Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Stripping and Putting On” by May Swenson, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about putting on light, like clothes.”

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 September 27th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Stripping and Putting On by May Swenson

I always felt like a bird blown through the world.
I never felt like a tree.

I never wanted a patch of this earth to stand in,
that would stick to me.

I wanted to move by whatever throb my muscles
sent to me.

I never cared for cars, that crawled on land or
air or sea.

If I rode, I'd rather another animal: horse, camel,
or shrewd donkey.

Never needed a nest, unless for the night, or when
winter overtook me.

Never wanted an extra skin between mine and the sun,
for vanity or modesty.

Would rather not have parents, had no yen for a child,
and never felt brotherly.

But I'd borrow or lend love of friend. Let friend be
not stronger or weaker than me.

Never hankered for Heaven, or shield from a Hell,
or played with the puppets Devil and Deity.

I never felt proud as one of the crowd under
the flag of a country.

Or felt that my genes were worth more or less than beans,
by accident of ancestry.

Never wished to buy or sell. I would just as well
not touch money.

Never wanted to own a thing that wasn't I born with.
Or to act by a fact not discovered by me.

I always felt like a bird blown through the world.
But I would like to lay

the egg of a world in a nest of calm beyond
this world's storm and decay.

I would like to own such wings as light speeds on,
far from this globule of night and day.

I would like to be able to put on, like clothes,
the bodies of all those

creatures and things hatched under the wings
of that world.

"Stripping and Putting On" by May Swenson, from Nature: Poems Old and New. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000. Reprinted with permission.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the piece “Attached to My Adhesion” by Eugenie Lee, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a scar.”

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 September 20th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Attached to My Adhesion by Eugenie Lee

Credit: Eugenie Lee

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Bone Appendix” by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write a letter about growing pains to your child self.”

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 September 13th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Bone Appendix by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

After Alexandra Petrova

Trace your son’s left hand
           against construction paper
                     with a nontoxic marker,

           teaching him the edges
of his bones. Then fill
            the space between

                     with what shines
           or powders, glitter,
crushed cheerios, flecks

           of skin even, teaching him
                     his bones remain
           in spite of it. Let him try

to fit his fingers in the contours,
           teaching him his bones
                      keep growing. And when

           he makes two fists, afraid
his body can’t keep up
           with what’s inside, clenching

                      hard as teeth to keep his bones
           just as they are, to keep them
from sprouting out, tell him

           of  Ukraine’s oldest apple tree
                      that grows its branches
           low into the ground

until they drink the soil—
           an indiscernible colony
                      of roots or eternally new trees.

           And when he falls
asleep pressed to your chest,
           trace his right hand

                      against the tree-house
           rib cage it first grew, teaching him
the endlessness of bones.

Source: Poetry (December 2019)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Blue Velvet” by Eileen Chong , posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about shoes to walk in another world.”

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 August 9th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Blue Velvet by Eileen Chong

I bought her those shoes. I was the only one
who ever bought her shoes. I knew her
size. I knew what she liked. She’d always
picked on me, but I was the only one
who ever bought her shoes
in her size that she liked.

She had told her oldest son
that when death called
for her, she wanted to be wearing
those shoes. He said
they were house slippers, too flimsy
for her walk in the other world.

Yet in the end, afraid, he gave me
the shoes – hand-embroidered
with phoenixes decked out
in sequins, gold thread, green
beads for eyes – I sheathed
the old lady’s cold, rigid feet.

Thank god I had bought them
in blue, not red. She would not
have been allowed to be buried
in anything red. Not unless we wanted her
to come back from the dead, shuffling
in those slippers, going to the courtyard
to beat the night’s blankets
in the dawning sun.

Credit: Eileen Chong

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting “The Smoke” by Matthew Wong, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about being lost in deep thought.”

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 July 29th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

The Smoke by Matthew Wong

Credit: Matthew Wong

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “When We Were Whales ” by Stan Heleva, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about turning suffering into song.”

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 26th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

When We Were Whales by Stan Heleva

We knew nothing of the legs we had shed
As we swam in the Peruvian desert
Nor how they had become unnecessary
Not an inkling of immanent return had we, nor again why.

We had only silent ballet, no music
Turning ourselves over in the murky sun
Only to dart in to tear more flesh from our fellows
Our tusks glinting dully, our beards stained with blood.

Our name, Leviathan Melvillei, was unknown to us
And might have remained so for all the good
It has done dead whale or dead poet: we had no tune I repeat
We taught them only to cry in pain; they made of it a song.

Credit: Stan Heleva & Michelle Paul
From Michelle Pauls’ Forthcoming play, “It’s Complicated….This Gift of Life.”

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Before” by Ada Limón, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a time before.”

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

Before by Ada Limón

No shoes and a glossy
red helmet, I rode
on the back of my dad’s
Harley at seven years old.
Before the divorce.
Before the new apartment.
Before the new marriage.
Before the apple tree.
Before the ceramics in the garbage.
Before the dog’s chain.
Before the koi were all eaten
by the crane. Before the road
between us, there was the road
beneath us, and I was just
big enough not to let go:
Henno Road, creek just below,
rough wind, chicken legs,
and I never knew survival
was like that. If you live,
you look back and beg
for it again, the hazardous
bliss before you know
what you would miss.

Copyright © 2015 by Ada Limón. Used with permission of the author.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “The Young ” by Roddy Lumsden, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about being young.”

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

"The Young " by Roddy Lumsden

You bastards! It’s all sherbet, and folly   
makes you laugh like mules. Chances   
dance off your wrists, each day ready,

sprites in your bones and spite not yet   
swollen, not yet set. You gather handful   
after miracle handful, seeing straight,

reaching the lighthouse in record time,   
pockets brim with scimitar things. Now   
is not a pinpoint but a sprawling realm.

Bewilderment and thrill are whip-quick   
twins, carried on your backs, each vow   
new to touch and each mistake a broken

biscuit. I was you. Sea robber boarding   
the won galleon. Roaring trees. Machines   
without levers, easy in bowel and lung.

One cartwheel over the quicksand curve   
of Tuesday to Tuesday and you’re gone,   
summering, a ship on the farthest wave.

Credit: Poetry (December 2008)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Against Distance” by Trey Moody, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about being one and many.”

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 24th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Against Distance by Trey Moody

I don’t know who needs to hear this

other than me, but the moon will never leave

you, you are good enough for the moon

and the moon is good enough for you,

because you are here and the moon is there

every time the moon is supposed to be

there, and isn’t it interesting when we want

to show up for each other we say we are

counting on it and what else but numbers

teach us we are each one, and what else

but the moon teaches us we are each many,

so when you try counting  your remaining

moments with the moon, the moon

that will never, ever leave you, give up.

Even the moon inches a little more distant

every year. I’ve heard grief is only love

with nowhere to go. But then you look up.

Credit: Poetry (May 2024)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session took a close look at a self-portrait painting by Filippo Balbi, posted below.

Our prompt was: “In my head...”

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 21st at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

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Self-portrait painting by Filippo Balbi

Credit: Filippo Balbi