No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
Some people are afraid of the office environment; I sympathize. Ari, who has spent a full five years of his life at a job that is clearly intended as a stepping-stone, once told me that the only thing worse than being in the office is being out in the field. I had just started with our group and I had no idea what he meant but I tried to be polite, an effort I now realize was lost on him.
Even though you don’t face the painter
he captures your face.
Heraclitus asked, how can you hide
from what never goes away?
Poetry became real to me not through the classics, but through my contemporaries in a college workshop.
The scrambling section required concentration, and so Jonathan and Ben didn’t say very much to each other before finally making it to the blustery overlook. Jonathan zipped up his fleece jacket and looked out at the small islands dotting the cerulean Norwegian sea. On one of the closer islands, two small bright red houses perched on stilts above the rocks in the dissipating fog. Ben’s yellow windbreaker obviously wasn’t warm enough and his shoulders hunched forward in the wind. Did he even notice how beautiful it was here?
Spill out your excuses, your secrets, your lies. Crack open your ribs slowly, one at a time. Allow enough room to let me inside.
Perhaps it was because of Jerry Harrison that I became a writer. Harrison (of Talking Heads fame) once attended a party at my home, where he feverishly examined the shelves of books that lined my childhood bedroom.
"What's your major?" He didn't look at me when he asked but continued to let his fingers linger over each book's title.