December 2021 prompt NOTE: No Session December 26. We meet December 12 and 17 only.

 Until I was ten, Christmas was celebrated with a tree and gifts.  I recall driving into Princeton to see the Christmas lights on all the houses.  Those were magical times.  I found a photo of what must have been the last Christmas we celebrated before my mother converted.  I’m sure she was exhausted, trying to keep three children happy in an unhappy house.  I wrote a pantoum about what I imagined her feeling:

The End of Santa

My mother looks disconsolate, 

like crumpled wrapping paper.

Not what she got, not what she wanted,

not what she was hoping for.

Like crumpled wrapping paper,

as if she knew what was coming,

not what she was hoping for.

Next year, she’d no longer celebrate.

As if she knew what was coming--

her final Christmas Day. No Santa

Next year, she’d no longer celebrate

with cookies, gifts, good cheer.

Her final Christmas Day. No Santa.

Converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses.

No cookies, gifts, good cheer--

she’d exchange them for The Truth.

Converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The coming war of Armageddon.

She’d exchange them for The Truth.

Convert her hapless children too.

The coming war of Armageddon.

Plaid-skirted on her chenille bedspread.

Convert her hapless children too,

looking woebegone and lost.

Plaid skirted on her chenille bedspread,

oblivious to the coming loss of hearth.

Looking woebegone and lost, the cookies

left for Santa on a small white plate

                                            

Connection to Recovery:

Today, I can feel compassion for my mother and understand her sadness of being married to an alcoholic and doubtless engineering Christmas all by herself (as I did when my children were young.)     I can also be gentle with myself when I find my expectations of trying to create a good time for others results in my abandoning myself and my needs.                                       

PROMPT:

1.Find a family photo from your childhood that stirs a memory of conflicted feelings.  Write down one of those feelings and circle around it in the form of a pantoum.

2.Write about any holiday you can recall.  See if you can capture the fun of a special day. Write about your parents or other caregivers and how hard they worked for you to have a nice holiday. 

3. Write about what you expected from any particular Christmas or other important holiday and what actually happened.  Find an image, like the cookies left for Santa, that fits the feeling of your piece.

note:  A pantoum is a repeating form in poetry in which the second and fourth lines of a 4-line stanza are repeated as the 1st and 3rd stanzas of the next stanza, continuing through the poem. The final stanza often repeats lines from the first stanza, although I did not do that here. If it’s fun, try it.  

Prompt for November 2021 The Manicure

 

A family with a secret often has more than one.  My grandfather had a girlfriend named Frances later in his life that I believed was a secret from my grandmother. I met Frances in his hospital room after he had a tragic car accident in which he struck and killed a child.  That brought on an attack of emphysema.

 I was summoned home from college because the doctors thought he was dying.  When I got to his room with my mother, there was Frances (my mother’s age) sitting on the side of his bed.  When he died a few years later, my mother gave me the job of calling Frances. 

The Manicure

A young Korean man bends over me.

A shock of black hair hides his face.

He takes my hand in his.

I am embarrassed by the age 

spots sprouting on my skin.

He clips my nails, oblivious. 

To him, I’m just a client.

Then I recall my grandfather, 

a lean, laconic farmer, gasping

through ravaged lungs in the hospital,

attended by the woman he had decided,

fearing death, he wanted me to meet.

Her name was Frances.

Frances from the feed mill.

She was my mother’s age.

Here, seemingly in secret 

from my grandmother,

Francis held his hands in hers

and gently clipped his nails 

as if seated at the feet of Christ.

This gesture, more shocking

than a kiss or exposed flesh,

silenced small talk.

The silence grew, divisive,

deadly, deft.

Connection to Recovery:

Alcoholics Anonymous has a saying: “You are as sick as your secrets.” Keeping secrets was part of the “don’t tell” rule of an ACA childhood.  We didn’t tell what life was like in our homes. I wasn’t the only one to keep my grandfather’s girlfriend a secret.  My mother was complicit too.  It was she who handed me Frances’ phone number when my grandfather died. Keeping secrets was generational in my family.

The cost of keeping the secret was shame—shame on behalf of my grandmother and shame that I was not being honest. I allowed myself to be overpowered by an authority figure—my grandfather. I participated in a family drama.  Today, I recognize the signs of drama and learn to step away.

                                

                                          PROMPT:

 1.Write about any secret that you have kept for someone else,

particularly if you were conflicted and wanted to tell the truth.

 2.Write about any situation in which you learned a secret that changed the way you felt about someone you looked up to.

3.  If you have kept a secret, write a letter to the person you want to tell the truth to, even if that person is no longer living.

October prompt

 Recovery Writers Prompt October 2021

from: Beneath the Steps: a Writing Guide for 12-step Recovery by Christine Beck

Break-up of the Family of Origin

My mother didn’t leave my alcoholic father until I was fourteen.  By then, her job could support us.   By that time, we had nothing to mourn about leaving the farm.  But it had been home for fourteen years and was imbued with a strong sense of history. As we painted furniture in our old house to take to our new one, I knew we were moving.  

But, like many Adult Children I have big gaps in my memory.  How did we move our furniture?  Where was my father when we left?  What did he say about our moving out?  Logic tells me it was a huge melodramatic scene, but in my memory, one day we lived on the farm and the next day we lived in town. I don’t recall approaching the move with hope or even relief, although I imagine those feelings must have been there.  

But it was change, big change, and I’m sure the dread of change inspired feelings like the dead moth that appears at the end of this poem (an example of the surprise that can happen). 

Starting Over

When my mother kicked my father out,

silence tumbled in.

Our farmhouse had been furnished

in old wood, mahogany and oak--

the dining table, desk, and bookshelves,

even bedsteads, all evoked the color

of brown dirt, dark and dank, as when

the plow clears last year’s stalks away.

We painted it all white. For weeks,

we made each piece as pure as baby’s breath.

With each stroke, I covered fourteen years.

They lay stuck in drying paint, like a moth,

when it surrenders to the trap, its wings

turned hard and gray.

Connection to Recovery:

Like the moth, I was trapped in an alcoholic home. The feeling of being trapped can be triggered in adulthood.  Today, I can recognize the feeling and remind my inner child she is not trapped today.  I can help metaphorically to build her a new home. 

  

                                       

                                           PROMPT:

1. Think about a piece of furniture, flooring or wallpaper from your childhood home.  Let it speak for you about the loss of your home, even if you didn’t think it was a loss. 

2. Write about any move you made in childhood, trying to capture the mixed emotions any move entails.

3. Write about any breakup in your family when you were young.

September post

 

                                            photo: Artur Aldyrkhanov on unsplash.com

September 2021 Prompt, from Beneath the Steps: A Writing Guide for 12-Step Recovery, by Christine Beck,p 125

The Bible is a treasure trove of stories that bubble up when I explore emotions of longing or disconnection.  The following poem speaks to the fear of abandonment. It also involves issues of class, which tormented me as a child.   It’s the story of Ruth and Naomi. Naomi is Ruth’s mother-in-law. Ruth, a foreigner, is married to the Jewish Naomi’s son, Boaz.  When Boaz dies, Naomi plans to send Ruth back to her homeland, which was the custom.  Ruth pleads to stay with Naomi. I’m exploring contemporary notions of meddling mothers-in-law before turning the poem in a loving direction.

Mother-in-law

Just when you think you’ve heard enough,

her suggested hostess gifts, secret signals

of how her people learned to recognize each other, 

the initialed cocktail napkins, pressed lightly to lips, 

never mauled into a ball, a wrinkled mess. 

Just when she starts in on the nursery

school, the kind where our kind

goes to get ahead, 

Your head goes to Naomi, the Israelite, 

mother-in-law to a heathen girl named Ruth.

Boaz, Naomi’s son, stone dead, and Ruth, his widow,

lonely as the wind on Mount Moriah, 

clings to Naomi’s skirts, begs not be repatriated.

Ruth wants any task, just to hold the hand

of someone who once held him.

Wherever you go, let me go there too.

Connection to Recovery:

We all have stories or myths that take root in our subconscious. This story of possible abandonment had a happy ending. Naomi let Ruth stay. This one reminds me of the power of women in recovery. I need to keep them close and ask for help, just as Ruth asked Naomi.

                                          PROMPT:

1.Think of any story from the Bible, Shakespeare or any well-known piece of literature in which the characters display your longings or fear of abandonment.  Transport those characters

 to a scene from your life and see what happens.

2.Write about any current conflict in your life and then “flashback” to a conflict in some myth or fairytale that relates.

Response to July Prompt by Anna

 

If I go away.........

Snap snap goes the belt

daddy can't see me under the bed

I'm invisible.

light streaming from the hallway

i look around my room

there's my record player on a small table

will daddy break that?

He knows how much love my records

45s smashing across my bedroom wall

there are my worn out, stained dolls in the corner

i continue to look around my little room

a room that was once cozy and safe

i see the pink and white striped wall paper i love so

under a tear in the wallpaper is a message I wrote with a crayon

if I go away will mommy stop drinking?

if I go away will daddy stop scaring me?

if i go away will daddy stop touching me?

I float up to the sky

snap snap goes the belt

daddy can't see me under the bed

I'm invisible.

July 2021 Prompt based on fear of violence

 Violence and Feeling Unsafe

                                            photo credit: Dan Blackburn on unsplash.com

We who grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family knew we were not safe. I wrote about walking home from school, fearing that I would find my father drunk and rageful.  He rarely hit us, but he swore, red-faced with anger and contempt.  His anger was inexplicable.  What had set him off? Would he be funny and want to play softball or would he be passed out on the living room rug? That uncertainty was worse than predictability. It created chaos, a roller coaster ride of emotions.

In this poem what is in a newspaper—words—can be more damaging to a child than being hit.  His words imprinted a belief that we were worthless and a problem.  We were shamed and felt abandoned emotionally.  This is true even if we witnessed these words being directed at others.  When I first came into recovery, I said my dad picked on everyone except me.  Today, I believe that was not true, but even if it were, I now know that if I was in the room, I didn’t need to be the one being derided and cursed at to register the blow.

Walking Home

It’s four o’clock. The school bus chugs off,

leaving me at the end of the lane to our farm. 

It’s called Princessville Road.

It’s lined with dirt, brambles, scent of wild things:

ink berries, bittersweet – their poison packed 

in blood-red berries bursting from their jackets,

cornflowers, huckleberries, honeysuckle,  

tiny drops of nectar shimmering on the stem.

Pull them through a slender shaft and suck it dry.

My mother isn’t home. 

She’s gone to work, and left me

to return to an empty house.

At least, I hope it’s empty. I hope my father

won’t be there, his rage rolled up like newspaper,

a weapon that’s supposed to leave no mark.                                           

                                                PROMPT:

1. Write about where you were when you realized you weren’t safe.

2.  Try to find an image, such as the newspaper in the poem above, to stand as a symbol for a weapon.

3. Try to put “contrary” impulses in your poem.  They create energy. Notice that the seemingly peaceful scene of walking down the lane with the berries and flowers becomes for the narrator a scene of danger when she imagines that the berries are “poison.” So the berries are simultaneously attractive and dangerous. This is one way to reveal what keeps us returning to dangerous or unsafe emotional or physical places.  We make choices that recreate our past, even if the past was painful.

Kevin's poem for the June 2021 prompt "In the Outside"

 In the ‘Outside’

by Kevin Cooper

 

 

Outside.

Outside was freedom

Opportunity waited outside

Adventure awaits

 

Almost always alone…

What games can I play

With no one else?

 

Climb a tree: it becomes 

a rocket to the stars,

a pirate ship…

Ride my bike, I’m flying

or in a road race

 

Outside, the wide world

is mine

No walls, no doors

no silence, no chores

 

Even when it rains:

outdoors is puddles

and drowning worms

My same world transformed

 

The street of our block

was a connection to another,

bigger world

It pulls me away with promise

of destination

But here I remain 

secure in the familiar;

the places to hide

right outside my front door 

Prompt for June 2021

 From Beneath the Steps: A Writing Guide for 12-Sstep Recovery

by Christine Beck

Prompt for June 2021

Hypervigilance

I learned to deal with the fear of violence by being hypervigilant to the moods in my house. I learned to hide.  I wrote about it, using the game “Huckle, Buckle Beanstalk,” a game of searching for an object in plain view. The name had that wonderful sound of repetition that I treasure in writing poetry.  I thought the game was harmless fun, but uncovered a deeper meaning.   See if you can keep writing about a topic until you surprise yourself with a kernel of a buried truth. 

In this poem,  I surprised myself by turning into a tree. This is called a “turn” in poetry, a shift in tone or topic. Growing up, I always felt safe outside sitting under a tree, so it isn’t surprising that I turned myself into a tree. I made the tree a home that has “sustenance,” plenty of what is needed to nurture birds and bugs—and maybe me. 

Objects

Huckle buckle beanstalk, a game of looking

for an object hidden in plain view, which

refuses to be found, camouflaged

in the shift and twist of the material. 

An ordinary object, a pencil, say, or glove, 

something useful, or something useless,

a ticket stub from a movie, a dried rose

from a man whose name has frittered off.

I loved that game, where luck was immaterial,

where skill or speed, or being chosen for the team,

was unimportant, a game for which you needn’t trust

another, no secret word, no acting out a movie title.

Just silent vigilance, looking for what isn’t there, or

isn’t where it’s supposed to be, knowing you are what

is missing, which is why you love to hide in open air,

stashed in plain view, looking ordinary. Slowing down

your breathing, until you sink into a nearby sapling, not worth

noticing. Until you are the tree, a home for birds and bugs,

a stationary object that sucks up sustenance

from deep inside the earth.

                                              PROMPT: 

1.Write about your backyard, park, or wherever you played outside as a child. Who was there? What games did you play?

 Did you feel safe? 

2.Write about your relationship with nature and the natural world today.  Is it a safe, inspiring place? Try to imagine a safe place and write about it.  Allow birds or animals to talk or help you if they want to.

Connection to Recovery:

The end of the poem reminds me to slow down and breathe when I feel agitated. It shows nature is my safe space. It reminds me that we are all connected in recovery. Being “ordinary” is actually a goal. Trying to be “special” got me in trouble. 

Recovery Writer Gretchen responds to May prompt

                                                        photo credit: Mathias p r Reding on unsplash.com

 No Award Will Make Me Proud

Carry those buckets of water to your 4-h sheep. 

I don’t care how heavy they are.

I also don’t care that you wanted to show pigs and not sheep.

Third place is not good enough.

Your best is not good enough. 

Try harder, practice more. 

All the awards you win and 

I’ll still never say I’m proud of you. 

Nor will I dare say I love you. 

I’ll teach you how to hang out with the guys,

Poach deer, drink like a fish and 

out work the best of men. 

But I’ll never allow you to be the 

Lady you were meant to be. 

Not as long as I’m in your life. 

After cutting me out of your life 

you’ll finally be able to learn all the ways

of a true lady with the help of

your wonderful, patient husband 

Whom I hate, because he was your 

ticket to a mentally healthy life style. 

Thru out your life you will have 

Ultimately abandoned and lost 

yourself with chronic people pleasing. 

You will lie about your likes, dislikes, 

wear makeup that you hate, buy the same 

clothes “your friends” wear and chronically 

beg for others opinions so you can please others. 

Always reading their behaviors and moods 

to see if you pleased them well. 

You will eventually get to the point where 

you realize you don’t know who you are anymore. 

You will try all the eggs like Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride

And realize you like them scrambled with katchup

Not fried over easy like I taught you. 

This will be the true beginning of your journey

to self discovery and overcoming people pleasing. 

You will become so addicted to learning who you truly are

that you’ll never want to please anyone for the sake of losing 

your identity again. Keep on trucking. 

Written by a recovering people pleaser~

Gretchen Marie Walters 

Prompt for May. My Daughter's Birthday

 People Pleasing

 There is nothing wrong with wanting people to like us. But when we betray our true selves in trying to please or ingratiate ourselves with others, we are trying to get others to fill our emptiness.  It doesn’t work.  And we lose our identity in the process. I wrote this poem in the voice of my mother.  She taught me how to be pretty and how to flirt.  This was people-pleasing behavior. I didn’t know it could backfire.  It seemed natural to me.  

                   My Daughter’s Birthday

Daughter, you begin your journey from a  pool

where you’ve been floating to a light you can’t imagine.

Soon enough I’ll perch you in a tub of water on the grass,

posed for a Christmas card, naked cheer.

Until the water cools and life that requires rain,

an ancient incantation to conjure, will usher

in uncertain scarcity.

You will lie, pretend, keep secrets, smile when someone’s

watching, learn to love a dress with green apples, just

like mine, totter in my evening shoes, imitate my laugh.

And we will band together, pretty women, entertain

the men, despise their undersides, leave them in the

valley, windblown on our mountaintop.

                    Connection to Recovery:

I learned people-pleasing from my mother. This trait masked my True Self and made me feel like a fraud. I gave away my power to people I was trying to please. Today my Loving Inner Parent tells me I am complete just as I am. I don't need to smile when I'm unhappy or pretend to be self-sufficient when I need help.

                                             PROMPT:

1.Write about how you learned about people-pleasing.  

Who were your models? What type of behavior did you take 

for granted because of what you saw around you?

2. Write in the voice of one of your caregivers about a trait they 

passed down to you.

3.Write about a time you gave away your power to please 

someone and the feelings you felt then. Bring your writing

 forward and write about how you feel now.

The Drama Triangle

 

Enjoy this response to our April prompt, written by Janine.

The Drama Triangle

The clothing of abandonment 

has fit me for so long

complimented my fierce survivor

with her tough girl boots

kicking up the mud in indignation

But am I not also some sort of predator?

seeking to rip off 

the misogynists’ masks

and toss them in triumph

on the pile

the garbage in your sweet seductions

revealed

And what about my trash?

What’s to be found in there?

Maybe just me

steeping in a victim’s love of victimhood

fulfilled best through repetition

my game is to say You put me there

but I can see now 

that I trashed myself

Too late to find another way

but that’s okay

your mask on the pile

me 

safe in the recesses 

of a metal can

Janine S. Brunell

for Wilbur - 2020

April Prompt: Abandonment

 Fear of Abandonment

The following poem imagines what is in my trashcan and lets those items stand as metaphors for the sense of loss and abandonment that led me to use alcohol as a “solution.” Notice that the poem ends with a wine glass.  I did not intend this image when I wrote the poem, which was before I went into recovery.  I realize now that I “knew” alcohol was hurting me even before I went into recovery. This is an example of a poem telling the writer something they didn’t know they knew. 

Taking Out the Trash

Gritty coffee grounds

Crushed and wet

Release morning’s breath

Grapefruit shell

Pink pungent taste

Small close compartments

Eggshell’s jagged edge

Embossed with shiny film

No longer home

Ragged edge of newspaper

Curled into itself

Forgotten admonitions

A half-smoked cigarette

Lipsticked cherry red

A moist pink tongue

Broken wine glass

Slender stem intact

Aftertaste of loss

Prompt:

1. Write about what is in your metaphorical trashcan, car, basement, attic or anywhere where there are unwanted things, or perhaps things you are holding onto that you know you should get rid of.  You can put people in there too!

2. Try to work with concrete images rather than "story" or "narrative." If you begin with a story, look for the images that appear in your story and "unhook" them.  See what happens.

Response to March prompt: Where have you had a spiritual experience?

                                pinterest.com m2c0...faf.jpg

 "Northwest Coast" 

        by Marcus H.

headlands  

hands of the earth

fingers of lava that dance with the ocean

wind, water, fire, earth

etched in basalt faces

Elephant Rock wades into the spray

Stone Whale blows its spout

Giants stand seaward,    no ship can pass

beach above my head  

wave polished stones 

frozen in crystal rock 

that flowed a thousand years ago

a beach of black marbles 

that sing with the waves

a beach of boulders 

that I must leap across 

a boulder

a pebble 

a grain

how big am I?

where do I end?

I can feel that....

rounding the headland

beneath the cliff 

under the arch

slick 

wet 

dripping 

where the ocean pounded 

an hour ago

listen to moon’s tidal heartbeat

and don't wait too long

but

stop 

see the world in a bowl 

an animal?

no a plant?

no a rock? 

squirting water

out of lips 

closing tight 

until the ocean kisses it again

ant crawl 

over the finger

animal trail through vaulted forest

ocean murmurs of cliff edge 

thick with bushes 

enter through their tunneled vein

scramble down a rock bed 

to water’s edge

sea peeks

through wall of pillars 

that touch gray cloud ceiling 

waves do not enter here

inches from the depth

I stand upon a table stone 

dinner scraps discarded there

am I alone?

whose house is this?

a head emerges

from still ocean

close 

as my boyhood dog

with talking eyes 

speaks to my soul

We are all one.

Response to February Prompt

 Here is a Recovery Writer's response to the February prompt by Molly.  Each month, I will post a sample of your work.  Please Reply if you would like to comment on this piece.  I love the feeling it evokes! The poem is by Molly L.  The photo comes from unsplash.com. 

photo: Patrick Reithboth on unsplash.com

March 2021 Prompt Where have you had a spiritual experience?

 Recovery Writers March 2021 Prompt

                                            Margo Brodowicz on Unsplash

Capturing a Spiritual Experience.

I had a sponsor who suggested that I list the places where I had had a spiritual experience and “visit there regularly.” Initially, I got caught in the burning bush scene—where, I wondered, had God been speaking, even if I defined God as a voice within me?  I have found that if I ask and keep asking, the moments will appear.  They lend themselves beautifully to a “list poem.” 

Here and There

My hospital room, my first baby wheeled in, her tiny baby face aglow with mystery—the mystery of me and not me, who she will become, and I think, God, yes. There you are.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a man, the single black face in a sea of a white, singing: God Be With You Til We Meet Again.  And I think: God.

The window with organdy curtains, outside white fences, horses grazing. The grandfather clock ticks, ticks, chimes. I long for that clock like our puppy, her first night bundled at our hearth, nestled with a clock, to remind her of her mother.

The doctor’s scale that said my anorexic daughter had gained 10 pounds in a month, impossible. My daughter, returned to the living, her desperation to be thin outweighed by the demands of marijuana.  Thank God for marijuana.

At my tenth wedding anniversary, my husband whole-heartedly recited vows before a God he privately called a maggot.  For me.  For our two daughters.  For the third, who unbeknownst to us was even then, stirring.

The hymn in church, “Is it I Lord, I have heard you calling in the night.  I will go Lord, where you lead me.  I will hold your people in my heart.” I don’t know yet who these people will be. The call a mystery.  I’ll find it years later in a church basement.

Fern Brook, the perfect peace of a perfect summer afternoon, children chirping among smooth stones, the minnows, the waving leaves. Everybody flowing in the same direction.  

A sleeping granddaughter, nestled near my neck, breathing in her baby smell, of soap and milk and skin, her tiny fingers grasping one of mine.  

My dog Belle, never more than ten feet from my feet. Dozing, waiting, leaping at the jangle of the leash. Always at the door when I return.  Yes.  There you are.

The first violets of spring when I am eight.  I reach down each tender stem and pinch, gather in a silver urn, a surprise for mother.  Each year.  A surprise.

The Madonna of Justice, a painting with Mary and a giant book, a Latin inscription. She calls to me. Mystery. Law. Rules. Books. Babies. Angels.  She wants my help. She wants to help me.  

Three kittens, all black, using me as a playscape on a sick day, the delight of kitten fur, pink tongues. Suddenly, they tire, drop, sleep. And I think: Yes. This is what you feel like. 

Prompt:

1. Write a list of the different places or situations where you have had a spiritual experience.

2. Consider odd coincidences.  Consider music that has affected you deeply. Consider moments in nature that felt profound. Consider both moments of high drama and what seemed ordinary, but looking with the eyes of recovery, perhaps profound.

Connection to Recovery:

I need to write down places where I have felt the spirit or I risk forgetting them or robbing them of their power.  My disease wants me to "forget" or to say "it's no big deal," "how important was it?" My naming those places and writing them down, I see that I have been a spiritual seeker all my life.  I also see that the spirit of love, connection to others, and the natural world are all connected. 

Taken from "Beneath the Steps, A Writing Guide for 12-Step Recovery", by Christine Beck (available on Amazon.com)

 Here is the REAL City Lights!

zoom for Recovery writers is: 443 381 9966 password recovery

February prompt

 

                                            credit: Pauline Loroy on unsplash.com

Losing Our Identity

People-pleasing is one way we lose our identity, our True Self. As we conform our conduct to

what we think other people want to see or hear, we ignore our own wants or needs. It’s not

uncommon to begin recovery with no idea of what makes us happy, what our gifts are, or what

our true calling the world might be. As we begin to explore our feelings we can see that even as

children, we had talents and gifts. As a young person before recovery, I was attracted to the

lives of other people that I found in books. Even as a child, I would hide from my father’s anger

with a book behind the drapes on a window seat. I can see that books were my parents for

much of my life.

City Lights, San Francisco

Damp as a sodden bathing suit,

beaches driftwood gray, fog obscured

the Golden Gate, North Beach, Angel Island.

On Broadway, neon lights blessed a strand

of strip joints. The barker at the Condor Club plucked

my coat, urged me to try my luck in the topless contest.

Around the corner, I escaped to City Lights --

a bookstore bathed in shades of black,

home to Ferlinghetti, Ginsburg, Kerouac.

I wandered empty aisles, picked up a stack,

found a threadbare chair, settled into acrid pages,

searched for a plot that I could fall into.

Prompts:

1. Write about any escape you made as a young person or one that you now wish

you had made.You will see I escaped from the barker at the Condor Club. Did you

ever encounter a person who urged you to do something you knew you shouldn’t

do?

2. Think of a place, such as City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, where you could

“be yourself.” Write about that self.

3. Try to use imagery, such as the fog in stanza one or the empty aisles in the

bookstore that reflect something about your identity. Check your words, such as

sodden, obscured, urged, wandered, fall into to make sure they match the tone

you are striving for.

4. Why do you think the neon lights “blessed” the strip joints? Was there something

attractive about them, some alternative to the bookstore as a place to find

identity?

Latest Recovery Writer Poem!

 

The ratted birds nest on the ground

Handknit, by a mothers love

A broken egg- inside

Its blue….so am I

The death of promise to its flock…

Sad, grief

I wonder, did bird mommy know her babies fate? Does she know baby died?

Is she soaring with the others in acceptance of what is….

Mommy, are you there?

Did you know that I, or...when I…. fell from your nest?

I was tangled in the leaves…I held my breath

I smoked and toked and drank so numb

I believed you when you called me dumb…

That immaculate nest… was a messy mess...

Shells smashed with shame and blame-

A daily coup upon our souls

"Do not break a bowl!!!! Do you hear me? “

The youngest did indeed die…..

Ssshhhh don’t -

Don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel.....

that was the deal

In November you passed … at last...

I have no tears,  less fears…

Mommy….dont blame, that I have no shame

From somewhere I hear You say, 

Oh Sandee!!! “how uncouth to tell the truth”

Sandee B

                                             Mitchel Lensink on unsplash.com

Give me Twenty Minutes

Those who have attended a Recovery Writers session know that we include twenty minutes in which to write individually in response to a prompt, before we reassemble to read and lovingly respond to each other’s writing.

As we expanded and grew, I started thinking about this twenty-minute “dark time” and whether there was a way to eliminate or restructure it.  Yes, I heard many of you say that the group meetings are the only time you write, but really, I thought, can’t I inspire or encourage you to write outside the meeting?

Luckily, I have a higher power. My higher power advised me to honor process over project.  That twenty minutes is important to our process. It is a sacred time. I don’t need to fix it or control it. 

My higher power also has a sense of humor! Later that night, as I was reading “The Equivalents,” about a grant program in the sixties to benefit women who did not have time or money to pursue their art, I happened upon a conversation between the poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin. They would frequently phone each other and then despair: “why aren’t we writing?” One would suggest a line or concept. The other would say “give me twenty minutes,” and either ring back or keep the line open. Sexton said she loved the pressure of the twenty-minute interlude. ‘It was the most stimulating thing. It’s a challenge…We’ve got this much time, and goddam it, I’m going to have something there.’”

There, in black and white, was confirmation of our “twenty minute writing break.” It works because we work it. 

Publication by Phyllis, one of our Recovery Writers! Congrats.

 

January 17 prompt

 Writing about Death and Grief

January 2021

 Even though I spent a lot of time with my mother, I was not with her when she died in the hospital.  I had no language for grief. Not until I became a mother and witnessed a child’s reaction to a lost kitten did I begin to appreciate the child within me who was abandoned and bereft by my mother’s death. Even in the face of suffering, even when death seems a mercy, the pain lingers underground. It can then pop up in unexpected places:

Lining the Casket

Two are black and white, feisty, thirsty; the third,

soft yellow, like sunshine mixed with baby carrots.

we name it Calico, a patchwork guinea pig.

It’s the runt, a slip of fur and darting eyes, skinny 

as an anorexic, heart pounding through her fur. My daughter 

loves it with the passion we reserve for the unlucky.

Its mother runs away when Calico approaches.

I take the healthy babies out to force what can’t be forced.

I briefly think of killing it, then recall my father’s tears

when he tied kittens in a sack and held them under water.

I tell Calico, “You can go now,” then feel a fool

for playing hospice with a guinea pig.

I didn’t say goodbye that January night, when my mother, 

wrapped in an iron fist, stopped asking if the sky was blue.

I took the train back to Manhattan, to the job she bragged about.

I recall the flowered dresses with matching panties

she smocked for me, as I line a cardboard box with chintz, 

head down the hill to meet my daughter at the bus.

Prompt:

1. Write about the death of a pet or a death that is not close to you and allow your poem to “circle around” to the death you really want to write about.

2. Write about what you have said about death to a child or as a consolation to someone whose loved one has died.  Make a “list poem” of all the platitudes, such as “he had a good life,” or “at least he didn’t suffer” and explore your reaction.

3. Write an obituary about a caregiver who has died and say what you would really want to say about that person. 

Years later, I wrote a poem in a less narrative style about grief.   You will find in your own writing that certain objects or images carry emotional weight for you.  They will show up again and again in your work, reminding you that you have hit on something important.

What I Never Wanted

Ashes in a vase, September mourning, 

distant calls of loons, a fractured sky,

sullen earth mounded under dogwood,

leaves burned hot as afterthoughts,

afternoon of unbelief, wall of windowpanes,

hangers in the closet, askew and bare, 

their fragile chattering, a sound like empty acorns,

nutmeats dried, the harvest passed.

 Prompt:

1.Take phrases, words or images from your first poem and “translate” them into a more imagistic poem about death. You can see I used the following:

Ashes, mourning, earth mounded, unbelief, bare, fragile, empty, dried.

All these words give a “tone” of emptiness and loss. The ashes and mounded earth indicate death. The empty clothes hangars chattering in the closet are the voice of mourning.