at yac today, we had a writer's workshop. we sat in a little group in the exec lounge and drew bubble-maps and made lists of our favorite words. i wanted to write about the end of the world, and our seemingly inexorable movement toward it. i ended up writing also about womanhood (yes. i am the ocean entire / these eyes my unpaned / ah, unpained scaffolding) and philadelphia (my intestines twisted / around the traffic signs / and the gutters / my eyes turned to stoplights, flashing / do not come near). i wrote from a deep and wounded place in me that hasn't seen the light of words in a long time. i've had such a struggle trying, shoving out awkward haikus each day just to be writing something, anything, just to be writing. i'm afraid i'll never get all the way out of the city, afraid that some part of me has been destroyed. i was afraid that part of me was my muse, my whatever-it-is power that had for so long forced words out of me, welling them up and out and spilling them everywhere without my leave or consent. a grace.


this workshop coincided, more or less, with the publication of my first story, and once, when someone on the train asked, i said "a writer."


i had dinner with my grandmother, also, tonight. i told her i was late because i was at a writing workshop at my studio, and she said "oh, i thought you'd moved on from that. i thought you'd have given that up by now." keep in mind, now, she also tried to feed me roast chicken for dinner - despite that i've been a vegetarian for six years - insisting that chicken wasn't meat. fine, then. i also don't eat chicken, and i also have not given that up yet.


but these poems! i have not written a proper poem in it feels like years. my writing has gotten all sloppy and flabby, given to hyperbole and conceit. these two may not be good, but they've got truth to them, and they came tumbling out like they were meant to be. i've remembered why i write. so, thanks kitty, and marcia. and me.