feeding?

For the last 10 years, Jeannine Cook has worked as a trusted writer for several startups, corporations, non-profits, and influencers. In addition to a holding a master’s degree from The University of the Arts, Jeannine is a Leeway Art & Transformation Grantee and a winner of the South Philly Review Difference Maker Award. Jeannine’s work has been recognized by several news outlets including Vogue Magazine, INC, MSNBC, The Strategist, and the Washington Post. She recently returned from Nairobi, Kenya facilitating social justice creative writing with youth from 15 countries around the world. She writes about the complex intersections of motherhood, activism, and community. Her pieces are featured in several publications including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Root Quarterly, Printworks, and midnight & indigo. She is the proud new owner of Harriett’s Bookshop in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia.

Dearly Beloved, You are my people, Do not pass on this story

Writing For Social Justice — Column

As He says also in Hosea: “I will call them My people, who were not My people, And her beloved, who was not beloved.” Romans 9:25

I am convinced that Toni Morrison is sending me messages from the other side. Maybe those are her knuckles brushing against my cheek when I sleep. Maybe those are her footsteps that come and go after things go silent. And that is why I’ve returned yet again to her story, Beloved.

This time, my sister Jazzy and I are using our new podcast as an excuse for yet another walk down Morrison’s Bluestone Road looking for clues to heal the chokecherry tree society’s back—clueless about what I mean? Then you have your homework.

This is not the first or the last time my sister and I will read Beloved or restudy the screenplay or rewatch the film knowing that the answers are all there. Our continued question—how do we complete the ultimate social exorcism and banish the evil of colonialism once and for all? We both agree wholeheartedly that Beloved holds the answers; it is just a matter of respecting the text and respecting our foremother enough to take a second look.

In our work as facilitators, before the bookshop, we reminded youth in countries around the world that the etymology of the word respect means to look again. We find in our society it is all too easy and highly common to make assumptions and conclusions about people, art, philosophies, and books based on our first impressions.

But respect requires us to return and see more—ask more questions—a second (or even in our case six hundredth) look lets you see what you never remembered you’d forgotten. Like it was Toni who took a second look at her own Black Book to better understand the woman she featured there, Margaret Garner. This woman who at first glance is seen as a wild slave and a horrific child murderer; at a second glance, she becomes a beacon of motherhood and the definition of freedom.

So, because we respect the heck out of this book and Toni Morrison, we find ourselves reading it like it is the first time. I am recognizing how much I’ve changed this time around simply by the questions that I find myself asking myself. Like, in 2012, I was obsessed with the feet. In 2014, it was the colors. In 2016, it was the men. In 2018, it was the mothers. And this time around, I am caught up in the Fugitive Slave Act and what its modern equivalent may be, how we treat felons, and how we know we are free. I always wonder how I miss so much. And wonder who I will be the next time I read it and what she will see that I cannot yet see.

So, the other night, my sister and I spent the night in the bookshop determined to unpack this book once again. “We have to do it for the podcast,” we said laughing. We poured libations for the ancestors, held hands, and invited Toni Morrison and Margaret Garner to “Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on.”

“60 million,” I read the book’s dedication out of respect for the 60 million who died during the transatlantic trade of people.

“60 million,” Jazzy repeats.

“You are my people,” I say out of respect for the book’s opening biblical quote about second chances.

“You are my people,” she repeats.

“This is not a story to pass on,” we say in unison.

From 9 p.m. to 9 a.m., we post sticky note after sticky note on the walls asking ourselves who was Beloved? And why we are being haunted by her. And whether we are wild or free. And how we are Sethe. And whether we have two legs or four. And why the community failed Baby Suggs. And what it means to be loved. And finally, we run out of sticky notes. We sit on the floor staring up at the wall and realize, once again we’ve only just begun.

My hope is that on your journey to wherever you may be headed, you will return to the books and the authors who are your beloved and take a second look. And that you will find your people and discuss it with them. And that you will find the clues to join us on the ultimate social exorcism so we can banish this thing once and for all.

Ase.

For the last 10 years, Jeannine Cook has worked as a trusted writer for several startups, corporations, non-profits, and influencers. In addition to a holding a master’s degree from The University of the Arts, Jeannine is a Leeway Art & Transformation Grantee and a winner of the South Philly Review Difference Maker Award. Jeannine’s work has been recognized by several news outlets including Vogue Magazine, INC, MSNBC, The Strategist, and the Washington Post. She recently returned from Nairobi, Kenya facilitating social justice creative writing with youth from 15 countries around the world. She writes about the complex intersections of motherhood, activism, and community. Her pieces are featured in several publications including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Root Quarterly, Printworks, and midnight & indigo. She is the proud new owner of Harriett’s Bookshop in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia.

Letter from the Poetry Editor

Philadelphia Stories is excited to share the winning poem in this year’s Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry: Caitlin Kossmann’s “Airborne.” This year’s Crimmins Prize was judged by poet Airea D. Matthews, director of the creative writing program at Bryn Mawr College and author of the critically acclaimed Simulacra. Kossmann along with the other winners will be celebrated with an online reading and awards ceremony to wrap up the LitLife Poetry Festival on April 17.

The 2021 Crimmins judge, Airea D. Matthews says that “Airborne” offers “an opportunity for stillness” as it “[reflects] on longing and the quotidian aspects of our cloistered lives.” The absence depicted in Kossmann’s poem is palpable and familiar, but so is the urge to tidy, to care for, and to protect.

This focus on small, meaningful detail is evident in the runners up for 2021 selected by Airea D. Matthews. Sean Webb’s “On a Day’s Pause from the Rigors of Metastases We Walk through Laurel Hill Cemetery, You and I” and Jessica Chretien’s “Plural” draw the reader’s attention to the granular, but build mosaics and colonies out of tiles, ants, years, and days. These runners up will each receive $250 for their poems and are invited to join us on April 17.

Many of the poems we reviewed for this issue speak to the obviously precedented dangers of systemic injustice, white supremacy, unemployment, and disease. The current moment exposes how interconnected and incapacitating such threats are. Widespread grief and frustration have been more than some of us can process in our own writing. Thankfully, poets like those included in Philadelphia Stories’ Spring 2021 issue have been able to offer us their work, helping focus our own sorrow and anger. Reading these poems feels to me like holding the hand of someone a step or two ahead on an unfamiliar path. They cannot answer our biggest questions, they cannot solve our hardest problems, but they can remind us—crucially, unexpectedly—of the points where we connect.

Philadelphia Stories thanks Joe Sullivan for his continued support of this contest and his enduring friendship with Philadelphia Stories. We also welcome Jackie Domenus in the role of contest coordinator and thank Jackie for consistent, helpful, and organized communication with our poetry editor and poetry screeners.  We perpetually thank  Yalonda Rice, managing editor, for her flexibility and patience in assembling the magazine. Above all, we thank the poets who trust their work with us; reading your poems each year humbles us and reminds us how connected we are.

We will celebrate the winning poets of the Crimmins contest and the new poet laureate of Montgomery County in an afternoon reception which will be online, free, and open to the public as part of the LitLife Poetry Festival on April 17. Visit https://philadelphiastories.org/litlife-poetry-festival/ for more information and to register for LitLife.

WINNER OF THE 2021 SANDY CRIMMINS NATIONAL PRIZE IN POETRY

“Airborne,” Caitlin Kossmann (New Haven, CT)

RUNNERS UP

“On a Day’s Pause from the Rigors of Metastases We Walk Through Laurel Hill Cemetery, You and I,” Sean Webb (Philadelphia, PA)

“Plural,” Jessica Chretien (Concord, NH)

 EDITORS’ CHOICES

“Why I Never Talk About My Mother,” Joe Cilluffo (West Chester, PA)

“A Black Body Stuffed in a Villanelle,” Jaya Montague (Philadelphia, PA)

“Warning, Do Not Eat Your Fortune: 40 Dating Reminders Every Woman Over 40+ Needs to Hear Now!,” S. Erin Batiste (Brooklyn, NY)

“Dad, Because You Made Me Destroyer of Worlds, Yours, Too,” Judd Hess (Huntington Beach, CA )

FINALISTS

Catie Barrett (Ithaca, NY)

Imani Cezanne (Oakland, CA)

Curtis Christler (Fort Wayne, IN)

Dillon Clark (Egg Harbor Township, NJ)

Christian Collier (Hixson, TN)

AE Hines (Portland, OR)

A Kaiser (New York, NY)

Darius Simpson (Oakland, CA)

Lupita Eyde Tucker (Palm Bay, FL)

 

Writing Prompt: Writers Write

Once, while in an Uber, the driver asked me what I did, and I blurted out that I was a writer. It was the first time that I had ever admitted to being a writer to anyone. Usually, I said that I was a mom or worked for my husband or worked for a medical practice. I used to write in secret, hiding my work in computer files or journals that I buried in the recesses of my cabinet drawers. But on that day, I was traveling to the convention hall for an AWP conference, and I felt part of the writers’ community. I recognized that there are different paths to being a writer, and my unconventional and delayed course didn’t discount me from being a writer. Writers write. That’s it. That’s the criteria.

For this month’s writing prompt, imagine that your character is sitting on their porch. Think about what they’re doing and what they fixate on? A stranger pulls up in front of the house. What happens next?

Letter From The Editor

Letter from the Editor

It’s been quite an eventful year! Who knew we’d be releasing yet another fantastic issue virtually from the comfort of our homes? It’s sad to think that not long ago, the team and I would meet together, once per week, at the haven of Mighty Writers West. Despite the challenges of editing this issue remotely, similar to our last issue, the transition has gone smoothly, and I’m happy to say that the safe space that Mighty Writers encompasses has made a positively impactful adaption to our virtual setting. 

Since September 2020, the team and I have been hard at work on this pandemic issue. This issue, for me, has been the most unique and bizarre than any other we’ve worked on. We had to persevere, seeking out artists and writers who’ve yet to be discovered, as well as working with students who already submitted through our platform. The team and I value each submitter near and dear to our hearts. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have had an issue this year. For that, again, I am so grateful for our team of editors and group of now published student writers and artists. 

Sadly, this is the last partnership issue I’ll be working on with Mighty Writers and Philadelphia Stories as I head off to college in the Fall. I’ve been working with both organizations for three years, which has been such an incredible and memorable experience. Having the opportunity to read the adventures and impressive narratives students submitted is heartwarming and inspiring. I look forward to continuing to read the imaginative works of students who seek to be heard through Mighty Writers programs and Philadelphia Stories magazine, to become artists, writers, wordsmiths, and changemakers.

I want to thank Christine Weiser of Philadelphia Stories for recognizing and offering me this incredible opportunity, for inspiring me to become a better writer and leader. I also want to thank Christina Rissell of Mighty Writers for giving me helpful guidance and advice on how to run a team of fantastic, hardworking editors who brought joy to a hard and daunting period of our lives.

Enjoy the issue!

Eric-Ross McLaren, Lead Editor

Philadelphia Stories Junior

 

Writing for Social Justice: At Your Mother’s Knee

The idea of instituting Governments is to secure people’s rights to life, liberty, and property. When John Locke stole this nugget of ancient Egyptian wisdom from the goddess Maat, I wonder if he had any idea folks like Thomas Jefferson would bastardize the wisdom and completely change the language, replacing property with pursuit of happiness.

Today, we see the consequences of this theft in American society. The colonialist mindset of manifest destiny was created without the contextual principles of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice that Maat represented thousands and thousands of years before this country’s inception.

If America had been built on these principles, the humans, the animals, the oceans, and the airs would yield better results for all life forms. But alas, Maat’s bastard child, the United States, was birthed without a legitimate connection to its mother. Stealing from her while trying to mimic her at the same time.

No respect for the true mother of American principles has been shown. This is evidenced as women who built this country were shamed, granted no property rights, and barred from the pursuit of happiness. And of course, out of pure hate, the founders captured Black women, and not only denied them property or a pursuit of happiness, but also inflicted inexplicable atrocities on them.

This sordid, inequitable history has left many Black women behind their peers when it comes to ownership in this country. And by ownership, I really mean guardianship, because as Maat will tell you, no one “owns owns” this land.

So how do we begin to reckon with this wretched history and restore the order? Well, look around and see that I, like so many Black women business owners in Philadelphia, are running businesses out of buildings and off of land that we have very little rights to or ownership over.

This modern form of sharecropping, working the land that someone else benefits from, limits our ability to leave the legitimate legacy of our businesses to our lineage and poses a serious impediment to our lives, our liberties, and our pursuits of happiness/property.

For the new year, I wish more folks, especially Black women in Philadelphia, and around the world, owned (not leased or borrowed) our own land and maintained complete and total autonomy over the direction of our futures on this land. This is the only way to begin to rectify the bastardization of Maat’s ancient wisdom. This is the only way to begin to repair the damage inflicted on us through forced labor in a measurable, sustainable way—because simply posting Black Lives Matter on Twitter or kneeling at a protest or reading antiracist literature is not enough.

Speaking of reading antiracist literature, my job as the shopkeeper at Harriett’s Bookshop is to curate and recommend books. This month I am recommending Ida B. The Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells which will be released on January 21st. It examines the life of Ida B. Wells—the mother, the writer, the advocate, the activist. Ida B. Wells exemplifies a crusader intent on restoring order and enlisting the principles of Maat even in the face of the lynching of her friends, the destruction of her newspaper, and the insults on her name. In her day, Ida B. Wells galvanized small civic groups across the globe to work in tiny cells on measurable community actions. Think big tree, small axe.

Consider, not only reading Ida B. The Queen, but also using her great granddaughter Michelle Duster’s text as a catalyst for starting your own small civic group that moves into action on the topic of life, liberty, and property. Because only the people can restore the order. It is also time to start partnering with like-minded folks and securing guardianship over land in ways that align with principle over profit. And while I am asserting large institutions should listen to this conversation and take action by offering land and resources to the people, I assure you this is going to happen either way. Because as the Great Mother Maat reminds us, balance is necessary and life, liberty, and property are a birthright. Ase.

For the last 10 years, Jeannine Cook has worked as a trusted writer for several startups, corporations, non-profits, and influencers. In addition to a holding a master’s degree from The University of the Arts, Jeannine is a Leeway Art & Transformation Grantee and a winner of the South Philly Review Difference Maker Award. Jeannine’s work has been recognized by several news outlets including Vogue Magazine, INC, MSNBC, The Strategist, and the Washington Post. She recently returned from Nairobi, Kenya facilitating social justice creative writing with youth from 15 countries around the world. She writes about the complex intersections of motherhood, activism, and community. Her pieces are featured in several publications including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Root Quarterly, Printworks, and midnight & indigo. She is the proud new owner of Harriett’s Bookshop in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia.

Letter From the Guest Editor

Hello,

My name is Lori.

I am a Black woman. I am a writer. And I have always known that Black lives matter. As an avid reader since early childhood, I have also known that Black stories matter, but I didn’t grow up seeing myself or others who looked like me in the pages of the books I so eagerly consumed. So, when I picked up a pen to write my first stories, I didn’t write about little girls who looked like me. I wrote about people who looked like Anne of Green Gables and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I didn’t know that I could write stories with Black people in the starring roles.

That is why it was such an honor to serve as guest editor for this special Black Lives Matter edition of Philadelphia Stories, where the mission was to tell Black stories, where Black people could have the starring roles.

So, what are Black stories? First of all, they are not stories filled with trauma, terror, and references to slavery. Except when they are. They also aren’t stories situated in urban centers and populated with senseless violence. Except when they are. Black stories aren’t repositories for stereotypes, but it would be perfectly reasonable to find references to fried chicken and southern living in a Black story. It would also be reasonable to find love, laughter, and joy as well. There also might be spaceships, dragons, and unicorns. In other words, Black stories span the entirety of the Black experience and imagination. Black stories are universal stories, written by Black people.

So, the essays, stories, and poems included in this issue are as varied as Black people themselves. There is love and laughter, sadness and pain. There is pride and despair. And yes, there is mention of fried chicken. The only thing that all of these stories have in common is that they were written by Black writers. And that’s what makes them Black stories. And yet, they are universal stories. Stories that can be appreciated and enjoyed by all people. Especially, Philadelphians, as most of the selections here have an obvious connection to the city of Brotherly Love.

In this issue, there are one non-fiction essay, two short stories, and five poems written by talented Black writers from different walks of life. These selections were chosen not only because they were well written and offered evocative expressions of life, both real and imagined, but because together, they offer a glimpse into the highs and lows of Blackness in America right now. From the front lines of the fight against Covid, to the bustling kitchen of a Black church, the prose offers compelling characters and complex stories. The poetry crackles with rhythm and life.

I hope you enjoy reading this issue of Philadelphia Stories as much as we enjoyed putting it together. I hope it whets your appetite to read more Black stories by Black writers, from Philadelphia and beyond. I hope more Black writers submit their work to be considered for this publication and many others. Because we need more Black stories. We need Black stories to matter to everyone, not just Black people. We need Black lives to matter to everyone as well. Please keep writing. Please keep reading. Please keep sharing. It all matters.

Lori L. Tharps is a writer whose work meets at the intersection of race and real life. She is an author, journalist, educator, podcast host, and popular speaker. She is inspired by the collision of culture and color. She is fueled by creativity and passion.

Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Lori attended Smith College, where she had the opportunity to spend her junior year studying abroad in Salamanca, Spain. After graduating from Smith, Lori spent two years working on Madison Avenue at one of New York City’s top-ten public relations agencies. Soon after, she entered Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and has been writing her way through the world ever since.

Lori began her journalism career as a staff reporter at Vibe magazine and then as a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly. She has served as writer and/or editor for magazines including, Ms., Glamour, Suede, Zora.com, Parents, and Essence. She has also written for The Columbia Journalism Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, The Root.com and The Washington Post. 

Tharps is the award-winning author of three critically-acclaimed nonfiction books including, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (St. Martin’s) Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain (Atria), and Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families (Beacon) She also penned the novel, Substitute Me (Atria).

Lori is the mother of three, is (almost) fluent in Spanish, and can say I love you in seven languages. She has a labradoodle named after James Baldwin.

 

 

Poetry Prompt: Write, Replace, Repeat

By Grant Clauser

In his Journal of the of Fictive Life (1965), former US Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov writes in one section about the struggle of getting started on a new work, but concludes “What a great weight one adds to the heart by simply writing ‘It was a fine summer morning.’”

While I can’t remember the whole passage (I stumbled upon the above sentence online), it strikes me as good advice to offset what Maxine Kumin calls “the terror of the first line.” I and many other poets have spent innumerable hours staring at an empty page (paper or pixels) waiting for the first words to squirm awkwardly from the ooze. Sometimes that happens. Often it doesn’t, which is why we need to try some other tricks to push through the inertia. I’m thinking of kayaking right now (daydreaming actually). The first dip of the paddle can be the hardest one because you’re not moving. You need to fight the water’s grip on the boat, and physic’s grip on reality, before one motion becomes forward movement. Dip and repeat. Dip and repeat.

So, back to Nemerov’s summer morning. Here’s a first dip that’s worked for me.

Simply write out the simplest, easy, statement you can, much like the above.

It was a fine summer morning.

Then, write it again, replacing one word for another, but to force the mind into movement substitute a verb for a noun, an object for a person, or turn it into a simile… until you feel the boat gliding across the surface. Don’t be afraid to get weird. Only then can you let go, point the bow somewhere and keep paddling.

She was a fine summer morning.

She laughed like a fine summer morning.

She laughed like the summer rain

against the tent, mosquitos bursting

between our bodies while down

in the valley the river rose over

the road making an island of us

Etc. You get the idea. The point being that the mind, the part that takes one experience and transforms it into another, sometimes needs a push, like a friend on the shore giving your kayak a shove before you figure out the stroke that will keep you moving. Dip and repeat. Dip and repeat.

Grant Clauser is the author of five books including Muddy Dragon on the Road to Heaven (winner of the Codhill Press Poetry Prize), Reckless Constellations, and The Magicians Handbook. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Tar River Poetry, The Literary Review and others. He works as an editor and teaches at Rosemont College.

Writing Prompt: The Three-Part Poem

In Carolyn Kizer’s introduction to Theodore Roethke’s essay collection, On Poetry and Craft, she notes that Roethke often described his favorite kind of poems as three-act plays.

“You move from one impulse to the next, and then there is a final breath, which is the summation of the action as a whole,” she writes. In a lyric poem of this sort, she says, the action is emotional or mental, rather than physical, but it still follows this dramatic structure.

That reminded me of a poetry exercise I created years ago and have presented to several classes. Sometimes I ask people to write it in class, as fast as they can. Other times it’s a take-home assignment for discussion the next week. Either way, it almost always results in good poems, ones with a structure that just seems to work. Depending on the workshop, I’ve called it different things with slight modification: The Three-Part Nature Poem, The Three-Part Person Poem, The Three-Part Nostalgia Poem. Here’s the place poem version.

Part 1
Select a specific scene or place from your memory where you have a strong emotional attachment (the front porch of your ancestral home, a place you’ve vacationed, the bar where you wasted your 20s, a boat dock you where you broke up with your lover, the paddock you used to raise hoses as a kid, the street in front of your grandfather’s house, the place you used to go when you skipped school…) and write one stanza on that. Try to keep people out of this stanza and make the imagery vivid and a little metaphorical.

Part 2
Write a stanza about your family or someone in your family connected to that place—any subject or situation relating to your family, but it must be in essentially the same style/format as the first stanza. Where there’s an emotional situation, describe the circumstances of the emotions or feelings, rather than the emotion itself (the sound of the fight, but not the fight itself).

Part 3
Write a stanza about yourself that returns to the place and imagery of the first stanza.

Now, refine these three parts to make them form one three-stanza poem. Look for connections within the stanzas. Do images or references create echoes or loops? How can you make the scene metaphoric or reflective for something in the other stanzas?

What would happen if you change the order of the stanzas (you may do that if you think the poem works better that way).

 

Grant Clauser is the author of five books including Muddy Dragon on the Road to Heaven (winner of the Coghill Press Poetry Prize), Reckless Constellations, and The Magicians Handbook. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Tar River Poetry, The Literary Review and others. He works as an editor and teaches at Rosemont College.

Writing for Social Justice: The Devil in Society

My Auntie Lilith is a storyteller adorned with all the histrionics a 5-foot Trinidadian woman can muster. As a child, visiting her home meant witnessing random flares of dramatic scares where, without warning, she’d turn out all of the lights, lock all of the doors, and provoke spirits as my sister, cousin, and me ran alongside her fighting evil in complete dread.

That eight-year-old me hid under her table in a puddle of my pee while my thirteen-year-old sister with tears on her cheeks locked herself in the closet and my cousins yelled in terror as my auntie’s unbridled jumbies and soucouyant and dwens chased us down the stairs and into varying corners of the house.

After a full night of panic, Auntie Lilith gathered us all at her feet for story time. Heaving breathlessly in the darkness of the house, she said, when she was my age, she fought off a mischievous haint that embodied a little boy named Seth. In her classroom, he’d walk past her desk and pull at her ponytails and call her a pickaninny, daily and without fail. Aunt Lilith knew that Seth was filled with an evil that only she could fend off. The notes she wrote to her teacher warning that a wicked energy dwelled in the classroom were unheeded and even mocked.

One day, as the wild and unchecked power hypnotized Seth, lil’ Aunt Lilith sharpened her pencil, fully intending to use it to pen yet another poetic prose of precaution. However, when Seth pulled his hand from her hair, placed it on her desk, and then bent down to whisper pickaninny inches from her lips, she knew it was her duty to exorcise the demon that ran rampant in Seth’s body. She stabbed her pencil straight through his skin, his nerves, his blood—scaring the hell out of him quite literally.

The metonymic adage, the pen is mightier than the sword, assuages the egos of writers who use our words to pen poetic prose of precaution about impending doom or a euphoric past. But, perhaps the pen is only mightier than the sword because it has the dual ability to both communicate brilliant essays and defend brilliant lives.

Today marks 147 days since Breonna Taylor was brutally murdered by her city (officers and officials), her state (her governor and her attorney general), and her country (her president and his administration). We, as taxpayers, play a part in her murder because we continue to pay the salaries of the people who murdered her. We also pay the salaries of the people who conspire to cover it up.

A good many of us have written think pieces and social media posts demanding justice, but, like my Aunt Lilith’s, our warnings are unheeded and even mocked. There is a wild and unchecked power that is running loose in our society. It continues, like Seth, to victimize and brutalize young, Black girls because it is drunk with power.

So continue writing your think pieces, telling your stories, and saying her name. But today, right now, sharpen your pencils and prepare to act boldly because this is an evil that we must fend off.

*The Writing for Social Justice column will appear quarterly in Philadelphia Stories. 

For the last 10 years, Jeannine Cook has worked as a trusted writer for several startups, corporations, non-profits, and influencers. In addition to a holding a master’s degree from The University of the Arts, Jeannine is a Leeway Art & Transformation Grantee and a winner of the South Philly Review Difference Maker Award. Jeannine’s work has been recognized by several news outlets including Vogue Magazine, INC, MSNBC, The Strategist, and the Washington Post. She recently returned from Nairobi, Kenya facilitating social justice creative writing with youth from 15 countries around the world. She writes about the complex intersections of motherhood, activism, and community. Her pieces are featured in several publications including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Root Quarterly, Printworks, and midnight & indigo. She is the proud new owner of Harriett’s Bookshop in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia.