No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
Joe told me that they chained him to a hospital bed so he wouldn’t escape. Flight risk. Young male. Tested positive for COVID-19. It seemed so unlikely. What were the chances? And that’s when I realized that they were pretty high.
I pushed the housekeeping cart into the middle hallway and braced myself for the day. I’d been a technical writer not long before; this job hadn’t been part of the plan.
I don’t write a little every day. I stay up for two days, sleep for twelve hours, and then repeat that for a month. That’s the rhythm. When it hits, I don’t pace myself. I disappear into it. My body is not a temple. I use it to write until the thing is done. Then I collapse, hard, and spend the next few weeks pretending to be a person while waiting for it to happen again.
Talented writers...
You need poetry to"free yourself" from misconceptions.
What I learned most from reading books was that "I needed to read more books".
I rowed through the lifeless water, gripping the jar between my legs. I was alone in the bay. Too early in the season for lobster boats and tourists. A light drizzle soaked through my jacket. I didn’t feel it.
Dad used to take me rowing in the cove at night and tell me Penobscot Bay ghost stories. Pitch black, but for the stars, and the fog light he’d leave on at the shack. My favorite story was my great grandfather’s.