How I Spent My Day, Two Years After. . .

You’ve probably heard the writing advice: show, don’t tell. It sounds easier than it is sometimes. I would like to just write, “I’m sad! I hurt! Love is so so so hard!” and have you get exactly how I feel.

Alas, it does not work that way. A skilled writer knows this. Thus, I introduce you to Barbara Costas-Biggs.

She and I know each other primarily via social media—ye olde Twitter and the Facebook—but she lives in my home state, and if I drive to where I grew up, I travel right through her city. I always think of her when I do now. She and I went to the same MFA program, at different times, and I know her, too, from the poetry I have read of hers. I give you a Barbara poem as the fourth installment of my National Poetry Month celebration.

How I Spent My Day, Two Years After My Father’s Death
for Tom Rogowski

Morning, February, a bit brighter every
day. One boy, Cheerios, an argument
about sugar. The other, a poached egg. 
Toast. Sleep-stumbling the house in my bathrobe,
searching for matching socks, dump laundry
baskets for clean shirts, the right pants
for each child. Brew coffee. 

There is a picture of my father hanging
in my dining room. Montana, a window in a barn.
Stalk of wheat in his mouth. It is a recreation
of a photo taken 45 years ago. Save
for the wheat. 45 years ago it was a Marlboro. 

Load the dishwasher to save the trouble
of doing it in the evening. I wonder
why I don’t usually do this, but I know
why. I’m never this meticulous, this
focused in the almost-dark of almost-spring
mornings, or any mornings at all.

There is a picture of my father on my
living room bookshelf. It’s a selfie he sent.
He’s half-in, half-out of the frame. Napa, my brother’s
courtyard. My mother, my brother, his girlfriend
waving. Tomato plants vine up the fence,
they have glasses of wine, fresh bruschetta. 

Pull a hot bath. I’m at my mother’s house.
She is with my brother in Texas. I have
wine. I have words rattling in the back
of my head. My small dog curls on the bathmat,
settles in for as long as I might take. 

There is a picture of my father with my niece. 
My father at my brother’s wedding. A portrait
of my parents on a wedding anniversary. Caption:
“Still crazy after 39 years.” A photo of my mother
and father on her dresser, at my uncle’s wedding. I’ve always
teased her that she had Marilyn Quayle hair. 

Start supper, wine-stumbling in the kitchen
playlist stuck on “America”:
Alexa, play “America”
again (empty and aching but I don’t know why)
and I’ll end the day the same way it started:
dumping the baskets, this time for pajamas.
Wondering what was out that Montana barn window.

Thank you, Barbara Costas-Biggs, for sharing your poem with me and with us for National Poetry Month.

---

Every week this month—National Poetry Month—I am offering up a poem in hopes that those who already love poetry will discover a new poet, and in hopes that those who don’t normally read poetry find poems that are accessible and that speak to them, too. My friend, Robert McCready, is reciting each poem, so have a listen here to Barbara’s work. Next week I will wrap up the celebration by featuring a poem by Romy Lanier Cawood (yes, we are related).

To learn more about Barbara Costas-Biggs, click here. To read another favorite Barbara poem of mine, click here.

Not signed up for my blog? You can do that here.

Photo of barn by Zachary Sinclair from Unsplash.com

At Lunch, I Learn My Father May Have Alexithymia

In a recent interview, I was asked, “Do you have tips on choosing titles?”

I wrote this as my answer: “I used to hate coming up with titles, and then a few years ago, I realized what great opportunities they were, and I started to love titling things—stories, poems, essays. For stories, I like unearthing a phrase I used in the piece that seemed insignificant but really encapsulates the story, or seems to mean one thing initially but has a different (or double) meaning once you read the work. I love titling a poem with something that gives the poem a different/deeper meaning. (For example, if it’s a poem that on the surface is about learning how to run, but the title is, ‘One Year After My Son Died,’ you’d read it differently.)”

When a writer uses a title to add meaning and/or depth to the work, I think of it as allowing the title to do some of the heavy lifting of that piece of writing.

Hannah Cohen’s poem, “At Lunch, I Learn My Father May Have Alexithymia,” is a perfect example of a poem whose title does some of its heavy lifting. (And if you don’t know what alexithymia is—I didn’t— here is the definition from the Merriam-Webster medical dictionary: “inability to identify and express or describe one's feelings.”)

Here is Hannah’s poem:

At Lunch, I Learn My Father May Have Alexithymia 

In the middle of a burger restaurant,
he looks at me, parts
his mouth and before he asks, I say
yes, I’m going to finish
my french fries. Yes. All
of them. Even the nubs.
I dip one into the tin
cup of ketchup, breathe in, bite
and bite until I’m at the end of myself.

Thank you, Hannah, for allowing me to share this poem as part of my National Poetry Month celebration.

Not signed up for my blog? You can do that here.

---

Every week this month—National Poetry Month—I am offering up a poem in hopes that those who already love poetry will discover a new poet, and in hopes that those who don’t normally read poetry find poems that are accessible and that speak to them, too. My friend, Robert McCready, is reciting each poem, so have a listen here to Hannah Cohen’s work.

The above poem was originally published in Noble / Gas Qtrly , March 2017. (Another favorite Hannah poem of mine is this one.) To learn more about Hannah, click here.

Photo of fries by Mae Mu from Unsplash.com.

The Man Next Door Is Teaching His Dog to Drive

Last summer I read from my memoir one evening at the Antioch Writer’s Workshop (AWW). It was a special night because AWW has felt like a home to me: I started attending in 2009, and I grew every summer as a writer because of it. Over the years, the workshop taught me many things—how to use the reflective voice, the ways that the particular can make a story universal, and the wonders of a prose poem. 

When I found out a few weeks ago that the workshop was closing its doors for good, I thought a lot about how the workshop had handed me opportunities and offered a place where learning didn’t have to be grueling. But perhaps the most important thing the workshop gave me was a community of writers, people who made me feel like I belonged, people who understood my love of words, people who got excited, just as I do, about language and story. 

I didn’t know when I gave a reading last summer at AWW that it would be the last time I ever could. I think back on that night now with more nostalgia. But true to AWW’s spirit of bringing writers together, I met Cathryn Essinger that evening because she read, too. I’d heard of Cathryn because she is a well-known poet who is also from the Dayton area, but I had never read her work. 

This poem is one she read that night, and I liked it so much that I contacted Cathryn a few months ago to ask her if I could feature it. I’m thrilled she said yes.

Here it is, for you all to enjoy as much as I did:

The Man Next Door
Is Teaching His Dog to Drive

It all began when he came out one morning
and found the dog waiting for him behind the wheel.
He thought she looked pretty good sitting there,

so he started taking her into town with him
just so she could get a feel for the road.
They have made a few turns through the field,

him sitting beside her, his foot on the accelerator,
her muzzle on the wheel. Now they are practicing
going up and down the lane with him whispering

encouragement in her silky ear. She is a handsome
dog with long ears and a speckled muzzle and he
is a good teacher. Now my wife, Millie, he says,

she was always too timid on the road, but don’t you
be afraid to let people know that you are there.
The dog seems to be thinking about this seriously.

Braking, however, is still a problem, but he is building
a mouthpiece which he hopes to attach to the steering 
column, and when he upgrades to one of those new

Sports Utility Vehicles with the remote ignition device,
he will have solved the key and lock problem.
Although he has not yet let her drive into town,

he thinks she will be ready sometime next month,
and when his eyes get bad and her hip dysplasia
gets worse, he thinks this will come in real handy.

Thank you for writing this poem, Cathryn, and for being a part of my National Poetry Month celebration.

I’m dedicating this blog to AWW and to all the friends I made through our summer weeks together over the years. I will miss them terribly.

Not signed up for my blog? You can do so here.

---

Every week this month—National Poetry Month—I am offering up a poem in hopes that those who already love poetry will discover a new poet, and in hopes that those who don’t normally read poetry find poems that are accessible and that speak to them, too. My friend, Robert McCready, is reciting each poem, so have a listen here to Cathryn Essinger’s work.

The above poem was published in My Dog Does Not Read Plato (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2004). To learn more about Cathryn, click here.

Photo of road by Patrick Tomasso from Unsplash.com.