Happenings March 2021: Seed of New Work

HAPPENINGS MARCH 2021: SEEDS OF NEW WORK

B

ru’mi-nate: TO CHEW THE CUD; TO MUSE; TO MEDITATE; TO THINK AGAIN; TO PONDER

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Happenings Inspired by the “happenings” of the 1960s, where people showed up and made good things together, we decided to create our own version of this goodness!

Between March 6–13, 2021, our brave writers and artists went live on Instagram and spontaneously created poetry, art, little stories, and small essays for ticketholders in our community.

We hope you enjoy these seeds of new work to come.

Saturday, March 6 8 a.m. Rachel King 9 a.m. Erika Oakvik, p 4 10 a.m. Melissa Poulin, p 5 1 p.m. Rebecca Hewitt, p 11 2 p.m. Emily Woodworth, p 14 Sunday, March 7 8 a.m. Lary Kleeman, p 18 9 a.m. Diane LeBlanc, p 22 10 a.m. Kate Bradley 11 a.m. Laura Bond 1 p.m. Chaun Ballard, p 23 2 p.m. Anne McGrath 3 p.m. Erin Carlyle 4 p.m. Sheya Vikram Monday, March 8 9 a.m. Cherie Nelson, p 27 11 a.m. Bess Cooley, p 28 2 p.m. Sandell Morse, p 29 Tuesday, March 9 8 a.m. Gemma Seltzer, p 30 10 a.m. Sally Rosen Kindred, p 33 11 a.m. Evan James Sheldon 1 p.m. Lisa Rosenburg 3 p.m. Lauren Camp, p 36

Wednesday, March 10 9 a.m. Catherine Hervey, p 37 11 a.m. Karen Bjork Kubin, p 40 1 p.m. Jen Stewart Fueston, p 41 2 p.m. Arah Ko, p 43 Thursday, March 11 9 a.m. Jason Villemez 11 a.m Robin Gow, p 44 12 p.m. Preeti Parikh, p 46 1 p.m. Angelica Whitehorne, p 47 Friday, March 12 9 a.m. Benjamin Gucciardi 11 a.m. Emily Stoddard 3 p.m. Emily McIlroy, p 48 4 p.m. Sean Conrey Saturday, March 13 8 a.m. Karoline Strickland 9 a.m. Katie Manning, p 49 11 a.m. Jonathon Winston Jones

Saturday, March 6th ERIKA OAKVIK, 9 A.M.

Cape Cod in September my best friend called, said you need to come to the Cape. we both knew what she meant instead was— there is something sacred about the saltwater balm and perhaps it was obvious that i needed sacred again. when we arrived, we walked to the shore. i was taken by the dramatic change from my new usual. how the waves crashed and the sun beat down and the salty air was so unafraid. i was absolutely charmed by the relentlessness of it all. it was at this shore that i experienced the miracle of accepting i am not as alone as heartache had made me out to think. yes, i believe it was that sacred something at work once more. i re-learned this as i looked out at the shore and wave after wave reminded me that much like a hard conversation or a good look in the mirror sometimes confrontation is surprisingly tender. i hold that special space, a locket in time where i truly took in the warm sand, the sea smells, the gift of good friendship— where i remembered that there is a charm to the relentlessness of this life that there is tenderness to be found, always.

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MELISSA POULIN, 10 A.M.

1. Salt, Water for Nancy It’s all we have salt carried by rivers after rain minerals from canyon and ocean floor mixing rising up to make this a thing that bears us carries us bobbing in all that blue ocean beach saltwater waves it’s been stable for billions of years there’s something sacred about saltwater this ancient body we’re part of that’s part of us about 73% water the brain and heart 88% the lungs a privilege the waves breathe in and out to make this count: for every liter of water 35 grams of salt the sea in us have salt among yourselves and be at peace with each other I’m at peace here my mother my sons this is all we have Notes: The italicized quotations are from Erika Oakvik’s poem “Cape Cod in September,” and Mark 9:50 (NIV), respectively.

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2. Bells for Barbara “Do you think there is anything not attached by its unbreakable cord to everything else?”

—Mary Oliver, Upstream

I. If anger is something beloved threatened, how angry we should all be right now. We ring the bells at noon, the steps slick with ice or warmed by sun.

Beloved ones. All year we read their names. Each week the minutes grow, second by second. A long history growing longer than winter shadow deeper than winter sun. Anger is not enough but still the sun shows us what it means to show up.

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II. I am going away, the Son said, and I am coming back to you. a mother leaves her child at the school door, sews an invisible cord from her heart to his coming back the way peace moves in us, needle and thread stitching us to someone bigger we can’t see when the bell rings the children run in the schoolyard wild the thousand faces of flowers in the grass a promise we’ll all be unmasked Notes: Quote is from John 14:28 (NIV)

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3. Notes on Retirement for my dad sometimes I take the earbuds out listen to the birds or silence either way I find it a delight the palomar mountains change what you see when you look in the morning I remember young children in the house the disorder the wild the play that filled the rooms a gift to have another run at it telling stories carrying children like time travel the most daring thing did you as a child work at it? good hours free food rowdy friends what would you do all day? doing it now was the motto then each week mine to choose of course I retain only some of it like having a hole in your pocket as you retrieve one pretty stone after another : the voices of friends now gone the laughter of children all of it one more time

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4. The Best Form for Ashlee “ The best form isn’t always the most efficient form.”

—Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments

A friend told me architecture is sculpting with light. She heard this on HGTV, one of those soothing shows that pull us, in this pandemic year toward the gravity of the fixable toward things like flour, sugar wood and steel.

When thirty minutes are through, there’s something weighted there, holding the minutes down, like a paperweight.

The white of paper, the blank of a bank of snow, empty frames in film, untaken. Or paper whites blooming in winter, year after year, pushing open faces through frost, having been nourished in the safe heart of earth.

A type of narcissus the family of flowers named for the boy who fell into the pond of his own reflection. A whole generation accused of this—with its selfie sticks and digital reels.

There’s another way to do it: to make pictures, houses of light.

Any novice knows it is slow, when every shot costs you something.

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Grain, grittiness: this is how I move through the world. Just sitting on the ground, counting rocks.

Can I confess something to you? I was focused on two things: her and the light—a kind of radical obedience. Sculpting the moment, this architecture of our days together. Not a pool of self but time, its wild wheels, the blooming in the middle of winter. We hit the shutter button, hope for the best.

Notes: Some lines and phrases taken from Ashlee Gadd’s essay “Why Film?” www.ashleegadd.com/blog/2021/2/6/my-first-attempt-at-film

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R E B E C C A H E W I T T , 1 P . M .

1. Making It f or Davie and Suzie in honor of their 40th wedding anniversary Someone told me once that the key to marriage is having enough gas in the tank to make it through grad school and small children.

I’ve always wondered—make it to where?

Sipping wine on the deck with ease no interruptions or spilled milk on the wooden planks, remembering together the red dress, the blue suit, the heat of an Iowa summer or nights in The Caymans watching shooting stars.

For every charmed memory, every good place you somehow make it to, there are the hours of loss, the roses that shrivel in the garden, despite your best efforts.

And through it all, a repetition of affection, a kiss on a cheek, a knowing glance across states and cities --- California and DC, Indiana, Colorado. Roads that are sometimes starlit, sometimes lonely, but always, if you reach for it, your lover’s hand waiting for you to take it again and again.

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2. Under the Bed for Luc, age 7 I’m sorry to tell you, there’s a Tatzelwuwrm under your bed.

It’s scaly and smart and it’s eyeballs glow red.

But it actually likes you, and thanks to the legos you feed it, it will be your best friend if you ever need it to scare off some mean kids or prank your mom, though I don’t recommend that because she is the bomb dot com.

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3. I wish I was a Morning Person The Carolina summer sun

comes through my windows like an old friend

who annoys me— never showing up for basketball

when I want him to.

It’s morning again, that promise

of a new day, glistening before me­—light dancing

off the floorboards asking me, to move my feet

to the day’s song.

But actually, I think the song might be stupid.

I put the pillow over my head and go back to sleep.

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EMILY WOODWORTH, 2 P.M.

1.

I’d not been sleeping well that night. Not sure why. Sometimes I’m just like that. I get an itch on my foot and by the time I scratch that it’s migrated to my calf and I scratch that and now it’s my cheek and so on and so forth. Then my old back would get to hurting and I’d know it was a lost cause. I didn’t want to wake Connie, my wife of 39 years, because I knew how that would go, so I got up finally around 3am and shuffled into the kitchen. Our tiny apartment had a view of a boulevard that was the main route for trucks making deliveries, and sometimes when I couldn’t sleep I’d sit and watch them and wonder where they was heading so fast and how what used to be our small town got so big and why I hadn’t noticed it until too late to do anything. Our church was just up the road and had been forever, but where it was once surrounded by small farms and ranchos and fields, now there were minimarts and strip malls. Still, its spire hung above the surrounding buildings like a beacon of a lost time. A beacon calling the lost home. I don’t believe in chance. I think such things are silly. I don’t believe I just happened to not sleep that night. I had my coffee in my hand and I was settling in to watch the headlights go by, to watch more of them fill the night as the morning went on, when I saw it. I near dropped my cup from my hand I was so shook up at the sight. A motorhome, old and big, was careening up the hill and there was black smoke billowing from the front. I looked around. Wasn’t nobody on the streets and no other cars. I almost called out, to Connie, but thought I ought not wake her—strange what thoughts you have at such times. Time slowed down and I ran fast through my apartment to the phone and I dialed 911 as I scrambled down my stairs and over a planter full of Gerber Daisy plants—my favorer the sidewalk and toward the vehicle which had come to a stop by the curb. It was beginning to burn now and I saw the man driving was still sitting there in the seat. Not getting out for some reason. Like nothing was going on. I was shouting something to the 911 dispatcher, but I can’t remember what, I just kept looking at the guy in the motorhome thinking Get out, get out, get out! but he wasn’t and wasn’t and wasn’t and I realized finally what needed doing. I dropped the phone and ran to the driver’s side door. The man was disabled, I now saw, couldn’t get out. I reached in and lifted him, lifted him like it was no thing, even with my bad back, like he was a feather. The heat from the flames singed by eyebrows right off and all the hairs on my left arm. We stumbled backward into the roadway—I wasn’t thinking at that point of cars and semis splattering us or anything other than getting clear of the flames. We landed hard and something exploded behind us. I turned to find the windshield had disintegrated outward. I swear, I saw the glitter of the glass particles hanging in the air like snowflakes. The fire engulfed the rest of the vehicle in

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no time and sirens started to sear the air, distant and closing fast. The man and I were laying side-by-side. His head was turned. I knew if I got there I’d be safe, he was saying over and over, mumbling to himself. Thank you, thank you, Jesus, he said. He was looking at something. I looked the same way and saw the church spire floating above us like a swimmer doing the backstroke on the surface of a great lake.

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2.

Prompt 1.

Mother had not said that she would be gone past dark. Mother had not said she would be gone at all.

Stop fidgeting, says May. I put my hands in my pockets to keep from playing with my fingers—thumb to index, to middle, to ring, to pinky, to ring, to middle, to index—I have begun again.

When will mother be back?

Stop asking that.

I’m hungry.

So what?

It is getting dark. The meadow in front of the cabin is filled with flowers of every hue, but their shades are dulled now. Our cabin stands alone among tower pine trees.

Their sap is hot from the summer sun and their smell pungent. There are no other buildings nearby. The only phone within miles is somewhere up a long and winding dirt road.

May and I are sitting on a bench on the edge of the deck. May is pretending not to be concerned, but I know better. Mother was gone when we woke up this morning.

She had left us breakfast on the table—cold oatmeal. We’d assumed she’d gone to the store.

I stood up.

Where’re you going?

Inside, I say. I have goosebumps on my arms. The meadow has chilled quickly now the sun is down.

You’re staying here.

I’m about to respond but a sound silences us both.

Mother? I call.

A dark silhouette rises on the edge of the meadow. In the dusk it is hard to make out.

Mother?

Shut it, says May. She grasps my hand so tightly I cry out.

Mother, May is hurting me!

May yanks me inside and bolts the door and only then do I really see her fear. We catch our breath. We wait for ages.

I’m hungry, I say to the darkness.

Me too.

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Prompt 2.

The man waited in the shade of a building near the edge of town. The sun had reached its apex two hours ago, and now the sultry, still heat of the afternoon baked the streets to dust. The man was watching for something.

The town is still. Too still. Not a dog or a cat or a person in sight, except for the man. One horse is tied in front of the bank, asleep. One might take the man as being asleep too, except for his rhythmic pull on a dying cigarette, and the lazy way his eyes move from the horizon to a noose fluttering gently now and again from its place on the only tree in sight.

He straightens.

A figure has appeared on the horizon. A rider on horseback.

The man tamps out his cigarette and touches his gun.

The figure draws nearer. It is a woman on the horse. The man pulls his pistol out quietly, as if she were near enough to hear. He pulls back the hammer with care. This is our only chance, he thinks. He takes a deep breath and steps into the street and fires.

Prompt 3: I am speed.

Invincible? Maybe. I haven’t had to test that theory yet.

I feel the station wagon beneath me like an old racehorse. One everyone thinks is done, but that deep down has legs.

I’m looking for my next target.

I like to find boys who play high school sports if I can. Football players are the best.

This one time I found the quarterback of our rival team and beat him so bad off the line I didn’t even get to see his tears myself: my friend Shirley had to tell me.

The beach wind breathes through my open window. I turn the corner and climb uphill, remembering when I used to stall out during the attempt.

I see a target at the light. I rev my engine to let him know I’m game. He looks surprised, like a girl in a station wagon is beneath him.

We shoot of the line and I feel him pushing, but I know I can push harder. I am speed. We race through the night, out of the downtown and into residential streets. He is laughing because he doesn’t know just how good I am. We come into a downhill. A red light looms ahead. I’ve got him, I think. I know. But suddenly he pulls off.

Red and blue lights flash behind me.

The last ride of the speed demon of Manhattan Beach.

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Sunday, March 7 LARY KLEEMAN, 8 A.M.

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DIANE LEBLANC, 9 A.M.

Blue Wings in Spring for Cristy Spring thaw brings back the pond where a heron alone attracts my lens.

Still life with ice, feather hem and shadow.

Later, I’ll tighten guitar strings and door hinges, a fence gate and window locks, all winter loose and rasping. But for now this stillness, silence until blue wings beat time across water.

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CHAUN BALLARD, 1 P.M.

1. Letter for Private Dorian Ballard from Mia Ballard (Page 4) ...

I’m sure there are nights you pray facing west, toward the warmth of my body, the drone of a television screen, its blurred image, hushed & ignored.

I’m sure you lay there, under fabric cover, minute hand & star-like, counting moons with the patience of a scarab beetle lost in part by time, how it rolls on & on slowly.

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The hour hand in our kitchen never quite catching the twelve after it has started.

How long has it been since we were gathered geese swept across the inlet; a migration of starlings in full bloom?

I worry for you across the waters, the unmanned expanse, while you probe for sleep or march or dream return.

It is the beginning of spring here— like the beginning or end of any season.

Your daughter wants to know when you will be home.

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2. I Do Not Collect Anything Outside of airy bright rooms soft linens birds chirping through a nearby window the whizz of memory ziplining me to my first job I was a typesetter for a newspaper a wordsmith a fountain pen in an epoch of future relics in a time when some people had no regard for another’s feelings I loved to think in blue blue skies blue necklaces the way a diamond turns blue when pressed against a break in the clouds Because of its boldness blue surrounds me with trees & children at play journalist at work the sonata of typewriters tapping smooth as jazz music is peaceful

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We lived to explore the outdoors & daydream Egypt during the days of Cleopatra inside offices I was Cleopatra before Julius became Rome & Marc Antony a history lesson I had not a care in the world

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Monday, March 8 CHERIE NELSON, 9 A.M.

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BESS COOLEY, 11 A.M.

Green We might paint our new front door on the white house a hunter color to match—compliment maybe—maple trees, the tulips an older lady planted there that begin to come up in early spring before they bloom to other colors— yellow, white. When we finish our hard days’ work landscaping, digging around in the peatmoss dirt we’ll relax in the grass with iced matcha tea, a salad of lettuce, spring onion, cucumber, perhaps even a slice of pistachio cake.

The next day we hike in the forest long and slow, up some Smoky Mountain hills choked with kudzu and tall with fir and go plodding over the algae rocks, we’ll look up and the sky and sun will seem very far away.

Who could reach them? We don’t have a rocket ship: just day packs and sturdy shoes and a long climb.

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SANDELL MORSE, 2 P.M.

for Victoria Your favorite place is Scituate Pond, a place you go daily or nearly daily summers. I have never been to your favorite place, but you have shown me pictures of you wading, of your grandson, who is maybe six or seven, now, paddling a child’s kayak. I know you swim laps over and back, over and back. I imagine you floating your body buoyant, your eyes closed. Perhaps, you see colors or stars. Perhaps, you see nothing. Perhaps, you remember your Great Uncle Doc, the brilliant storyteller in your family.

Because I know you, because you are my friend, I know you love stories. You love books. You love a painting your husband bought you. It is a painting by a friend, and you hung it in your kitchen where you see it and love it every day.

Because I know you, I know you love your family, your husband, your children, your grandchildren, your blended family. Here is what I did not know about you: years ago you hitchhiked to work in Boston, two rides each way. “That was crazy,” you say.

You also hitchhiked through Europe and Cape Cod where you met your first husband.

He drove you back to the city. I assume that city was Boston.

People who are racist, sexist, homophobic, people who believe lies or who won’t listen to facts make you angry. I surmise those kinds of folks have always made you angry. I hear you. You find peace sitting in sun that shines in your window, a good book in your lap. You also find peace on Scituate Pond where you swim and swim. If you could paint a picture of anything, you would paint Scituate Pond.

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Tuesday, March 9 GEMMA SELTZER, 8 A.M.

1. Blank Page for Rachel Cherry You and me and the blank page take a walk and you and me and the blank page stand under the tree we like: the big grandfather of an oak tree. All the leaves on the tree sway.

The blank page says, Well. You say, We’ve been having trouble with you. I say, Could we agree you offer us a first line at least? The blank page shrugs, blankly. You say, Just give a word?

It is a too hot day, the air is thick with heat. We lean towards the blank page.

Its soft, bare arms folded over its chest.

You say, Look, we heard you have a special service. We have money, you know.

At that, the blank page nods and digs a hand in its pocket. It pulls out a piece of - what - air? There’s nothing to see.

The blank page says, The trouble with you is you think you are the writing, the words and the letters and the marks and the ideas. You think that’s who you are but you’re not.

You raise your chin and say, Who are we, then? I say, Yeah, who are we? The blank page shows us what it holds in its hand and nods again.

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2. Reading the Air for Mathew Hanratty ‘Reading the air’ or ‘Kuuki wo yomu’ is a Japanese concept that means being attentive to the atmosphere of social situations or conversations.

I met a woman who read the air around me and told me it said beware of lilac.

Lilac would bring great disappointment. My mind went straight to the lilac envelope I’d address to my dad, and the letter inside that complained he was not living up to the childhood name I’d given him: Mum. Later, I stood at the postbox with the sealed envelope and wondered whether the disappointment would be for him, or for me? Which mattered most? I ripped the envelope corners leaving the stamp and address intact. He would understand the gist even if words were missing. His imagination might fill the holes and I could deny assumptions easily. I posted the letter.

It wasn’t just that the woman could read the air, but she could taste it too.

When an atmosphere was particularly knotty, she said it was like scraps of paper in her mouth, laced with cloves and pepper, stiff on her tongue, scratching and cutting.

When she read the air between new friends, people meeting and delighting in each other for the first time, she said it was like ever so juicy raspberries, topped with double cream. The sensation of pouring cream - that’s what she saw in the air.

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GEMMA SELTZER, 8 A.M.

3.

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SALLY ROSEN KINDRED, 10 A.M.

1. Hemlock Point for Ellen at Lake George When is a lake a lament? When is a lake a lost map to the girl you were, to the way you’d wake to fog on the shore-lap and walk out into green rolling blue and blue shining hectic to the hemlocks?

Is the sky an hour shouldered in gulls?

When is it a map back to the time before you and I became women in air, women in pavement and ink, women trailing children’s feet down pain-bright asphalt walks?

When is a lake a dress you sink your body into, and when is the air a hammock to bear your skin?

Tell me its claim and swing. Tell me the long afternoon, suspended, the bend and moan through needle-light when wind rocks the lake to us and back, our reflections to stone. Tell me the lake’s name and fog over the dim pages, exhalation and your hand on mine, when book, when rope, when shoulder. Say what we lose when the earth tilts like water. Tell me what we miss.

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2. Green Gables for Nancy Meet me in Marilla’s body.

Meet me in her afternoon, late island light bending through her kitchen glass as she sets out the plate of russets.

Supper is planned, tea is ready.

Soon Anne will be home from school.

Once we would have met in Anne’s Haunted Wood.

Once you and I were girls. But now Marilla sits down and we sink into her slat-back chair, begin to mend the pinafores.

Meet me in her knees, whining dim and creased by pinewood hours scrubbing the floorboards with ash and lye.

Soon Anne will swing her satchel into the room, but now she’s whirling to the Snow Queen and we’re here. A shame the girl believes in ghosts.

Last night these hands taught the girl to pray.

Over this gingham lap, they close together: we remember.

Meet me here, in her hips—here, looking out the window and down the damp lane, for ourselves, for the girl, and try to remember the way, just this morning, end over crimson end, we braided her hair.

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3. Holdfasts for Katie Be extra kind you tell your son the year the mouth on the screen opens, oceanic, mean, and becomes our king. Be kind you say mornings on Mission Beach, and try to step around the kelp, whose tender brown and green shoots curl up, torn from their forest on the ocean floor. Do they remember the cold, the slow unfurling in water they wore like pearls of wind? Or the way their frayed folds stuttered in the gray amniotic wake? Rootless, featherless, once they clung to the twilight ground in holdfasts. A gray whale hid her calf in their branches. See her: hunched and silent, waiting for the great white mouths to pass.

Rootless, featherless, we try to be kind: make ourselves night-leaf and sanctuary, try to wind our witch-skin around faces small and our own. And they are all our own.

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LAUREN CAMP, 3 P.M.

Quantum Entanglement Shelter moves along with the ravens who cap the trees all black and in copies.

We agree that a vulgar December was made from our boots. I see god isn’t at war in the middle of this exhausted place, not so long as we fill it with multiple pieces of our ongoing fiction. What I want most to remember is the calm of the mules undressed to the grass that keeps growing.

Let this become my lasting investigation of this reduced moment.

I’ll put in my magic square all the impossible numbers, the melting point of ice and have you heard the Brunt Ice Shelf is broken? What isn’t broken?

Even Wednesday or people.

I will come to you with my sentences and as many commas as I can wedge to each thought: myself and you and supplicant.

Myself and the hinges and my negative enthusiasm, thirsty and lunatic. Can I prove the great grief is more than gathering suggestions?

I’ve been told there are four solutions to worry.

That’s what I’ll do with the hours of today.

See the empty window as how I admire the emptiness best.

What happens each time is the dusk, a currency I know how to spend.

The weight of the clocks and each circumference of sky.

Three trees make a limit.

Here is our area and perimeter. I stay wrapped in small sweaters on this property cut through the mountains. The absence of road.

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Wednesday, March 10 CATHERINE HERVEY, 9 A.M.

1.

When my daughter was in preschool, she got to spend a dollar every Christmas getting presents for us. There was a whole little shop set up for them to choose things from, and volunteer parents who paired with them to help them find things.

When I picked my daughter up from school with all her gift bags, the other parent who had been her shopping companion told me “Oh my gosh, your present, I… When you open it I have a story for you.”

I was puzzled, but on Christmas Day when I opened a wine travel mug, like a wine glass encased in a plastic travel mug, I began to understand. Apparently when this other parent was helping my daughter look through the wares on offer she suggested, “Does your mom like wine?” And my daughter’s eyes lit up and she gasped and said, “Yeah, she LOVES wine!” Given that I had no idea what legal things one can get up to with a wine travel mug, I thanked my daughter, took pictures of it for my family and friends, and put it high in a kitchen cabinet, where it remained unused.

But then this one day I went to the dentist, and I had a panic attack. I have some strange issues with anaesthesia . . . I’ve heard rumors it might be a redhead thing.

Whatever the case, in the months leading up to this fateful dentist appointment I had multiple experiences of anaesthesia not working and doctors not understanding when I tried to explain it and proceeding with incredibly painful procedures.

So when I needed a cavity filled and I felt a jolt of pain after the novacaine should have set in, my brain went haywire. The dentist was very nice and did his best, but in the midst of my panic I was metabolizing the novacaine so fast that he had to give me more shots of it and ended up immobilizing the entire right half of my lower jaw. I had to make an appointment to come back and fill the other one, because he couldn’t also immobilize the other side or I’d be drooling on myself for hours.

On the way home I sent a message to one of my best friends who is a therapist and told her that I had just had a panic attack at the dentist and, like, what on earth was wrong with me I was in my mid-thirties, or something to that effect.

She told me I should drink some wine, that having a glass of it would lessen the likelihood that the memory of the dentist panic attack would become traumatic.

This sounded like a great plan to me, so I went home and poured a glass of wine to take to the bedroom while I tried to come back to myself. This was my first panic

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attack, so I wasn’t sure what else to do. The problem was I couldn’t drink the wine because I couldn’t purse my lips. I tried once or twice and got it all over myself. And then, I looked up into that seldom disturbed top cabinet at my wine travel mug and I realized its time had come.

How porous, the borders between us. The warmth, the very body heat radiating from one person’s fingers depressing the characters on a screen that spell out TRY SOME WINE, that warmth encoded, sent, reconstituted under my own fingers, and then wine and another person’s wisdom down my own throat and into my body. All this aided by the spark of joy in a small girl that an adult could see and recognize, mirror neurons perhaps at work in that brief moment so that between them they chose a present. It is no simple thing to say where one person ends and another begins.

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2.

She learned when she was forty-two that guinea pigs can get scurvy. For most people this tidbit of information would be classified as trivia, one of millions and millions of discrete bits of information clogging different corners of the internet and overwhelming our poor, unadapted brains. Or perhaps for a person who owned guinea pigs, it would be a useful and necessary thing to know--ensure your guinea pig gets regular vitamin c because like us they cannot store it and otherwise they will go the way of unfortunate sailors on the high seas hundreds of years ago.

But for her, this fact was an indictment. She learned it because she had just purchased her son a pair of guinea pigs as starter pets on the way to the dog he desperately wanted and they had gone to the library’s children nonfiction section looking for guinea pig care books at his reading level, and the book they brought home said that guinea pigs can get scurvy.

She, at her son’s age, had had a guinea pig, which is perhaps why it occurred to her to get him guinea pigs as well. She had not known, at twelve, that guinea pigs could get scurvy. She had fed her guinea pig, whose name had been nutmeg, pellets in a bowl that her parents got at the pet store. Nutmeg had lived for five years without ever receiving a vitamin c supplement or having her nails clipped or getting the fresh hay that apparently was also supposed to be available constantly in unlimited quantities.

She hadn’t known. Her parents hadn’t tried to find out, and neither had she. At forty two, this tortures her.

In the first flush of horror at her unknowing neglect of nutmeg, she tried to tell herself that it had been a different time, that relations with pets and animal care in general had been a different thing when she was a child, that there were things that simply weren’t known and weren’t practiced and the shame involved in treating an animal so poorly could thus be spread across the entirety of humanity and shared. But the library book, with its dated photographs of children with bowl haircuts belied this assessment, and she looked at the copyright page and saw that the book proclaiming that guinea pigs can get scurvy and including helpful, detailed charts of the vitamin c content of various fresh vegetables, was written in 1977.

“Mom,” said her son from the couch where he was sitting with his tablet as the guinea pig book open to its title page still lay in her hands. “Guess what. In Europe it’s illegal to have one guinea pig because they can die of loneliness.”

I will do it right this time, she thinks, holding a tiny, squirming forepaw in one hand and a nail clipper in the other. In the middle of the night she opens the bag of hay as quietly as possible while her son sleeps nearby and adds a few more handfuls to the pile, to be sure the guinea pigs have enough to make it to morning. This time, I will do it right.

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KAREN BJORK KUBIN, 11 A.M.

Sometimes We Find the Words for Amy Some people know how to pray and some people write poems but I’ve been told by people who know that in the end they are the same thing.

Both sing.

Both are trying to find their fragrance, reaching for something beyond them, rising incense.

This poem is reaching for the ocean, bringing its vastness to the prairie, making the grass wave like water, Letting the sun glance off each leaf and stalk in ripples and diamond glints, everything dancing, everything roaring.

This poem is reaching for borders it cannot see, filling in the unfillable, rushing towards and past and around so that all the things that separate us are now only this field away.

This poem is reaching for the warmth of the sun and the warmth of friends all in one place again.

This poem is the sun on your skin: soaking, warming, stretching with you for that place and time where there is nothing but light buoying you in salt arms, the waves rolling you but always holding you up.

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JEN STEWART FUESTON, 1 P.M.

1. The Garden after Liesel Mueller I bring a cottonwood seed about to molt, a papery feather laying in my hand like a promise.

Nature always suffers quietly—its bravery in never flinching from what’s opening it.

She collects nothing for herself, instead allows memory to paint her a red-gold brilliance at a distance. How strange that recollection is a garden growing wild, a bramble, where a stone path steps through time, each green branch catching at your heel, your body marked, and made.

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2. Peace after Liesel Mueller It stretches the pine branch that cannot read,

curiously climbing the library wall.

It stays green and awake,

through the winter.

It vibrates the slant of light beneath

the wooden bridge above the creek,

rounded over the spring water,

holding silence

like a golden cup.

It hummed in the color of a woman’s dress

before love arrived, a spell knit

into the fabric, as if cast

saying, you will remember.

Paths through the woods turn silently

when there is no reason to speak,

our feet on the dust

a language of their own.

In the cupped ironwood, held.

In the necessary answer,

unspoken.

It is unseekable, cannot be found, only eavesdropped on,

the way you listen at a door for a visitor.

Or in that moment of anger find

your body turning back,

soft again and ready,

settling on your face like snow in a spring storm.

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ARAH KO, 2 P.M.

Thaw I want the smell of dew

before it freezes, fresh snowberries, frost-ripe

distant mountains pile closer every day. Sometimes

I collect movie ticket stubs, down jackets, chai tea, anything

to keep me warm until sage creeps up the forest paths,

until you come home.

I miss the scent of new

dirt under my fingernails, soft earth after a hard winter,

dog breath panting warm against my palms. I feel you now,

bright like perennial stonecrop, purple peony, hot June afternoons

in the backyard drinking pop - its taste, sweet as any memory

against my teeth.

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Thursday, March 11 ROBIN GOW, 11 A.M.

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PREETI PARIKH, 12 P.M

The Migrant’s Origin Song I come from cantonments, jongas and jeeps, one-ton and three-ton trucks hauling military engineering equipment— I come from bridge construction sites, the mile-wide Brahmaputra river flooding, army helicopters summoned for rescue operations— I come from the words forces and civilians— I come from small hill stations and capital cities rchitecture by British colonials— I come from joint families and ancestral homes long razed and replaced by millennial buildings— I come from misri, panjiri, nutty wheat flour roasted on iron skillets— I come from pine trees, morning bugle calls, blanket and bedding in hold-alls, trunks, hole-in ground toilets— I come from 8x10 hostel rooms, immersion rods warming bathwater in buckets, laundry drying on clotheslines, benches on stepped terraces— I come from power outages, inverters, petromax lamps— I come from backyards with jackfruit trees, rows of bathua, carrot, cauliflower, pepper plantings— I come from home kitchens with makeshift temples and neem leaves steeping in saucepans— I come from the northern plains of the Ganga, from the waters of Teesta, Chenab, Tawi, Jhelum, Yamuna, Sabarmati— I come from desert sands billowing into turbaned heads and veiled eyes— I come from sleeper cars in narrow gauge trains, water in matkis, and chai in kulhads on platforms— I come from childhood collections of coins and erasers, first-day postal covers, books amassed and circulated amongst school friends, a precise one-to-one bartering— I come from the family motto: Help others, and God will take good care of your life— I come from questioning God, questioning life— I come from curfews, communal riots, immolations— I come from an undivided Indian subcontinent— I come from partition; I come from separation.

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ANGELICA WHITEHORNE, 1 P.M.

Flash News I heard there was a time when the news was dropped off at your front door, tightly wrapped like a present of sorts and printed with dark black importance on the backs of dead trees, your unrolling of the world’s enrichment, the first sacrifice of your morning, right after sleeping: the last sacrifice of night and right before your first ritualistic kitchen devour.

And I imagine how these readers of the past would go to find a place, probably the same place as last week, and flap open the butterfly wings of the newspaper, nonchalantly hungry for the best worked happenings, so they could go into the talks of their day feeling primed, well read, and ready; aficionado on stock prices, lost dogs, drug scandals.

And how sweet it must have been to read the typings of the world, curated and succinct. And even more how sublime it must have been to have it all end, to put the paper down and be done with it, close your shades to society and its grimy violence, back deals, syrupy success stories, headlines of hazard. To go about your day untethered to it— now the news envelops us always.

I open the app to see my friend’s faces and there it is, news of a baby falling from a 12 story building. I scroll to my home screen and Apple positions all the world’s affairs in front of my eyes and it is like lightning across the window of my phone, who could manage to look away? Our world is like a car crash, no like a highway pile up, and all these news sites are like watching the fenders collide into each other over and over again.

The notifications announce themselves to me this midday and I see that another story of nature’s revenge, hurricane or tsunami or landslide has come, I slide the messages away, but I do not turn them off. Turning them off would be like turning away from the awful. I grow guilty whenever I do not hold the tragedy of these stories second hand, continual consumption seems the least I can do. Me and my entire generation has lost their ability to put the paper down and so we read from morning to night and roll it all over a second time in our dreams, almost as penance for the bad news not having our names in it.

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Friday, March 12 EMILY MCILROY, 3 P.M

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Saturday, March 13 KATIE MANNING, 9 A.M.

1. Choosing a Moon for Beatriz Fernandez “ I think everybody in the poetry community deserves their own moon.”

—Todd Dillard

Who can resist the pull of Ganymede, the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field, named for the most beautiful boy? And don’t most of us make the mistake of taking whatever is largest—a slice of cake—or most lovely— that gorgeous boy—even when we know they’re not the best for us? Then I leap to the other extreme: I think of Deimos, smallest moon of Mars, the 8-mile ball I could keep in my cosmic pocket, but who wants to carry even a small amount of dread? Then I turn to Io, and my mouth keeps turning the vowels over and over. How could I resist the liquid sounds

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that label the driest object in our solar system? How can I help but see myself in one of the few mortal women beyond this earth?

What woman doesn’t contradict herself and burn. The lava lakes call to my tongue.

Io. This is the one.

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2. When God Looked Down for Charnell Peters because she’d smelled the baking bricks / and wondered what the humans were up to this time / she saw the tower / and the men trying to be big and famous / instead of spreading across the earth like she’d said / building this tower as if they were the witches to imprison her / climbing it as if they could be the ones to save her too / she did not let down her hair / but dropped down herself / nothing you plan will be possible / she said / if you won’t listen to me / you won’t understand each other either / and their speech shattered into languages / the men stopped building / and before the people scattered across the whole earth / the supervisor shouted / why can’t you all just speak English! / but everyone / even God / ignored him

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GEMMA SELTZER