WEEKLY WRITING ROUND-UP: NOVEMBER 16, 2017

Last month when I mentioned the #MeToo movement, it was with some ambivalence. While it was inspiring, albeit triggering, to see women and non-binary folks come forward, I couldn’t help but wonder how quickly it would all fizzle out. I wouldn’t have thought that a month later it would be gaining momentum– even as there remains work to be done in the representation of which abusers and victims or survivors matter (spoiler alert: they all do)– and I wouldn’t have thought that poets’ resistance would be receiving extensive media coverage and support. If you haven’t already checked them out, make sure to take a look at Isobel O’Hare’s erasures poems made from the accused’s statements regarding allegations of sexual assaults and this article and interview by Anthony Ramirez. This week I’ve also been sitting with the following:

Poetry

Poetry by Octavio Quintanilla on Connotation Press: “When I try to return to my boyhood, // sometimes I end / with my head // on my mother’s lap.”

Self-Portrait As God With A Still-Born Inside by Chelsea Dingman: “I want / to keep you longer. Let there be light. There is no bucket, // no rope. This isn’t a nursery rhyme.”

a prose poem by Nicole McCarthy: “I built a fortress in my body out of / words and cement. Incantations / reinforce walls composed of / affirmations.”

Prose

Vete a la Chingada Party by Vickie Vértiz: “And this is what I wanted last year when I was a senior at Williams: that my friends should pick me over Beto, Beto and his new bitch, some whitewashed chick from Calabasas. My friends don’t want that vieja, they want me of course, the hometown girl who did good and now she’s back home.”

Essays

Myth of Motherhood Poetics by Jennifer Givhan: “When I couldn’t have children, when my body wouldn’t cooperate, when the lines wouldn’t transform into a pink cross, or when the pink cross did appear but then the bright red poppies began their painful stain, I made myth.”

Border Theories by Marcos Santiago Gonsalez: “The border is a trauma, living in the body, triggering and affecting, passed on to other bodies. The border, as E— seems to be suggesting, can manifest even here downtown in New York City, so far from the United States–Mexico border, so far from my undocumented father who now lives in rural New Jersey.”

Stephanie Kaylor in based in upstate New York and is currently a MA student in Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought at European Graduate School. She holds a MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University at Albany and is Managing Editor for Five:2:One Magazine and Reviews Editor for Glass: A Journal of Poetry. You can follow her on twitter @sm_kaylor