Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem A Poem for Pulse by Jameson Fitzpatrick, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Where will we go?”

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

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 July 8th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

A Poem for Pulse by Jameson Fitzpatrick

Last night, I went to a gay bar
with a man I love a little.
After dinner, we had a drink.
We sat in the far-back of the big backyard
and he asked, What will we do when this place closes?
I don't think it's going anywhere any time soon, I said,
though the crowd was slow for a Saturday,
and he said—Yes, but one day. Where will we go?
He walked me the half-block home
and kissed me goodnight on my stoop—
properly: not too quick, close enough
our stomachs pressed together
in a second sort of kiss.
I live next to a bar that's not a gay bar
—we just call those bars, I guess—
and because it is popular
and because I live on a busy street,
there are always people who aren't queer people
on the sidewalk on weekend nights.
Just people, I guess.
They were there last night.
As I kissed this man I was aware of them watching
and of myself wondering whether or not they were just.
But I didn't let myself feel scared, I kissed him
exactly as I wanted to, as I would have without an audience,
because I decided many years ago to refuse this fear—
an act of resistance. I left
the idea of hate out on the stoop and went inside,
to sleep, early and drunk and happy.
While I slept, a man went to a gay club
with two guns and killed forty-nine people.
Today in an interview, his father said he had been disturbed
recently by the sight of two men kissing.
What a strange power to be cursed with:
for the proof of men's desire to move men to violence.
What's a single kiss? I've had kisses
no one has ever known about, so many
kisses without consequence—
but there is a place you can't outrun,
whoever you are.
There will be a time when.
It might be a bullet, suddenly.
The sound of it. Many.
One man, two guns, fifty dead—
Two men kissing. Last night
I can't get away from, imagining it, them,
the people there to dance and laugh and drink,
who didn't believe they'd die, who couldn't have.
How else can you have a good time?
How else can you live?
There must have been two men kissing
for the first time last night, and for the last,
and two women, too, and two people who were neither.
Brown people, which cannot be a coincidence in this country
which is a racist country, which is gun country.
Today I'm thinking of the Bernie Boston photograph
Flower Power, of the Vietnam protestor placing carnations
in the rifles of the National Guard,
and wishing for a gesture as queer and simple.
The protester in the photo was gay, you know,
he went by Hibiscus and died of AIDS,
which I am also thinking about today because
(the government's response to) AIDS was a hate crime.
Now we have a president who names us,
the big and imperfectly lettered us, and here we are
getting kissed on stoops, getting married some of us,
some of us getting killed.
We must love one another whether or not we die.
Love can't block a bullet
but neither can it be shot down,
and love is, for the most part, what makes us—
in Orlando and in Brooklyn and in Kabul.
We will be everywhere, always;
there's nowhere else for us, or you, to go.
Anywhere you run in this world, love will be there to greet you.
Around any corner, there might be two men. Kissing.

 Copyright © 2017 by Jameson Fitzpatrick.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Twenty-eight participants gathered to read and discuss Ada Limón’s “I Have Wanted Clarity in Light of my Lack of Light” from her 2022 collection The Hurting Kind.

After reading the poem I Have Wanted Clarity In Light Of My Lack Of Light from The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón (poem posted below), we commented on “the attack of the poem” with its barrage of sounds and images that echoed our experiences of the world’s “too much-ness.” The narrator’s references to “knocking in the blood”, “a sound that undoes me” and becoming “More sense, shake, and nerve” (i.e. more like a dog than a human) suggested an experience of post-traumatic stress disorder, perhaps that of a veteran. We questioned what it means to be brave in the face of the many current challenges that worry and wear us down.

Before we were prompted, “Write about a time you were brave” one among us offered a glimpse of light to the group with the words, “Look up” as a strategy that is both a physical act and a metaphor that can change our perspective. Several people read aloud accounts of bravery in the face of grave illness, grief, and a kidnapping. One participant shared a drawing of flowers and a gun’s trigger and double barrels, which reminded people of anti-war protest emblems in the 1960s.

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 June 29th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

I Have Wanted Clarity In Light Of My Lack Of Light by Ada Limón

Fireworks in the background like an incongruous soundtrack,
	either celebratory or ominous, a veil of smoke behind

a neighbor’s house, the air askew with booms.

The silver suitcase is dragged down the stairs, a clunk, another clunk,
	awkward wheels where wheels aren’t any use. Uselessness of invention.

There is a knocking in the blood that is used to absences but hates this part
	the most. The sudden buried hope of illusion.

Lose my number, sadness. Lose my address, my storm door, my skull.

Am I stronger or weaker than when the year began, a lie
	that joins two selves like a hinge. Sawdust in the neighbor’s garage

that smells of the men who raised me. What is the other world
	that others live in? Unknown to me. The ease of grin and good times. 

Once I loved fireworks so much that they made me weep without warning.
	I smoked too much pot one young summer and almost missed them

	until I simply remembered to look up. Gold valley crackling in chaos. 

Now, it is a sound that undoes me, too much violence in the sky.
	In this way, I have become more dog. More sense, shake, and nerve.

Better now when the etches in the night’s edges are just bats,
	Erratic and avoiding the fireflies. How much more drama

can one body take? I wake up in the morning and relinquish my dreams.
	I go to bed with my beloved. I am delirious with my tenderness.

Once I was brave, but I have grown so weary of danger.
	I am soundlessness amid the constant sounds of war.

Pp.48-49. The Hurting Kind. (2022) Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions. 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris by Raymond Antrobus, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a time when you didn’t know the words.”

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

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 June 27th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions 

Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris by Raymond Antrobus

When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car
the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.

I use the past tense though this is irrelevant
in Daniel’s language, which is sign.

Sign has no future or past; it is a present language.
You are never more present than when a gun

is pointed at you. What language says this
if not sign? But the police officer saw hands

waving in the air, fired and Daniel dropped
his hands, his chest bleeding out onto concrete

metres from his home. I am in Breukelen Coffee House
in New York, reading this news on my phone,

when a black policewoman walks in, two guns
on her hips, my friend next to me reading

the comments section: Black Lives Matter.
Now what could we sign or say out loud

when the last word I learned in ASL was alive?
Alive — both thumbs pointing at your lower abdominal,

index fingers pointing up like two guns in the sky.

© 1909 - 2022 The Poetry Society and respective creators 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Thirty participants gathered from diverse geographies and time zones to listen, read, discuss, and write with a focus on Juneteenth the federal holiday celebrating June 19, 1865, the day when an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas learned of their emancipation, which had been proclaimed more than two years earlier.

After watching a video of Danez Smith performing the poem dear white america in 2014 (video and text posted below), we silently read the text, discussed tone, themes, metaphors, and structure, as well as thoughts and emotions evoked in us when hearing Smith’s powerful delivery. Such a dense and sonorous text stimulated explorations of meaning, connections to biblical references and Shakespeare, and biting and evocative wordplay employed by the author, who follows the naming of murdered/disappeared Black boys with “abra-cadaver, white bread voodoo.”

The choice of prompts “Write about the planet you search for” OR “Write a new history“ called forth journeys through and to places of desired values and safety.  

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 June 24th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

dear white america by Danez Smith

i’ve left Earth in search of darker planets, a solar system revolving too near a black hole. i’ve left in search of a new God. i do not trust the God you have given us. my grandmother’s hallelujah is only outdone by the fear she nurses every time the blood-fat summer swallows another child who used to sing in the choir. take your God back. though his songs are beautiful, his miracles are inconsistent. i want the fate of Lazarus for Renisha, want Chucky, Bo, Meech, Trayvon, Sean & Jonylah risen three days after their entombing, their ghost re-gifted flesh & blood, their flesh & blood re-gifted their children. i’ve left Earth, i am equal parts sick of your go back to Africa & i just don’t see race. neither did the poplar tree. we did not build your boats (though we did leave a trail of kin to guideus home). we did not build your prisons (though we did & we fill them too). we did not ask to be part of your America (though are we not America? her joints brittle & dragging a ripped gown through Oakland?). i can’t stand your ground. i’m sick of calling your recklessness the law. each night, i count my brothers. & in the morning, when some do not survive to be counted, i count the holes they leave. i reach for black folks & touch only air. your master magic trick, America. now he’s breathing, now he don’t. abra-cadaver. white bread voodoo. sorcery you claim not to practice, hand my cousin a pistol to do your work. i tried, white people. i tried to love you, but you spent my brother’s funeral making plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones. you took one look at the river, plump with the body of boy after girl after sweet boi & ask why does it always have to be about race? because you made it that way! because you put an asterisk on my sister’s gorgeous face! call her pretty (for a black girl)! because black girls go missing without so much as a whisper of where?! because there are no amber alerts for amber-skinned girls! because Jordan boomed. because Emmett whistled. because Huey P. spoke. because Martin preached. because black boys can always be too loud to live. because it’s taken my papa’s & my grandma’s time, my father’s time, my mother’s time, my aunt’s time, my uncle’s time, my brother’s & my sister’s time . . . how much time do you want for your progress? i’ve left Earth to find a place where my kin can be safe, where black people ain’t but people the same color as the good, wet earth, until that means something, until then i bid you well, i bid you war, i bid you our lives to gamble with no more. i’ve left Earth & i am touching everything you beg your telescopes to show you. i’m giving the stars their right names. &this life, this new story & history you cannot steal or sell or cast overboard or hang or beat or drown or own or redline or shackle or silence or cheat or choke or cover up or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or ruin 

										                                                                                                                                   this, if only this one, is ours.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem His Stillness by Sharon Olds, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about sitting in stillness”

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

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 June 20th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

His Stillness by Sharon Olds

The doctor said to my father, “You asked me
to tell you when nothing more could be done.   
That’s what I’m telling you now.” My father   
sat quite still, as he always did,
especially not moving his eyes. I had thought   
he would rave if he understood he would die,   
wave his arms and cry out. He sat up,   
thin, and clean, in his clean gown,
like a holy man. The doctor said,
“There are things we can do which might give you time,
but we cannot cure you.” My father said,   
“Thank you.” And he sat, motionless, alone,   
with the dignity of a foreign leader.
I sat beside him. This was my father.
He had known he was mortal. I had feared they would have to   
tie him down. I had not remembered
he had always held still and kept quiet to bear things,   
the liquor a way to keep still. I had not   
known him. My father had dignity. At the   
end of his life his life began
to wake in me

Source: Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem All the Stones That Built Me by Somto Ihezue, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a time you thought: How long have you died here? OR Write about the things that built you.”

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

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 June 17th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

All the Stones That Built Me by Somto Ihezue

In this house are things:
a boy, a lantern,
dead mice, silverware,
running water, screams.

There is filth in this house,
and there is a mop,
and the filth is mop,
and the mop is filth.
And there is me: mop and filth.

This house is a broken Louvre.
In it, I do not have a face,
only a coin ... on the floor ... 
In its shimmer—ghosts pushing me off the roof,
daring me to fly.

And the bedroom?
We sleep when we are dead.
The kitchen?
In this house, we break not bread but stones and promises.
How long have you died here?

My mother lived in this house when I lived in her.
She was many a thing:
a girl, a dark room, scurrying mice,
rust, dripping water, silence,
and at the end, the last spoonful of canned beans.
They collect, dancing on the ceiling, the memories.
They cry, they howl,
they put a bounty out on me.

How do I quell the place that built me?
Set fire to all your bones.

There is no dreaming in this house.
I want to dream that I was old.

Source: Poetry (April 2022)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting The Masterpiece by Norval Morrisseau, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Complete the sentence – When I behold the world, my inner eye sees _________.”

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

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 June 13th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

The Masterpiece by Norval Morrisseau

Copyright: Estate of Norval Morrisseau

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem Things Haunt by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about what’s in the mirror”

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

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 June 8th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Things Haunt by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

California is a desert and I am a woman inside it.
The road ahead bends sideways and I lurch within myself.
I’m full of ugly feelings, awful thoughts, bad dreams
of doom, and so much love left unspoken.

Is mercury in retrograde? someone asks.
Someone answers, No, it’s something else
like that though. Something else like that.
That should be my name.

When you ask me am I really a woman, a human being,
a coherent identity, I’ll say No, I’m something else
like that though.

A true citizen of planet earth closes their eyes
and says what they are before the mirror.
A good person gives and asks for nothing in return.
I give and I ask for only one thing—

Hear me. Hear me. Hear me. Hear me. Hear me.
Hear me. Bear the weight of my voice and don’t forget—
things haunt. Things exist long after they are killed.

Copyright © 2018 by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 11, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.