Young Writers Society

lessons to my children; from my mother; or my past; or my future; and to you again.

i've reached this strange age where
sometimes instead of having imagined conversations
with myself, instead i am sharing some hopeful-wisdom
to my own unborn imagined children; i sit them on my knee,
and sing to them about these little lessons earned from another
scraped knee, and bruised heart, i try to gently teach them to be careful
in this rough-edged world, without making them afraid;
i don't know when i gave up telling myself these things
and decided the next generation of my imagination was
better suited to my advice; i hope it isn't because i gave up on her;
the self that knows too well that knees will be scraped, and hearts bruised,
who has learned from repetition the lessons i scratch across my journals
again; again; and again. i hope it isn't because i think i already know
all i have to learn. and i hope in some alternate imagination-realm
that my mother, or my past-self, or my future-self, sits me on her knee
and tells me once more the world is not something to be afraid of.

In the middle of the Covid Pandemic; after not seeing anyone in my family for several months, I first got really into ancestry research. Finding each name previously unknown on our family tree was like unveiling a little corner of our story, of my own story, a little treasure preserved in time. When I moved that year, I drove a few hours out of my way to visit the graves of my great-grandfather and great-great grandparents for the first time in my life, I drove past the land where my great-great grandparents would have lived, I drove by a creek that I thought may have been the one I had heard my dad talk about, I drove through the streets of their little town and everything seemed to settle together. Though I hadn't seen my family in months, or been home for half a year, here I was hundreds of miles away in another home. Seeing their graves and town was a very circular, pilgrimage-type moment for me, I'll never forget it.

I also attempted to go to the graves of my other set of great grandparents in the same region - I spent hours walking back and forth the rows of graves in the rain searching for my last name, and never was able to find them. That was very unsatisfying and frustrating, and is where the searching in this poem is inspired by. One day I'd love to find my way back, and find them, I'd love to stand in the creek by their home, and attempt to find my way to the coal mine they worked at, I'd like to see where they were baptized, and listen to how people speak, and how the birds sing. Another day, another homecoming, if not in this lifetime, the next.

Note: I've used the first two lines in a few different poems before, but the rest is new.



gravedigging & homecoming

skimming gravestones in appalachian country
i'm looking for names that sound like mine

i’ve been told they don't give maps here
to people passing through from out of town,
i suppose land, like our family tree, is far too intimate
to print out on scratch paper, so we keep some knowledge quiet,
and i rely on the map drawn in the creases of my hand
the after-image lingering when i close my eyes,
like tree roots; stretching in every direction - infinitely far;
and yet infinitely close. no matter how far we grow,
we are always attached to an origin,
to an inherent longing, when the stars chart their course,
and the water returns to shore, and the sun rises again,
and the whole earth exhales at once, and repeats.
i've always known the way to the river no matter where i am
like my heart was left at the bottom of the sea and i can
still feel the water rippling as i breathe, and sometimes
i don't know who i'm searching for; myself, or my ghosts, or
just trying to trace my way back home again
and i've been searching too long for the names of all my ghosts
like if they had a name, i would know them again,
maybe we could just say hello and pass on our way,
maybe we could follow the river to its end -
maybe you could tell me what i'm looking for,
but until then, i search for you;
hoping i can follow this winding gravel road to my homestead
hoping my inheritance isn’t all hollow memories,
hoping someone tells me the name of the place
i return to every dream, it seems to be
where the frayed ends of my veins must have been tied
together at one time before i was born,
back when we knew where we were from.

I have a beautifully scrawling family will from 1851 that records the different items that were notable for appraisal to an ancestor - 2 Bibles, several bushels of corn, a thick pair of pants, 3 regular pants, wool stockings, a number of sheep, a horse, a yoke, a bureau, a tub of lard, etc. among these small items some of which I can't really fathom writing in a will as they have no bearing in my present living there's a listing for 12 Tablespoons, 12 Forks and Knives, and 11 Teaspoons. The 11 always gets me. One short of a dozen. One teaspoon is missing.

This I can relate to.

When I moved to college I took (borrowed) from my mother's silverware drawer a single teaspoon and a single fork, so that I would have spare utensils to eat if I should need them. I have since bought my own silverware, but keep the stolen spoon tucked unmatching in my drawer as a nostalgic keepsake from home. My mother's house is always one teaspoon short, just as her great-great-great grandfather's was. No matter how complete our drawers may be, we always keep some absence. Among our inheritances there's always these missing pieces, and perhaps their stories carry just as much value.



a missing teaspoon | part one

in reading family wills,
170 years unread -
I find my great-great-great-
grandfather was short a teaspoon in his household set,
too few for an error of arithmetic
his meager possessions were appraised with
* a dozen tablespoons
* a dozen knives
* a dozen forks
* & eleven teaspoons

I wonder about our final spoon;
the missing inheritance -
where did it go, and who
had carried such a valuable silver-piece
away from its home

I sometimes imagine our spoon
tucked into a shirt pocket, after visiting neighbors
for a cup of still-brewing tea, or our spoon
lent to a passerby with a loaf of bread
and mother's soup for the road, or maybe it was
made an heirloom years before the will was writ,
patted into the thin luggage case of a son
setting out into the world on his own, only
not entirely alone, because he is carrying our spoon

and our spoon is carrying the warm conversation on a fall day
between a cup of tea and a neighbor, and the last whisps of steam
from a family recipe, and a mother's well wishes, and a father's hopes,
and his father says, "don't worry about taking our spoon,
because then I'll know you'll be coming home."

Perhaps I will continue to write -



recipe cards and restaurant reviews

my uncle is a truck-driver,
and he drives in the same way some people are religious,
a monastic life he has cultivated for his own searching;
in these daily pilgrimages to pit-stops and cramped sleeping quarters,
miles and miles on maps, and the garish liturgy the radio offers,
his main source of food comes from the roadside delicacies
of convenient stores and fast-food joints,
he has taken to reviewing some of the "finer" establishments online
in a crude language that seems to be exchanged
only by certain types of men, in obscene offensive-flourish.

my uncle is a youngest son,
to my grandmother, and you wouldn't know it from his Facebook page,
but he is gentle. he once threatened to kill a man,
because the man had threatened a litter of puppies. he once,
canceled a week of work, to travel 3,000 miles because his brother needed him.
and if you ask him, he is the only one left who knows
the recipe for my grandmother's upside-down pineapple cake
by heart. and he will not hesitate to make it if you're in town.

in the end i don't know which words become our memoirs,
or which stories worthy of eulogy, i only know
that humans are infinitely layered,
and in beautiful contradiction,
every rough edge seems to meet a softer one,
if we only care to know.

dust to dust to dust
dustsceawung: a definition-poem pertaining to absence &/or presence

dustsceawung - (n.) "contemplations on dust;"

what was dust before it was dust;

where all things will return.



1. surely no one sets out to leave a partner or their child, but there is no secret to the tide, it is either coming or going, and he can not be stopped, not by the sun, not by the moon, not by a thousand stars that he is still keeping in his shirt-pocket that seem to be latched to veins, and those veins to his heart, and his heart to mine. and he is gone.

and what is all this pocket lint doing clogging my lungs until i can't breathe?

and i wish my love was strong enough to be an anchor. just strong enough to keep you here.

but there is not much weight to dust. and you are already gone.

2. wouldn't it be interesting if a father, could teach his son to grow taller than he, or to run further, or to settle his debts before his own son inherits them, but we humans aren't very good at evolution if you believe in that sort of thing, we are good at collecting, and borrowing, good at stealing breaths before lungs are born, and starting fires while we refuse to stay to see how the ashes fall. we are good at reincarnation, good at being infinite, but not very good at changing who we are.

and the dust piles always grow,
no matter how many times you tell him to sweep up the kitchen floor.

he will leave so many ashen foot prints here. and he will not care.

even after the tide has swept us all away. and he will not look back.

3. i am not bitter. i am not still chewing this burning match in my mouth. i am not still asking why. but sometimes i do wonder what to do with all these artifacts left in every edge of my mind. did you intend these broken memory jars to be my inheritance, did you leave them here or did i make them and forget, will you one day take them too, or am i supposed to give them to my own kin and let them store them for a thousand generations. did you break these things or is this how we've always been.

i could spend my whole life trying to dust out these hollow places, and fire-places, and severe all these strings and chains and winding things,

but i'm afraid i would forget how to breathe with the air so clean, because you're always here.

and i guess i don't want to forget you. because you always come back.

Filling out the rest of the poems that belong in this collection from recent writings / napo / etc may add more commentary later.

@Euphory I love your comment - and you are very right to connect poem 14 with the serotinous trees poem! I would love to know more about how the Quran treats humanity's connection to dirt / ash since I find that super fascinating in Christianity - which connects dust to creation, sin, mortality, grieving, and redemption. Thanks so much for all the kind words - every one of these poems is very close to my heart!

~~





you & i

we have this way of orbiting; you & i
as if we are held a universe-away,
latched by an invisible string - you
tell me one hundred years after you're gone
what it's like to see the sun rising over the harvest prairie
(quiet & steady like the way your father used to sing;
& the same color as autumn-grain; light reincarnated
from the edge of yesterday born into tomorrow)
& i see your poetry written through the stars -
light reincarnated; & i tell you
that i am your daughter, or maybe in the same strange way
that time keeps hold of its strings, & roots, & reflections - i am you -
or maybe we are watching the same sunrise, or maybe
you have already heard me tell you all this before.
we have this way of orbiting; you & i.

We are all carved from this same plot of land & wedge of sky, this is our inheritance, this is who we are

We came here from coal mines, & railroad tracks. We survived house fires, and war-ripped brothers, and locust-years, & fathers leaving before their sons are grown. Maybe because we believed we would be different. But I am from where my father is from & where my mother is from, this land is written on the grooves of my bones, & I've already taught my children every verse of our family song before they know our name. I've been whispering map-keys into their ears before they've even been born. We're all the same here. We're all carrying field-rocks in our pockets, coal-dust in our shoe-treads, with centuries-worn hymns-humming at our lips. We're all telling each other Summer's around the next corner. We're all trying to leave, just as desperately as we're tracing the lines in our palms to remember our way back. We're all gritting river sand between our teeth & over-promising our see you soons. We're all carrying this same overgrown tree of expectations on our shoulders, roots wrapping tight around hearts, & veins, & hopes, & dreams & know these promises stretching miles & miles under river-plains & mountain-valleys are the only thing keeping this land from receding into the sky; the only thing steady enough to make us stand. We are all the same, every one. & it shows in how we're always trying to come back home.


(original photo)

this poem is inspired by my ancestry research, & is supposed to help the reader experience the feeling of not being able to read everything completely that comes with with reading old documents - sometimes I will have a letter or a census document that can not be read completely because the handwriting, or missing information, & it feels like you have to fill in the rest of what's happening in the gaps. it's also inspired by my great-grand-uncle Leslie, who I've written about in several poems and especially here: woven basket which I think is probably the most personally-meaningful poem I've written which in-part is about how the loose-ends people leave when they die, or in life, are a precious part of who we are.

In this poem too, I am aware you won't be able to read all the words. As said above, that's part of the point. But I will also place a plain text version below to read afterwards.



& all these loose-ends will bind into a net.

my great-grandmother's table | a seat at eternity

Worn with more memories than my grandfather's Bible, his mother-in-law's table now sits in our dining room. It is all at once an imposing altar, a holiday buffet, a pillow for a child's head to rest, a work desk, a crafting counter, a filled slate for signatures over a century old and tally marks for quarantined days and initials of secret-loves carved quickly when parents aren't looking. Perfectly round, except the scuffed side by the window, that my mother will sit at in an attempt to save our guests from the uneven edge. I sometimes wonder if my great-grandmother ever imagined her sturdy kitchen table, the heart of her home, would be passed like a treasure to three homes after she was gone. Did she imagine what generations would chatter, and bicker, and laugh reminiscing? Are her dreams carved among my own somewhere in the woodgrain? One day will my own grandchildren eat strawberry pie here from an ancient recipe, and make up stories for all the people who have gathered here? One day will the worn edge be smoothed out? In some way even now, do we share a meal together, past and present and future all at one table, even in our unknowing, because somehow this humble heirloom seems to hold memory? Is this table, this passed down living tree, another thread of Eternity sewn through finite lives to remind us time never ends.

I think I will revise this poem later, but I like the start / thought. I always like to say that "I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe in ancestral echoes, and divine symmetry, the communion of the saints, and the resurrection of the body" so in other words, I may have a more concrete belief in the living-dead, than many people who would say they do believe in ghosts. What I mean by all that - is I do not think that deceased souls float around in this earth causing mischief and such, but sometimes I think God allows redemption arcs that span generations and that those saints who have lived before me are very much alive in Christ and will be again. Any who! Here is a poem about "ghost" ~

ghosts - definition

ghosts (n.) - the unfinished hem of life, where the stitches appear to begin a new garment.

a. half fear, half hope
b. found congregating in your lost-places, and second-thoughts, and regrets, and where did you say you were going again...?
c. although they seem to thrive on memory, they are not to be confused with yesterday or tomorrow, because a ghost is only here for today

ex. These ghosts seem to occupy these empty grounds with peculiar eagerness in Autumn, perhaps it is the leaves, perhaps it is the threat of Winter.