Jill Scott

KATHERINE SHERRITT SAGAMORE, 39 YEARS OLD,
AND 8 ½ MONTHS PREGNANT,
BECALMED IN OUR ENGINELESS SMALL SAILBOAT,
AT THE END OF A STICKY JUNE CHESAPEAKE AFTERNOON
AMID EVERY SIGN OF THUNDERSTORMS APPROACHING
FROM ACROSS THE BAY,
AND SPEAKING AS SHE SOMETIMES DOES IN VERSE,
SETS HER HUSBAND A TASK.

Tell me a story of women and men,
Like us: like us in love for ten
Years, lovers for seven, spouses
Two, or two point five. Their Houses
Increase is the tale I’d wish you tell.
Why did that perfectly happy pair
Like us, decide this late to bear
A child? Why toil so to conceive
One (or more), when they both believe
The world’s aboard a handbasket bound for hell?
Well?

                        Loie Rawding

SORRY STREET by Aaren Perry

One block up from Sad on Angry
Sorry Street cuts into Nightlife
at the same angle she’d look at me
when she wasn’t telling’.
These days I pass by without a glance.
I can’t see down Sorry anymore.
Been blocked for months. Power’s out,
sidewalk’s piled with the rubble of repair,
the blue cobblestones of Pity Alley
buckling down there under blinkin’ sawhorses.
That’s the corner where we used to play this game:

Her in the street like standing like Stella
staring at me starring on stage smoking.
She’d tell me to come back to her, push me away
when I did, slapped me for trying, cry
when I said I was leaving, see if she could stand it
when I stayed. Then we’d kiss and say, sorry.

We used to do shots ’til Patty’s pub closed
then hopscotch stooped stooped down Sorry
all the way to Drunk and Rage. We both wanted out
but couldn’t see it. Now I wonder if it’s her
smoking in one of those tiny TV-lit row house windows,
her face blue as an alien, or if she just finally
met someone special down the Agony Steel Plant.
I just came back for one last look.
Tomorrow I’m moving out
Of the Innerdoubt section of town, altogether.
I can’t even see down Sorry.

Reflective writing prompt
Write about the intersection of Joy and Sorry Streets

Street Life, Harlem – William H. Johnson

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about the street where you live.

The Boy at the Circus, as if in a Dalí Painting
–after AR

 The boy has the key to a savage party. What can he unlock here? The acrobats climbed ropes to swings and flew like skilled bees. There were suited capuchins, dwarves in gowns, twirlers, spinners, rollers and tumblers, and the flowered clowns. He took water to the elephants who wore skirts and honked for hay. The horses were crowned with peacocks. The band played at music and the dancers danced baroque steps. The crowd roared as a choir of lions yawned. The Barker passed him the tallest hat and the scalloped boots, and he led the parade, as the players waved, as the swans landed to fly him home to cloudy mirrors and an empty quarter.

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about what’s in the tent

Sorrow Is Not My Name by Ross Gay

—after Gwendolyn Brooks

No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.

Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.

—for Walter Aikens

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about what is, or is not, your name.

From: Prologue, The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had
brought.

Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus. The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.

But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.

He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest
appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water,
transformed into a lake of salty tears.

“Why do you weep?” the goddesses asked.

“I weep for Narcissus,” the lake replied.

“Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,” they said, “for
though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could
contemplate his beauty close at hand.”

“But… was Narcissus beautiful?” the lake asked.

“Who better than you to know that?” the goddesses said in wonder.
“After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate
himself!”

The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:

“I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful.  I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.”

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about the beauty reflected in your own eyes.

Please join us when we will listen to Melanie Brooks read an excerpt from her memoir “A Hard Silence.”  We will then close read, discuss, and free-write to the excerpt.

A conversation with Melanie follows the workshop.

Simulationist Narrative Medicine Community co-founder Ginny Drda read her 2020 poem “Magnolia Doesn’t Know.”