Poem: She tells me she is glad

She tells me she is glad

I understand it.  It is good
to want them home,

to want them returned.

I understand that.
But I think of other things,

of all that was done.

I want to ask her
what will be done

for those killed

in pursuit 
of that release?

Consider them,

consider, even,
just the children.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Writer's Notebook, Day Seventy-One

Today was an extremely productive day: I broke 65,000 words tonight, and am at the cusp of the real action of the climax.  I feel far more assured about the ending than I had even a few hours ago, when I gave my last update, though I still need to ascertain some of it.  There has been a bit of clarification on certain points, which makes it easier for me to begin imagining how it will work out. As mentioned, I need to balance two concepts with each other, and each one needs to fit with certain parameters.  The overall ending will be unresolved, in some ways, and is going to need to be bittersweet as well.  That has to develop out of these separate elements, and the individual pieces need to also be able to fit together in the right way. This, in part, has to do with fracturing the narrative, in a way that will create two distinct views on events that then have to come back together into a single narrative again at the end, without resolving the fracture.  It...
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, Two-Thousand-Four-Hundred-And-Sixty-Eight

I've been thinking a lot about the exercises I want to present in my workshop and I have a pretty good idea for most of what I am planning to do, but I would like to add one more example to the syllabus.  The general concept is to share different approaches, with focus on different aspects of poetry, and in order to do a more complete job of that, I feel like it would be important to add something that is more about the musicality of poetry.  The issue is that I want it to be something that is approachable and not overly technical, but still more than just rhyming or consonance.  As well, I am aware that I want to make this reasonable as a group exercise.  I trust myself that I will come up with something, as I do often play in that space when I am writing, and I have some techniques and exercises in that direction, it is just figuring out the way to shape it into something with more concrete instructions.
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, Two-Thousand-And-Fourteen

 I am still playing around with ideas for a new novel.  There are a number of subplots that are floating around in my head, a few of which are rather well-developed, along with other ideas that feel less fully formed at this point.  I'm also starting to get a stronger sense of the overall structure.  I'm still not entirely certain about the primary plot, although I have a strong premise for it and some sense of the general shape it will have to take.  I'm trying to discuss it without getting into the details because one of my big fears is that telling the story and its details before I start writing will relieve the tension I am feeling around it.  I have a strong desire to share this, and if the outlet I will allow myself for that is the actual act writing of it into a novel, that serves me, but I know that can be derailed if I talk too much about just what is in the story.  However, talking around it without including those specifics, that can help t...
Read more