Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EDT September 29th 2021

Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we close read “in lieu of a poem, i’d like to say” by Danez Smith, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was “Write about what begins at the end of your name.”

More details on this session will be posted, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday October 4th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.


“in lieu of a poem, i’d like to say” by Danez Smith

apricots & brown teeth in browner mouths nashing dates & a clementine’s underflesh under yellow nail & dates like auntie heads & the first time someone dried mango there was god & grandma’s Sunday only song & how the plums are better as plums dammit & i was wrong & a June’s worth of moons & the kiss stain of the berries & lord the prunes & the miracle of other people’s lives & none of my business & our hands sticky and a good empty & please please pass the bowl around again & the question of dried or ripe & the sex of grapes & too many dates & us us us us us & varied are the feast but so same the sound of love gorged & the women in the Y hijab a lily in the water & all of us who come from people who signed with x’s & yesterday made delicacy in the wrinkle of the fruit & at the end of my name begins the lot of us

7 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EDT September 29th 2021

  1. Patricia D.

    At the end of your name…

    Once there are no more Dobkins, centuries of a gene pool will end.
    Hazel eyes, short stature, inquisitive minds may linger among the stars where souls may peer down from the heavens waiting to inhabit a new born body.
    Would the world miss us Dobkins?
    I’d like to think that it would as we as a clan have devoted ourselves to others’ enrichment.

    Liked by 1 person

    • al3793

      Patricia, I expect close readers among those souls that peer down from the heavens waiting to inhabit a new born body. Beautiful language and such motion, the line made me want to move and prompted a deep breath to inhale and hold that line. The planets have put on quite a show in these late summer nights, the dark sky a harbor for the souls you write about. Andre

      Like

  2. al3793

    What begins at the end of my name

    is a long story
    that began with lots of nurture &
    lots of instruction and love &
    lots of direction in a safe space &
    lots of time outside, in the woods & hitting baseballs any chance I could, & school &
    a gradual exposure to the things of the world that I remained so inexperienced about for a long time &
    an excursion into the world of a medic that opened this life to experience – I had no choice &
    now a wild man’s journey of a wise old fool.

    Like

    • michele348

      The journey of life, a series of ascending steps in a spiral staircase. When reaching the top, we are not “fools” but wise travelers having had the experiences that our journey has supplied us.

      Like

  3. Write about what begins at the end of my name~~~

    My name is just a brief snapshot of my entirety.
    The end of my name should have a question mark following it.
    I’m forever questioning everything about me.
    Who am I? Why am I here? What about that “road not taken”?
    Is there something out there waiting for me to discover it?
    The profoundness in the simplicity of life… simply amazing.

    The more I learn, the more questions I have.
    Maybe some questions have no answers and that’s okay.
    Maybe what’s important is the searching,
    sparking synapses in this overworked brain of mine.

    Neverending, self-exploring, emerging pathways.
    What’s around the bend?
    Don’t know, but I intend to find out.

    Like

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