I am at the desk of one Quraysh Ali Lansana. Bad ass writer- good friend. Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center.
Today has been a day of Communing with other writers. The conference is Amazing. The conversations all around literature and the smell of words on the breath of authors we love.
I love being in the wry rant of odd poets and novelists and essayists and general individuals who live to see new books printed, to hear another interpretation of Dubois' work. Harlem and renaissance
and inked leaves crisp with hope
and old stories
I am at peace here in Chicago again
Chicago will always hold me
hungry with the need for a poem or a woman or maybe just a place with the wind upon a face and a history of writers who wrote regardless of family and funds and friends who did not understand the rapid click of keys
and how it makes us wet
and wound up
with the thought of bringing the tale to a climax
Chicago State University
warmer than it should be
must be the hands weaving terror
and survival and photographs of faces who look like who they were before they died and left us with the best parts of them
breaking like lines
in the middle of some haiku
not Japanese anymore
just black bodies creating a new sound for literature
and defining the small edges of our world
stretching across the atlantic
and Atlanta
to Chicago
and New York is where they all ran to
when Tubman was begging her husband
John come with me
I done come all this way back for you
John if you don't come with me
I might have to take some other man
or maybe his child
or his wife will want to come too
John
you
ain't never gonna leave this place
and I ain't never gonna stay here
better to be alone
and free
better to be
than be here with you and these dark wires holding you
tight
John
I gotta go
all that inspired by Quraysh's book coming out
Black man
with two children
writing about a woman who died long before I ever wrote anything about slave
or sex or food or journeys made into the thick cloud of a swamp
damp fog is always harder to see through
I love the sound of writing
I could make all kinds of love to the fingers of a woman writing on keys
scratching odes
sonnets onto the smooth white of some page
smudged now
with the impurity of thoughts
againt God and state
Fuck the state of things not seen
feelings not felt because you lost the wisp
of self
in the arms of a dream you thought
you were both having
simultaneously
Chicago at night is you
and me
and the way we loved against all odds
odd how we loved like that
regardless
and now I am content with the mere hedge of these small steps
we are taking
I am learning to love you slow
this time
alone most nights
the canter of you is beautiful in memory
the quiet in between
is precious
savored for the sweet draw of the thin streak of blood
no danger in that small leak of life
flatlining
I know you are there
and I am comforted by that
I like loving you like molasses
never thought I would
love Chicago
like summer and poetry
and conferences where I am sitting alone
mapping out journal entries
for faces I cannot see
I love every crease in the notes you send
unexpected
but always on time
I am sorry there is not more to give
words are all I have
these mean more to me than bellies
upturned for consumption
alone in Chicago is sometimes good
and I own Chicago too
without
her breath caught in her throat
when I came through the door
Chicago is mine
without her
without the rain
and the way she smelled the first time I heard her laughter
uncontained
we were small girls
before we were lovers
we were friends first
and Chicago
will always me mine
and hers
and all the years we have spent here
together
or alone
Chicago is brutal
and gray and winter
and summer gone mad with the pace of love and ache
and the horror of the ends of things
things do not end
they just change
like the sky
and her face
when she gets me
when I get her
when the world is one big enigma
and we are caught
laughing out loud
because we just figured that out
in the spirit of change
and embracing
what it brings
Staceyann
...the site
the journals go.
one day we will have this mess of an electronic love letter carved out and sent.
in any case
it's been a messy couple of months
again
the fingers hesitate over the page
each time these hosts and servers and what nots
fuck up
I start again
no luxury of a continuance
a thought carried over
a brooding given from one frame to the next
every time
the killing is begun again
the healing is longer
the old sore stubborn
an ulcer
reluctant to stitch itself into new skin
I am in Atlanta again
Show at Agnes Scott Today
with Doria Roberts
I go from here to Chicago
alone
for the 13th Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Black Writers Conference
My boy Quraysh is putting all the pieces together
I admire minds who can be present enough to plan entire conference. I barely know how to get from one place to the one event that marks my participation in an evening.
I wish I could drive.
Downtown Decatur
I forgot my vibrator
shit
I am writing
from planes again
one week at home
almost
Saw Ain and Tiona etc last night
good night filled with laughter
and just enough sorrow to make the evening
undull
reading Sylvia Plath
just finished My Year of Meats
by an author named Ruth Ozeki (I think)
check out Patrick Neate
interesting writer guy from somewhere far and away
London I think
I am a little better at accessing my feelings
I was a little numb
a lot numb for a while
could not feel my body
my fingers tingle toward sensation
my pen wraps itself more comfortably around my truth
these days
I am inking in the water
regardless of who it will stain
I am trying to not write from a place of intent
trying to get back to just spilling
it's hard when so many people are slistening to your thoughts
but this path
is chosen
given
prescribed
whatever
this is the way I am walking
so shut up chin
and write
so you are older
maybe a little worn
but you are not a glass globe
sitting unchanged on the desk of someone's imagination
you must grow
and fail
and learn lessons
and each lesson comes with its mark
a scar
a blemish
tattoed on the plane of my experience
I wear all the scars well
the ones who loved me
and tried to convince me of such
the ones I could never believe
the ones who will never leave
staying is a way to survive
sometimes leaving is just too hard
My therapist thinks I am an impulse
I think
the middleground has always been so fucking boring
I got a PO box
Staceyann Chin
PO BOX 130459
Brooklyn NY. 11213
mundane but handy. the application
the proof of address
the payment for the year
six months
a man named henry took the money
life and a list of worries
I am thinking of home
I always do when the sharp breath of winter yaps insistent at my heels
tropical feet don't like shoes
sandals
and I am in florida
from the 4th of November to the 14th of November
West Palm Beach
Orlando
Miami
and a place called Withalachoochie in Dade City
kiss me woman
I miss you still
after all this
miss you
colors and all
I miss you
Good Morning World
It's good to have you back,
Staceyann