what happens in march
march round-up/april poetry month
I can’t really say what happened in March. For much of it I entered a mystifying in-between state. Something between prayer and light sedation (lol). That sounds dark but it’s how it felt. I only knew at the moment when I was exactly where I should be and then as soon as a moment passed I found myself disoriented again, with only fragments grounding me. Especially the past two weeks, which have found me an anxious mess, truly unable to tell left from right, wracked with nightmares and wanting, always, to be writing to you, yet fearful nothing would come out right or true enough. This is how it goes when winter vibrates into spring. My body vibrates along with it and it dizzies me, this year more so than others.
In March I went to the woods to finish my quilt and I got to have a winter beach day with Ell — an annual New England necessity. And towards the end of the month, I unknowingly exposed myself to an allergen for 4 days straight and that really took a toll on both my body and mind. There were already things I needed to deal with that, once I handled the allergic reaction, flooded my body with more stress, fatigue, and fear that I did not respond to quickly enough. So to protect me, as the brain does, I entered a dissociated state.
I remember the first time this happened to me in college and my therapist at the time essentially described it as the brain’s way of saying: 🚨THERE’S DANGER PRESENT! DO NOT LOOK! GO AWAY! PROTECT YOURSELF FROM IMMINENT PAIN!🚨
I love my body for wanting to protect me. This is also a very scary feeling.
And as I recover and get back to myself so slowly, this newsletter calls to me again, as it has all month. There is an urgency here, too. I recently read Indelicacy by Amina Cain and this quote has been swirling around in my head (bold mine):
Who am I if I'm not writing? I'm a person in a dance class, then I'm walking next to a dump. I listen to music, write my own name in my notebook, winter charging toward me. For things do charge, you must feel that too.
The sky is flat against the mountains. The mountains and then the ground. Here is the place where the town turns into the country, and then the valley leading to the mountains, all of it the same piece of land. Here is a black dog, running wildly toward it with all of its being. The last time I mirrored something I was coming to nature. Now I seem to be mirroring this dog.
Still in the process of becoming, the soul makes room.
When I am not writing I fear I will lose something. I fear I will lose you, who reads, and some other magic thing. Though this is wholly untrue. I become a sharper writer by answering the call, yes, but also by living my life. By dancing, being out in the world, spending time with my loved ones, cooking, not cooking, sleeping, not sleeping, by losing my mind a little, and finding a way to get back to it. By asking for support in all this living. By finding a good therapist and a psychiatrist that listens. By listening. To my body, my moods, and tending to them. Everything I do is in service to my writing. Even and especially getting well.
🌀
April is poetry month, here are some of the poems residing in my heart.
For My Friends, in Reply to a Question
by Safia Elhillo
I’m okay. And, of course, I’m not,
but I go through the motions. I wake up
to the alarm’s howl, even when the word
in my body is no. I dress in livid colors.
I blacken the hairs of each eyebrow. I bake
& braise & pickle. I write & read & lose
hours to the blur of the television. I sit
for hours in the bath, my skin puckering.
I don’t know if I’ll ever go home again.
I don’t know who I’ve seen for the last time.
The Arabic comes back to me in streaks
of paint, verb forms & vocabularies
I may never again have occasion to use.
My days smudge into one another & it’s not
that I am afraid. It’s as if I am watching it
all happen below, & I am somewhere above
the room, wondering if the rice is burning.
I am somewhere above the room, watching
my new aches, watching the news as if
I am reading it in a novel. I look up
the names of people I knew in childhood,
learn their new & angular faces, their
faraway lives. My grandfather pixelates
into a smile & I work my creaking muscles
to replicate it, I do not ask if we will ever
meet again, I do not ask him to read to me,
or for anything that will make me long.
I dull it with sugar & oil, with cooking shows,
with sleep. I sleep twelve hours each night
& in my dreams I am fleeing a war, in my dreams
I am touching the faces of my friends, we are
each one of us touching, & even in the dream
we are afraid.
*
*
I Wanted to Make Myself Like the Ravine
by Hannah Gamble
I wanted to make myself like the ravine
so that all good things
would flow into me.
Because the ravine is lowly,
it receives an abundance.
This sounds wonderful
to everyone
who suffers from lacking,
but consider, too, that a ravine
keeps nothing out:
in flows a peach
with only one bite taken out of it,
but in flows, too,
the body of a stiff mouse
half cooked by the heat of the stove
it was toughening under.
I have an easygoing way about me.
I’ve been an inviting host —
meaning to, not meaning to.
Oops — he’s approaching with his tongue
already out
and moving.
Analyze the risks
of becoming a ravine.
Compare those with the risks
of becoming a well
with a well-bolted lid.
Which I’d prefer
depends largely on which kinds
of animals were inside me
when the lid went on
and how likely they’d be
to enjoy the water,
vs. drown, freeze, or starve.
The lesson: close yourself off
at exactly the right time.
On the day that you wake up
under some yellow curtains
with a smile on your face,
lock the door.
Live out your days
untroubled like that.
*
“The Unbosoming” by Olena Kalytiak Davis, read by Eloisa Amezcua
*
*
Black Lead in a Nancy Meyers Film
by Rio Cortez
Aging, at all. I want that. And to fall
perhaps most honestly in love
beside the ocean, in a home I’ve paid
for by doing as I like: drinking good
wine, dusting sugar over a croissant, or
the stage play I’m writing myself into.
Aging Black woman in neutral summer
turtleneck. Known. And jogging. Lonesome
enough. Eating homemade lavender
ice cream, the moon blooming
through the kitchen window. The distant
sound of waves. Learning
French as a second language.
Votre pâte merveilleux, I smile back.
And then, just like that! Falling, cautiously,
for my busy, middle-aged lover,
who needs me, but has never truly seen me
until now. Our Black friends, celebrating
with hors d’oeuvres. Our Black children
growing older.
*
*
these closing lines of Adrienne Rich’s poem “coast to coast”:
If you can read and understand this poem
send something back: a burning strand of hair
a still warm, still-liquid drop of blood
a shell
thickened from being battered year on year
send something back.