KyKye: Paolo, the main character in your short story, “La Camaraderie du Cirque” has a complex relationship with his voice and the others he acquires. It makes me wonder how you, as the author, feel about your own voice. What is your relationship to your voice and how would you describe it?
Dave Ring: As a queer person, I’ve often questioned the gendered image that I share with the world. Voice is a part of that image. I’ve worked on a number of hotlines where callers assume your gender because of how you sound, and those assumptions have changed and informed my speaking in a lot of ways. And like many, when I hear my voice in a recording, I often find it intensely uncomfortable, since our head-voices are always different than how our voices are perceived by others. Paolo’s relationship with his voice is something like my own, but vastly amplified.
K: You are chair of the OutWrite LGBTQ
Book Festival in Washington, DC. What is your favorite part about holding that
position?
D: Volunteering for a big queer lit fest is pretty amazing,
I have to say. It’s also a lot of work.
The most rewarding aspects for me come from supporting local writers,
but also hearing what folks get from attending and being part of a
predominantly queer space.
K: What are you most proud of in your
writing career so far?
D: I finished the first draft of a novel earlier this year.
I’m still revising it, but writing “the end” on a novel was a
longstanding dream/anxiety of mine. I’m proud to have gotten past it…making
way for new dreams and anxieties.
K: Since you have experience in both,
what do you like better– writing or editing? Why?
D: Perhaps others feel differently, but both forms serve my
literary journey. Editing for me, with anthologies like Broken Metropolis and the novella series I’m putting out soon from
Neon Hemlock Press, is about curating vital voices and lifting other writers
up. Writing is about telling the stories I wish I’d heard before and
contributing to the collective canon.
K: What is the most valuable writing
lesson you’ve learned over the past year?
D: Don’t underestimate the power of literary community, in
whatever sense gives you the most energy to work on the projects that matter
most to you.
K: What do you hope your readers take
away from your story, “La Camaraderie du Cirque?”
D: I’d like to deflect here… instead perhaps I can tell
you what I take away from it? Reading it now reminds me of illicit thrills, and
the impossibility of desire. What if the things you yearn for don’t give you
peace? What if you were always running after the wrong fulfillment?
K: You write speculative fiction but if
you could rewrite one thing about our current world, what would it be?
D: I’d rewrite rules of power. Nihil de nobis, sine nobis writ large.
JF: The story is part of a collection of stories I’ve
been working on about these characters. The plot itself originally was the
backstory in another piece, but (as sometimes happens) the backstory proved to
be more interesting, so I decided to make it its own stand-alone piece. The
setting sprang naturally out of the story since I needed them to be someplace
near the woods, and this suggested a less urban setting. I liked it as a choice
since, being a city boy, I tend to write a lot of urban stories. This forced me
out of my comfort zone and allowed me to explore a different world.
Shift: Both
your 2015 novel, The Thunder of Giants, and “Deadfall”
feature female protagonists. How did you get into these characters?
JF: As a reader,
I’ve always gravitated towards stories with strong female protagonists, and I
think this is why this is often reflected in my writing. I’m distinctly aware
of the challenges associated with this, and I try to do my due diligence. The
Thunder of Giants is historical fiction, so I was able to do research
into the era, and that helped me to attune myself to the obstacles faced by
women in the 19th century. I try to do a similar thing these days with the modern
era. I read a lot and try to listen even more. I’m fortunate to have grown up
in a family of strong-willed women, and many of my closest friends are women,
including, of course, my girlfriend of many years. I rely on them a lot to tell
me when I’m getting it wrong and help me figure out how to get it right.
Shift: What are you working on now—and where are you headed with your writing?
JF: I always have several projects on the go since I work in multiple forms, but right now the focus is a screenplay I had optioned recently and my thesis project for my MFA, which is a new novel. I work as an actor, too, so the new novel is about a family of actors navigating the industry in the #MeToo era. I also have a list of projects I want to pursue which includes more historical fiction and the collection of stories of which “Deadfall” is a part.
“It really only takes me three months to write a book. So that’s three months of hard, focused work. Now the problem is, it takes me six months to do these three months’ worth of work, not because I’m sitting around playing games all the time, but because I feel like in my head that I can’t get the story out the way I like it, so I sit there trying to think and tinker, and I’m like, ‘If I only had a little bit more time, I could make it perfect in my brain, and then it’ll come out on the paper and it’ll be the greatest.’ And that never works because it’s an illusion.”
“What I think happens, and it certainly happened to me, is that people hold themselves to this impossible standard of envisioning perfection first and then putting it on paper. So they get caught in this loop of they never do anything because they’re waiting to have all the answers and they’re trying to put together The Godfather in their head when they’ve never written a word on paper. What you do instead is you learn while working. You work to learn; you learn while you work. And in my case, I think, ‘Why not put it out there and get feedback from readers and learn in the wild?’ You can’t write a book until you’ve written a book.”
“The number one thing I say all the time is—Purpose. Target Group. Strategy. I apply it to everything I do. Why am I doing this? Who am I doing it for? And what is my strategy for reaching those people for that purpose?”
Melanie Quezada: You have just graduated from your MFA in Fiction. What is your advice to students entering the field?
Colleen Mayo: My advice to students who want to pursue writing is: do it! Treat yourself and your writing with respect. This means be disciplined, curious, supportive of yourself and others. Writing sounds and looks and feels many different ways. Try to expose yourself to a wide variety of work. If what you write is totally different from anything else, that’s probably a very good thing. Also, celebrate and participate in writing communities, MFA or otherwise.
MQ: When did you know that writing was for you?
CM: I have no idea! Always? Always.
MQ: If you had a time machine and could meet any author living or dead, who would they be and why?
CM: Well even the fantasy of meeting these people makes me so nervous… I know I’d just explode or drool or be an absolute nincompoop, but the three names that first come to mind are: Toni Morrison, Denis Johnson, and George Saunders. Also, Anthony Bourdain.
MQ: How many hours a day do you write?
CM: I try to write 75 or so minutes every morning before I go to work. It’s tough for me to make big headway with just an hourish, so I like to work for 2 or 3 hours during the weekend.
MQ: Do you believe in writer’s block? What do you recommend for those who have it?
CM: I don’t believe in it for me… because I know I use it as an excuse. I’ll tell myself I have writer’s block because it’s easier than going to sit in the chair and actually deal with something that’s stumping or frustrating me about a story. I usually write myself into stories and characters, which is not a quick process, so for me “writer’s block” usually means I haven’t done enough work yet. All of this is a way of saying that I recommend we all write through our block. Butt in chair. That’s the only way to do it.
MQ: What are you working on now? What do you hope to work on in the future?
CM: I’m working on revising a story collection and getting back into a novel! Two very different projects in different stages, which is fun. My 2019 goal is to finish the damn novel. I’d also like to get to work on some essay ideas knocking around my head but…I try not to get too excited about ideas. We all have ideas, you know? They’re not worth much without the words on paper.
Colleen Mayo’s writing has appeared in Crazyhorse, The Sun Magazine, The Rumpus and others. She was a 2017 winner of the FSU Creative Writing Spotlight Award for Nonfiction. Born in Texas, Colleen now lives in Tallahassee where she recently graduated with her MFA in Fiction at Florida State University.
About the Interviewer:
Melanie Quezada is a Creative Writing major at Ringling College of Art and Design. She currently resides in Sarasota, Florida. She is getting her bachelor’s in Creative Writing.
Long before you made a habit of hating me, your mother proposed. We were at a steak place. I wore a suit. Her, a red dress— my favorite color on her. She kept swirling her finger along the rim of her wineglass as if it might sing. My head about flew to the ceiling when she popped the question. She said she loved how I made her feel. It all sounds so corny until it’s directed at you.
“Like I have nothing to hide,” she said.
“Oh Dawn, me too, me too” I whispered. If the boys back in Little Rock could have heard me coo like that, they’d have doubled over. I’m not known for being an emotional guy.
Still, your mother’s finger, around and around. Back then, the flesh off her pinkie was rougher than
the callus on my big toe. I never minded it. I’ve got rough hands as well, made thick from working the machines at Remington thirteen hours a day. I believe all good hands should tell a story.
Then she looked up at me, nothing but eyelashes and trust. I knew then what it feels like to be so happy that your heart aches. The both of us sensed this was some kind of moment, a picture we’d forever return to in our minds.
“When should we do it?” I asked.
She leaned her fork over my plate and shoveled up a heap of garlic mashed potatoes—Dawn’s appetite back! I’d trade in three years just to see her go to town on a basket of fries and onion rings.
“After I talk to Sally,” she said.
“For now, we’ll move in together.”
She touched my leg underneath the tabletop. I paid the bill quickly. My stuff was at y’all’s place by the end of the week. You weren’t thrilled, but you seemed to get over it. I was once a simple man, easy to live with.
Quickly, Dawn got me into the jewelry business. I started crafting metal baubles that sold well at all the fairs. We’d work the Central Texas circuit clean from December to June, then we’d pack up our camper and take you out on adventures the whole summer long. Moab, Yellowstone, White Sands—it was downright glamorous. This pattern for six years. We’d joke about my life before and after Dawn, B.D. and A.D., which we all thought was pretty cute.
B.D., I worked as a Preventative Maintenance Specialist out at Remington in Lonoke, Arkansas. I was good and we had a decent crew, but one slip-up is enough to bring the whole assembly line to a halt and—rip—a limb or worse can be lost in two seconds. It’s quite stressful. I don’t have to tell you that. The lot of us used to head down to this joint Smokey’s once or twice a week to drink it out and share stories. Some of the men could get competitive about the gore, which I never liked.
I had this coworker named Christian. We were both on shift when a bad batch got cased. The explosion made national news. Two guys dead, five banged up badly. Christian lost his left eyebrow hair, yet, to hear him talk about it, you’d think he survived Afghanistan. Sitting at Smokey’s night after night while Christian reenacted our dead buddies’ faces melting off didn’t go down well. I’m a vet myself. I started to feel a bit offended. I’ve surprised myself much more than the night I crashed a pool stick against Christian’s head. Let me be clear: I wasn’t surprised, but I wasn’t proud either. I woke up the next morning, called in sick, and b-lined it for Texas. The goal was Houston, then in Austin I really did surprise myself.
You were fifteen the summer she started misplacing shit— normal things at first, like keys and receipts, the sort of stuff you chalk up to a bad night’s sleep. Meanwhile, you’d turned difficult, all slouch and sarcasm. But we made it Jackson Hole in time for snow. When you saw it all, you looked back at your mother and me as if we’d given you a great gift. I felt for a moment what it would have been to see you as a child. You cartwheeled around the white hills, pausing to lick the wet off your hands and smile at us with a disbelieving, magical grin. You ran up and pulled us both into a hug, pressed your cold fingers against the back of my neck while Dawn kissed my check. Life had become something I’d never even known I wanted. But I wanted it, you need to know that.
Names started to get funny shortly after your sixteenth birthday. She’d call you ‘Susan’, or me ‘Barry’, or sometimes her mind would go somewhere else entirely and she’d talk to me like I was her father or ex-husband. Then her temper started to flare up something evil. That’s when we really started to worry. She’d ask me to pass the salt, then throw a knife at my head if it didn’t come fast enough. Your English teacher called the cops after she ate three fingers of chalk and turned over a chair over during their parent- teacher meeting. I couldn’t trust her at the booth alone for fear she might lose it at a customer.
It was sometime during this period when I left. I was gone one and half days. I’d driven back to Arkansas, parked myself up at that familiar corner in Smokey’s to throw back more beers than
my stomach remembered how to handle. It’d been nearly a decade; no one outright recognized me. I knew some—Christian, yes, and a few others—and I shut my eyes to listen to them share their stories, which hadn’t changed a beat from the gore and other talk. I left a good tip.
I swear, every exit called to me— from I-30 to I-35—and maybe if I’d been soberer I might have turned around back to Arkansas. I hope you never make a habit out of the stuff, but sometimes drink does give you courage.
When the diagnosis finally came, your mother was stoic. She sat in front of the doctor and nodded at the charts. “Yes,” she said softly. Her eyes stayed locked on the series of lines and numbers while her thumb stroked the back of my hand. “Yes,” she repeated with a terrible, patient smile, “this makes sense.”
We told you. You didn’t cry. You did nothing. You walked away.
I guess you could call the time it is now A.A.D.: After, After Dawn. She’s still physically here, of course, and sometimes the film of this sickness slips from her eyes and she looks up at me from her bed at Eastwatch with a near-sane intensity like are you fucking kidding me, Gary? This is how it turns out? I lovehate these moments. It’d be easier without them. I’ve let myself imagine what it might have been to like to grow old with her rather than grow old taking care of her, what a fantasy, what a useless mindfuck.
And, yes, I’ve let myself imagine what it might have been like never to have met you both. Never to have these bills, this commitment, this terrible dearth of love from a daughter who shares none of my blood, from a woman who doesn’t remember my name.
Sometimes I wish I’d actually made her my wife, you my daughter. It wouldn’t have made a damn of difference.
Colleen Mayo’s writing has appeared in Crazyhorse, The Sun Magazine, The Rumpus and others. She was a 2017 winner of the FSU Creative Writing Spotlight Award for Nonfiction. Born in Texas, Colleen now lives in Tallahassee where she recently graduated with her MFA in Fiction at Florida State University.
The Visiting Writers Forum (www.visitingwritersforum.com) at Ringling College of Art and Design has been a way for young writers like myself to hear from seasoned writing professionals such as Pulitzer-winner Robert Olen Butler and Cuban-American poet Virgil Suarez, among others. Children’s book superstar Jane Yolen kicked off the spring 2018 series, but before she took the main event, she joined me for a quick chat.
Sydney Nicole: 300+ published books is an impressive number. What’s your motivation to keep writing?
Jane Yolen: Well, possibly because at almost eighty, I don’t know anything else. I love to write. I love to find out what I’m thinking and the way I can find out what I’m thinking is to write. I also come from a family of writers. My father was a writer. My brother’s a writer, my mother was a failed writer – she sold only one short story in her entire life. But she made crossword puzzles and my great-grandfather in a small shtetl – which is a Jewish community in the old country – had an inn and he use to tell stories around the fire to people. So we are a long line of liars.
SN: Your picture book Stranded Whale deals with death. How important is it to incorporate serious topics into children’s books?
JY: I do some lightweight stuff and I do some funny stuff like Commander Toad in Space and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? But I also do serious things in picture book form. I’ve also written three Holocaust novels – my latest comes out this year – so I write everything. It’s the story that I want to tell that dictates in which sub-genre it’s going to be and how dark it’s going to be; how light it’s going be. If I start writing something in bouncing rhyme, I’m sure not going to make it into a Holocaust novel. So there are limits to the number of changes you can make in something. But when I’m writing, in the beginning, I’m not always sure what it’s going be. Sometimes I am, but most of the time I try to get my ideas down and see where they take me.
SN: A few of your books have made it onto banned books lists. What advice do you have for writers who want to write for a younger audience, but fear they may be banned?
JY: If it’s banned, you’ll sell more copies. You’ll get a lot of press and people will want to see what they’re missing. But I think if there’s a serious issue that you want to write about, you write about it. If you want to write about it because you think it’s going to make money? That’s a bad reason. You want to write with your heart. Not with your pocketbook.
SN: How has today’s current climate affected your writing?
JY: I’ve been thinking about writing a Women’s March picture book, though I have a friend who’s doing it, so I probably won’t. But I’ve been certainly writing poems about that. I think that if you look at my body of work, you’ll find a lot of feminist stuff. In fact, a book of mine that just came out last week is about the women and girls in the Hebrew Bible, a feminist take on their stories. It liberates them out of the men’s stories and lets them live on their own. So I’m always thinking of women topics.
SN: So we can expect to see more of that in your work?
JY: Yes, absolutely.
SN: I’m writing a musical about the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s going to be about a black girl who is adopted, both her parents are white and her dad is a cop and how she perceives race in today’s history.
JY: Interesting, good take. I wrote a musical – two musicals for kids. One was performed in Boston and performed again in Massachusetts. And the other one was performed in North Hampton, Massachusetts and it is that kind of cooperative venture that picture books are too.
SN: How are picture books cooperative?
JY: Your first cooperation is not only between an author and his or her words. Instead of how is that story? You say to the story, “Come on, cooperate with me.” But then you’re cooperating with an editor, then you’re cooperating with the illustrator. Then you’re cooperating with a copy editor. You’re cooperating with all the promotion people 10 who want to sell your book to teachers and librarians who want to know what you really meant in your book. Most arts are cooperative – even though we think of ourselves as this lone wolf sitting there day in and day out putting down these magnificent words on the page. But in the end—like the musical—it’s very cooperative.
SN: I’m also working with a documentary group as the writer. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the documentary film 13th, about mass incarceration in the U.S. A local elementary school showed it to a bunch of fifth graders and the students wrote spoken word poetry based off what they saw. Our goal is to capture both how they felt about the subject matter and their experience with writing poetry.
JY: So where do you want to go? Do you want to do all these things or do you want to narrow it and go after one?
SN: I kind of like everything, but right now I’m more focused on screenwriting. I’m taking a lot of screenwriting class because I like film and television, but I also want to write a musical and I like books. I’m a little all over the place.
JY: Don’t think of it as being all over the place. Think of it as being easily bored, so you want to follow your passion and never narrow yourself because you don’t know right now what you are capable of. I still don’t know now what I can’t do. I want to be able to write anything I want. Maybe excluding porn. Who knew forty years ago that I could write graphic novels – which I have. Who knew fifty years ago that I could write fiction? I thought I was a nonfiction writer and a picture book writer and suddenly I became a fiction writer as well. Who knew I could write musicals? Who knew I could write movie scripts? All of those things I did because I didn’t tell myself I couldn’t. If somebody says, “Can you do this?” my answer is always, “Yes, I can.” Maybe I can’t, but I have to find that out for myself. Don’t narrow yourself before you know what you can’t do. Let every moment be a can-do instead of a can’t-do.
About the Author:
Jane Yolen is an author of children’s books, fantasy, and science fiction, including Owl Moon, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? She is also a poet, a teacher of writing and literature, and a reviewer of children’s literature.
About the Interviewer:
Sydney Nichole was born in Columbus, Ohio where she originally went to school for engineering. Instead of doing her engineering homework she found herself writing stories. Switching paths, she found herself at Ringling College of Art + Design for Creative Writing focusing on screenwriting. In her free time, she likes to do puzzles and pretend that she’s a late-night TV Show host.
At the Molotov Cocktail, we serve Irish Car Bombs all day, and our napkins are rags soaked in kerosene. Disasters unspool on our high-definition televisions in surround sound – floods, riots, mass shootings. Take your pick. This Throwback Thursday, watch Watts explode into flames at the bar. Follow us on Facebook to discover more vintage disasters and other special offers. Leave a comment on our Instagram if you have a suggestion for a disaster you’d like to see. You can be anyone here- lady killer, femme fatale, innocent bystander. No one is a victim here. This place only has so much room, and we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.
About the Author:
Michelle Brooks has published a collection of poetry, Make Yourself Small, (Backwater Press), and a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, (Storylandia Press). Her poetry collection, Flamethrower, will be published by Latte Press in 2019. A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit.
Megan Cooke: Do you have any influences in your life that have really helped with your poetry? Teachers, friends, or family?
Avanti Tulpule: I am unbelievably grateful for the support that my family has shown for my poetry. In a time when more technical fields are prioritized, it is rare to see parents who are genuinely happy that their child is pursuing a less predictable future.
My teachers, especially my English teacher last year and my current English teacher (who is also the supervisor for the literary magazine I contribute to), both exposed me to writing that influenced my own. They taught me how to read to see the soul.
Additionally, my friends are limitless sources of inspiration and encouragement. I believe that poetry is communal. One cannot write poetry in isolation. I would not be the writer that I am today without their presence in my life.
I love my family, friends, and teachers wholeheartedly. I cannot thank them enough.
MC: In your bio, you mentioned that you’re a child of immigrants. Do you think poetry has been a vital method for helping people to understand your experiences? Do you turn to poetry as a way to communicate complex topics?
AT: Poetry has been key to helping myself understand my own experiences. My writing asks questions that I would not dare to speak aloud. Reality is complex and subjective. I am afraid I rewrite my history to contextualize my present existence. I turn to poetry in order to isolate these experiences and make sense of them individually, before examining them as a whole. I want to give my past self the breathing room she deserves, so that she is not defined by who I am today.
I would hope that my writing helps other people understand my story, but that it also helps them understand their own. Although everybody has their own unique life story, the underlying emotions we feel are universal. I hope that my poetry can help others identify similar emotions they have felt, and subsequently identify themselves within me, so that we can both see each other as fully-formed people.
Poetry is able to break through our self-imposed isolation.
MC: How has your poetry evolved from your childhood to today? Have your topical choices or your style changed over time?
AT: In seventh grade, my English teacher taught that rain always symbolized grief. I had written a poem about the world on the brink of monsoon season, when the sky trembled with breathless anticipation. She told me to rewrite it so that it would be more symbolically accurate. For a long time afterwards, I internalized the lesson that poetry was meant to convey a palatable, predetermined message.
Until recently, my poetry was not dishonest, but not true to myself, either. I hid the complicated emotions surrounding my experiences in favor of easily digestible generalizations. I hid my sexual orientation and my race for fear of being “too political.” Although my writing might have been “good,” it was apparent that I was absent from my work.
Once I began unlearning this self-inflicted invisibility, I truly began writing. I started writing about my own experiences and ideas instead of writing what I thought the audience wanted to read. I started playing with structure and syntax, so as to emphasize ideas based on a line break or rhyme scheme, or the shape of the stanzas.
Over time, my poetry has become more truthful. I believe that this has greatly improved both its quality and my self-esteem.
MC: Your poem “Seabird” has some very evocative lines about the desire to move from place to place, and the desire to return (or not return) to where you’re from. Do you think of yourself as somebody who isn’t tied down to any one place? Are you more grounded instead?
AT: Like my parents, I am grounded in my values. Above all, I center my life around compassion towards myself and others. I assume that a majority of immigrants view “home” as a physical place; I believe that my home lies within me. I am grounded within myself.
I think that one’s physical location matters very much. I am trying to find where I will fit in the grand scheme of things. Once I find out where I am most free, I believe I will be tied down to that place.
MC: Is there anything else you want to say about your poetry now, or how you want to grow as a writer in the future?
AT: I would like to make one point clear: the modern narrative of immigrants with rags-to-riches backstories, who are cruel, or at the very least emotionally standoffish, parents is untrue and harmful. First, this narrative normalizes the trauma that these parents and their children endure. Secondly, it erases the humanity from the story.
I fear that those who might read my poetry will not see my parents as people but rather as faceless, generic immigrants. “Immigrant” is not a dirty word. My parents do not represent every immigrant – they are amazing individuals with their own rich stories. I do not represent every brown lesbian – I am my own person, and I speak for myself.
Avanti Tulpule is a high school senior. She would like to thank her family and friends for their support.
About the Interviewer:
Megan Cooke is a senior at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota. She’s majoring in Computer Animation and minoring in Creative Writing. She was born and raised in Minnesota for twelve years until she moved to Los Angeles, where she lived before moving to Saint Louis after graduation. Her hobbies are playing violin, reading, and having existential crises. She enjoys getting caught in hurricanes and feeding her pet shrimp named Salmon. You can get in contact with Megan by writing your message backwards on a piece of paper and feeding it to the nearest pigeon.
& like windswept seagulls, swelling / into a white sky, until it heaved / low-bellied & congested / fell to its knees / & held up by the raucous clutter of wings,
our mothers gathered at the edges of the sea / until the oceans were littered with their bodies / push-pulled & thrust back to shore / holding one mouthful of static.
this is how i imagine i am born; frothing lavender & milky mucus; white wiped away to blood- browned life. under the sterile moon / my mother: wet wings, fluorescent halo.
hunger chokes out my childhood; i call the emptiness girl. so my mother cups me in her palms / calls me blessing. so my mother crushes her blue teeth / into powdered grievings / & i swallow. / & i swallow until my belly is water-logged and bursting / until water seeps out of my ears & floods the house with the stench of desire.
so my mother flees from water-body to water-body. so i call this lingering home.
i drown my mother; i haul her to the frayed horizon and cast her to shore. earth does not accept her / i try to bury her, & she rises from its depths / a mouthful of sea-salt. & the ocean push-pulls her / to shore, murmurs she has spent too long forgetting how to drown / to surrender.
this is how i imagine a future; in which i emerge, whole / overflowing. sea-salt lingers on my lips & crusts over my fingernails; i choke on static / call her daughter. the moon, somber, a baleful eye.
i kiss women who fill me with their want / who fill my mouth with wildflower promises / until i know why my mother could never go back to the sea. / water gnaws my body until i am stripped to my girlhood / night holds me in jagged silence / streetlights carve my body into flame.
