Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

Our text was an excerpt from “Meditations for a Savage Child” by Adrienne Rich from her collection Diving into the Wreck, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “Write about no longer knowing.”

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II.  
from “Meditations for a Savage Child”

I keep thinking about the lesson of the human ear
which stands for music, which stands for balance-
or the cat’s ear which I can study better
the whorls and ridges exposed 
It seems a hint dropped about the inside of a skull
which I cannot see
lobe, zone, that part of the brain
which is pure survival

The most primitive part
I go back into at night
pushing the leathern curtain
with naked fingers
then 
with naked body 

There every wound is registered
as scar tissue

A cave of scars!
ancient, archaic wallpaper
built up, layer on layer
from the earliest, dream-white
to yesterday’s a red-black scrawl
a red mouth slowly closing

Go back so far there is another language
go back far enough the language
is no longer personal

these scars bear witness
but whether to repair
or to destruction
I no longer know

from Diving Into the Wreck (1971-1972)
By Adrienne Rich