12/30, Write Beside

Note: You need not to have participated in the Zoom session earlier today to write. Please, write whatever is in your heart or on your mind.

Our Host

Penny Kittle teaches freshman writers at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire.  She was a writing teacher in schools for 34 years. One year she met Ellen Stackable, and they started having their high school students exchange writing notebooks–from  Oklahoma to the mountains of New Hampshire. When Ellen founded Poetic Justice,  Penny was honored to attend poetry groups at Mabel Bassett. She loves to hear the  voices of so many brave women.  

Penny will lead an express poetry workshop with Ellen today at 10:30am (CST)/11:30 (EST) where she will take us through the prompt below. Register here to write with Penny, Ellen, and your #VerseLove friends. We realize this timeslot is not accessible to all, so we will organize an evening event for #Verselove later in the month. Write-on, friends. Disclosure: Sarah J. Donovan, founder of Ethical ELA, is a Poetic Justice Board Member.

Inspiration

I am inspired by collections of poetry from around the world; writers who tell their  stories in so many different ways. I watch spoken word poetry often as well. Most  mornings I begin by reading poetry and listening–for lines and ideas–that lead me to my  own stories and poems. I grab a simple phrase from a poem like, “I remember” and  write. The poet’s voice stays with me as I craft my experiences into language. In my  notebook I am always allowed to write poorly or not at all. I just show up and wait for  words. Sometimes magic happens.  

Process

We’re going to write next to “Elementary” by G. Yamazawa.  

After watching the spoken word  performance, list memories, using an exercise I learned from  spoken word poet Phil Kaye. It is a way to access memories and trust yourself to find the  details to show that moment to others.  

G. Yamazawa is an Asian American poet who speaks about his family, assimilating into  the culture of his peers in school, being multilingual, the use of the slur “gay” when he  doesn’t understand it, and the powerful impact of his father. Many powerful  intersections here. 

Penny’s Poem

My poem…”Stained” which I wrote using this exercise is pasted in below. In our Zoom session, I will share my  drafting process from my notebook to this draft.  

Stained  by Penny Kittle

It begins on Belmont Street, wide and silent before dawn. We race down double yellow lines breathless
with night and the shock of being here without parents. We can’t miss the bus!
We don’t.
We pull stuffing from split seats
and draw hearts and snakes on windows
singing, “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”
all the way to the fields far from home.
With a 5-gallon bucket in one hand
we walk among strawberries, strawberries
and inhale their sweetness in the damp clinging to prickly leaves our hands soon wrapped in stinging scratches.
Ribbons of fog pass into the heat of midday
sweat clinging to our shirts.
Isn’t it time yet for lunch?
I glance at the bus—
imagine my foil-wrapped, frozen soda thawing
beside a peanut-butter sandwich and I can almost feel the relief of straightening up again.
We leave berries unpicked and run for the bus
but not John—my friend’s older brother.
He’s muscled and tall. He might be 14 or even 15 and we watch him comb the rows while we eat silently. He’s stronger than us, and works harder, his dark hair slapping his forehead as he picks berry berry berry
and I suddenly know that I love him.
How terrifying.
We awake as the bus lurches our return to the bus stop now busy with the ordinariness of afternoon traffic. We leap from the step and race to seats at the counter inside. Energy shifts when John slides in beside me
holding a glass of orange soda in red-stained hands
that I want holding my narrow, 10-year-old frame.
Our eyes meet across the top of the glass stuck with two straws. We giggle and orange soda sprays out his nose.
John, my older crush for that moment, is soon replaced when Russell invites me to play floor hockey in his basement. Is that why weeks later John overpowers me behind the backstop during a neighborhood softball game? He whispers, “I’m gonna pinch your titties,” and then forces his hands up my shirt
onto my almost-breasts, fingers twisting my nipples.
I hate him then more than I ever loved him, and I don’t even feel sorry decades later when he is accused by of sexual assault and stripped of the license to practice what he loves. John, who lived in a house of marble, glass, and power chose me—stained me —because he knew he could.
There was a cookie always in my hand
that I finally split open. My fortune:
You, little one, you will find your power.