Basketweave

I am the insatiable wolf
whose hunger you fear
yet whose domain you desire.
Step off the path, my dear
why are your eyes so big?
Have you never felt
the earth with bare feet
have you never smelled
fresh flowers so sweet?
Your mother warned you
to stay away
your grandmother
told her the same
yet here I stand, welcoming
and you come to me.
I am freedom. I am the door
that opens new paths, your small fingers
holding onto the basket till it breaks
like glass. What big ears you have
did you hear the wind in the leaves
or a star shooting across the sky?
What big lips you have? Better
to speak, better to eat
and my, what big teeth, you say
but they’re necessary
to clear the way.

After “Sugar House,” from Lisa Andrews’ The Inside Room.

Red Riding in the Wood

From the moment I stepped upon the path
	I knew I was meant to leave it
after all, what’s the worth of a warning

if it could never come to pass?
	so I stepped beyond the bricks
let my toes impress upon the earth

bits of dirt and morning dew
	clinging to my flesh, my flesh
as much earth now as the ground.

I tread more lightly in the wood
	than I would upon the path
for there the ground is paved

and garish, cracked and strewn with weeds
	but here the earth abounds
with green vines and blossoming flowers

of pink and lilac and white, soft yellow
	like the ethereal bricks of other
paths that women were meant to follow.

I shall not follow. I shall step freely
	decide my course, my own way
to whatever ends I aim at.

After “Gretel in the Forest,” from Lisa Andrews’ The Inside Room.

Insistent

Content warning: This poem contains graphic sexual imagery.

After After

I have thought many times about what I shall do after I write this. But now is still before, and this is before, but having said such, it is also after. I have spent many months thinking about before, before before, when things were better. Except things were never better: I was only blinder, before I knew, before I knew that I didn't know, before I knew what I now know after. I spend equally as much time imaging after after. I had a dream: I have a dream about after, after I can see whole faces again, after black faces and brown faces aren't held after white faces, after my faces face each other and I face each of them after my before is after, when I am after my before. I wonder about the weight of holding hands, how light they felt before, though before before when holding his hand was like holding a mine somewhere beneath our feet, set there some time before, and maybe it would detonate after we set upon if if we didn't hold still. And after after, I wonder how heavy our hands will be, when I haven't held a hand in so long, not since before. I remember before when I ate better and ran often and lost thirty pounds. And I think often after before when I gained back forty and I wonder now what I'll wear after after when people see more than my upper torso, since my shoulders fit about as well in my shirts after as before even if the bottom seams ride up my stomach after I switched to only elastic waistbands before. There is too much before to be mindful of what was before before, and I know there is too little after after to be certain of what will still exist after what happened before and after what killed before kills even more even after who was here before is replaced with the person after him. I have spent too much time staring after after, ignoring before before, and I commit, I cannot linger, must admit there is no after after when what I am, where I am, when I am is neither before nor after but now, and now, after before but still before after, I have neither before nor after to look for.

“After After” is after a poem in Jameson Fitzpatrick’s book Mr. & called “The Genius of Wives of Geniuses I Have Sat With,” which is itself after a paragraph in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein. Even poems, not only poets, can have their own lineage.

Hacking the Hacks

This morning I learned about a “Hackathon” short story contest by Owl Canyon (details here) and the premise is unlike any other writing contest I’ve ever seen: they provide the first paragraph and the last, and it’s your task to complete the story with exactly eighteen intermediate paragraphs of at least fifty words each.

Naturally, I’m gonna try my hand at it–and because they also allow multiple submissions, I thought it would provide an excellent opportunity to do something daring.

I’m going to write multiple stories–and each of them will have a different genre.

So, to get started, I thought I’d take some time to dive deep into the writing “prompts” and brainstorm some ways I can tackle it from such different perspectives.