Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we close-read the poem Smoke in Our Hair by Ofelia Zepeda, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “The strongest memory.”

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 Wednesday December 1st at 12pm EST,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Smoke in Our Hair by Ofelia Zepeda

The scent of burning wood holds
the strongest memory.
Mesquite, cedar, piñon, juniper,
all are distinct.
Mesquite is dry desert air and mild winter.
Cedar and piñon are colder places.
Winter air in our hair is pulled away,
and scent of smoke settles in its place.
We walk around the rest of the day
with the aroma resting on our shoulders.
The sweet smell holds the strongest memory.
We stand around the fire.
The sound of the crackle of wood and spark
is ephemeral.
Smoke, like memories, permeates our hair,
our clothing, our layers of skin.
The smoke travels deep
to the seat of memory.
We walk away from the fire;
no matter how far we walk,
we carry this scent with us.
New York City, France, Germany—
we catch the scent of burning wood;
we are brought home.

Ofelia Zepeda, “Smoke in Our Hair” from Where Clouds Are Formed. 
Copyright © 2008 by Ofelia Zepeda. 

Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we close-read the poem A Map to the Next World by Joy Harjo, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “Draw (with words) a map to a next world.”

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!

Take the Survey!

Please join us for our next session Monday November 29th at 6pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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 A Map to the Next World by Joy Harjo

for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for
those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged
from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It
must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it
was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the
altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our
children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born
there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to
disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to
them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the
map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-
ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s
small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a
spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking
from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh
deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world
there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song
she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you
will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they
entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the
destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our
tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was
once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we listened to the spoken word performance of the poem Forsaken Sea by Sekou Sundiata, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “We do not believe…”

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 November 22nd at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Forsaken Sea by Sekou Sundiata

            Always go in low tide, high tide comes
            Always go in low tide, high tide comes
 
We always go it seems, we always go to the ocean
We always go to the ocean at low tide
 
We could walk, we could walk deep 
We could walk deep into the sea and never be
     in over our heads
 
We do not believe, we do not believe, we do not believe that 
drowning is for us
 
High tide comes out of the water the same way
     for the last billion years.
There is nothing new
We know when to swim, and when to wait
We know when to swim, and when to wait

           The waves come in and go back out
           For the last billion years
          The ocean still emotional, singing in our ears

          Always go in, always go in low tide, high tide comes
         Always go in low tide, high tide comes

High tide comes out of the water the same way for the     
 last billion years. There is nothing new
 We know when to swim and when to wait
 
In the car, in the car the road 
In the car the road murmurs beneath the wheels     
The ocean, so emotional, in our ears

We seek without looking
The smallest token, passes and settles
 into what music is about, music is about
 
You could say
You could say we are dancing
And from this one thing we know 10 things
From this one thing we know 10 things
 
We always go in low tide when high tide comes
We always go to the ocean
We always go to the ocean at low tide

         We see without looking at the music the water makes
         We know when to swim and we know when to wait
         We always go in low tide, high tide comes
         Always go at low tide, high tide comes

We do not believe
We do not believe
We do not believe
That drowning is for us
 
High tide comes out of the water
The same way for the last billion years
 
Yes, you could say, you could say we are dancing
And from this one thing, we know 10 things
 
We always go in low tide
High tide comes

Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we close-read the poem Study the Masters by Lucille Clifton, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “Write about dreams.”

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 Friday November 19th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Study the Masters by Lucille Clifton

like my aunt timmie.
it was her iron,
or one like hers,
that smoothed the sheets
the master poet slept on.
home or hotel, what matters is
he lay himself down on her handiwork
and dreamed. she dreamed too, words:
some cherokee, some masai and some
huge and particular as hope.
if you had heard her
chanting as she ironed
you would understand form and line
and discipline and order and
america.

Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we close read an excerpt from the novel Bewilderment by Richard Powers, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “Write about what was enough because you saw it.”

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, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Powers, Richard. Bewilderment. (2021) (p.183) New York: W.W. Norton.

I TOLD HIM ABOUT THE PLANET MIOS, how it had flourished for a billion years before we came along. The people of Mios built a ship for long-distance, long duration discovery, filled with intelligent machines. That ship traveled hundreds of parsecs until it found a planet full of raw materials where it landed, set up shop, repaired and copied itself and all its crew. Then two identical ships set off in different directions for hundreds more parsecs, until they found new planets, where they repeated that whole process again.

       For how long? My son asked.

       I shrugged. “There was nothing to stop them.”

       Were they scouting out places to invade or something?

       “Maybe.”

       And they kept dividing? There must have been a million of them.

       “Yes,” I told him. “Then two million. Then four.”

       Holy crow! They’d be all over the place.

       “Space is big,” I said.

       Did the ships report back to Mios?

       “Yes, even though the messages took longer and longer to arrive. And the ships went on reporting, even after Mios stopped responding.”

       What happened to Mios?

       “The ships never learned.”

       They kept going, even though Mios was gone?

       “They were programmed to.”

       That gave my son pause. That’s pretty sad. He sat up in bed and pushed at the air with his hand. But it still might be okay for them, Dad. Think of what they saw.

       “They saw hydrogen planets and oxygen planets, neon and nitrogen planets, water worlds, silicate, iron, and globes of liquid helium wrapped around trillion-carat diamonds. There were always more planets. Always different ones. For a billion years.”

Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we close-read the poem Deer Dance Exhibition by Ofelia Zepeda, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “Question…”

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 November 15th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Deer Dance Exhibition by Ofelia Zepeda

Question: Can you tell us about what he is wearing?
Well, the hooves represent the deer’s hooves,
the red scarf represents the flowers from which he ate,
the shawl is for skin.
The cocoons make the sound of the deer walking on leaves and grass.
Listen.
Question: What is that he is beating on?
It’s a gourd drum. The drum represents the heartbeat of the deer.
Listen.
When the drum beats, it brings the deer to life.
We believe the water the drum sits in is holy. It is life.
Go ahead, touch it.
Bless yourself with it.
It is holy. You are safe now.
Question: How does the boy become a dancer?
He just knows. His mother said he had dreams when he was just a little boy.
You know how that happens. He just had it in him.
Then he started working with older men who taught him how to dance.
He has made many sacrifices for his dancing even for just a young boy.
The people concur, “Yes, you can see it in his face.”
Question: What do they do with the money we throw them?
Oh, they just split it among the singers and dancer.
They will probably take the boy to McDonald’s for a burger and fries.
The men will probably have a cold one.
It’s hot today, you know.


Ofelia Zepeda, “Deer Dance Exhibiton” from Ocean Power. 
Copyright © 1995 by Ofelia Zepeda.

Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we closely looked at two photos Knowing the Way to Tomorrow and Who Knows Tomorrow by Aida Muluneh, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “Write about the possibility of tomorrow.”

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 Friday November 12th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we close-read the poem Baruch Spinoza by Jorge Luis Borges, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “In the margins of the manuscript, leave a message for the philosopher.”

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 Wednesday November 10th at 5pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Baruch Spinoza by Jorge Luis Borges

Bruma de oro, el occidente alumbra
la ventana. El asiduo manuscrito
aguarda, ya cargado de infinito.
Alguien construye a Dios en la penumbra.
Un hombre engendra a Dios. Es un judío
de tristes ojos y de piel cetrina;
lo lleva el tiempo como lleva el río
una hoja en el agua que declina.
No importa. El hechicero insiste y labra
a Dios con geometría delicada;
desde su enfermedad, desde su nada,
Sigue erigiendo a Dios con la palabra.
El más pródigo amor le fue otorgado,
el amor que no espera ser amado.

Baruch Spinoza by Jorge Luis Borges

A haze of gold, the Occident lights up
The window. Now, the assiduous manuscript
Is waiting, weighed down with the infinite.
Someone is building God in a dark cup.
A man engenders God. He is a Jew
With saddened eyes and lemon-colored skin;
Time carries him the way a leaf, dropped in
A river, is borne off by waters to
Its end. No matter. The magician moved
Carves out his God with fine geometry;
From his disease, from nothing, he's begun
To construct God, using the word. No one
Is granted such prodigious love as he;
The love that has no hope of being loved.
         


Spanish; trans. Willis Barnstone