Fly
The Poetry Kiln - Monthly Poems, Photos, and Handwritten Marginalia
Dear you,
Thank you so much for stepping into this little corner of the poetry world. :)
This month’s poem and accompanying pieces are my attempt at reintroducing myself to the world. I hesitate to call this a “life update” but I’ve changed significantly over the past little while, largely in isolation, and wanted to share a bit of that process with you via a less polished/edited poem. With that said, there’s a few surprises in the audio recording (raw without autotune!)—a foreshadowing if you will. ;)
Please feel free to share this ‘poetriesletter’ with a friend, your network, or social media (or gift them a subscription)!
If you would like/have the means to support my work, please also consider donating to Gaza Relief & Recovery. ❤️
I hope you enjoy this month’s poem, recording, photos, and handwritten marginalia.
Take gentle, tender care & speak soon.
Gratefully,
Fly
Please find an audio version of the poem below
I didn’t graduate this year, but it’s been nearly four years, to the week & day, since I last did. And in these four years, it’s been a steady stream of classes on violent self-loathing & suicidal thoughts after every text, call, email, and Zoom that I didn’t sign up for, yet, seem to be mandatory credits that I can’t take pass/fail. I had to get a grade & against my will, it was an A. Plus. A-plus what? A lot & nothing. Lot & empty space… From mid-2022— after my second suicide attempt— through 2023, I stopped speaking & most days could count on ten fingers just how many words I said aloud each day. But it was because I didn’t end up where I thought I’d be that I found where I was meant to go. ★ The lyrics of Part of Your World first struck me because I felt a longing (to be part of a world) that I didn’t belong in or align with— and that, honestly, I don’t think any of us belong in or align with because this world needs to change and our longing for it is it’s safeguard; a reason it won’t. Capitalism is sneaky. When we say “your” world, whose is it? Perhaps we long to be part of something else… a world we must make like art on a stage or words on a page…. ★★ If you know me well, you know I’m obsessed with dragons because of How To Train Your Dragon. To me, Toothless is basketball. Are You Ready is the title song for the third movie when Hiccup & Toothless part ways after years of unparalleled friendship & needing each other to fly after injury. But the time comes… “Are you ready to fly on your own?” Until now, without basketball, the answer has been no, but sometimes magic blares brilliance that bursts through poem seams, or, as a raccoon Momma & her infant babies nesting in new deck furniture beneath the winter-proof tarp. But that’s when this poem opened to paint that new world on paper… …when I realized that home could be anywhere if I take the risk to be seen where I best belong but have never been expected to be. ★★★ I haven’t shaved my legs since November and I don’t give a f***, even though I booked a physio appointment this morning. Beefing up my oatmeal with all sorts of things like pistachios, blueberries, spices, chia, bran, coconut I’m still packing a thick slab of the onion rye bread I’d baked. Carbs are key. Downtown, I stop at a café where flower fridges meet purple pastries meet knitted paintings and order a cardamom latte, which became a matcha because cardamom discontinued (I think I was its only fan). Physio. Therapist doesn’t care about the exploded hay bales across my legs! Imagine that! Don’t shave if you don’t want to (.). Pause on my way out for the cherry tulips; pray with words I don’t have except “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free.” I try to beat the rain on the sidewalk hike to my next stop— the tattoo shop— by speculating types of clouds, dreaming of dragons… The orange leather chairs & art studio beckon & in the washroom mirror, for the first time in decades, I notice the waning scar on my mouth from trying to jump out of my crib as a toddler. Even then I wanted to fly like a dragon, and if not a dragon, what? ★★★★ I peel the second skin from my tattoo on the eve of a new moon freeing a flying dragon chasing a semi-colon, presently framed by fingernails like peacock feathers painted the colour of blood. If not a dragon, what? Throughout May I recorded songs & spoken word for my first EP, about suicide, terrified, but no one can listen if you hide… ★★★★★ A dear friend says, “You haven’t read Eragon?!” & his dragon, Saphira, sleek & sassy with sapphire scales. ★★★★★★ I fall in love with horses & horse-centred stewardship on a little farm in Coldwater, drawn instantly to a horse named Sapphire before I knew her name or her stories of abuse & pain that very nearly mirrored my own. “Fly,” she seemed to say, as if she might have been or known Saphira thousands of years ago. ★★★★★★★ It’s funny, how, if Toothless is basketball, I’ve come back to running— my first sport— to fly on my own. And then Richard Sherman dies. “Though her words are simple and few “Listen, listen”, she's calling to you…” ★★★★★★★★ Afraid to jump without wings: singing writing running I unwrap the gift of reading a poem for the first time, Today I Am Full of Birds, by Lyz Soto. Please read it—you’ll understand why I wept at my writing desk and officially made the switch to autoethnographic poetry for my MA/PhD path at Queen’s University in Belfast, to find out, only after, that the live-action How to Train Your Dragon was filmed there this year. ★★★★★★★★★ A wonderful friend sends me photos for this poem: a typewriter with a peacock feather & orange umbrellas all while I happened to be listening to the music from Saving Mr. Banks, the story of why P.L. Travers wrote Mary Poppins, who, of course, could fly— with an umbrella. And so I write, and sing, and run but I still struggle with how many references there are to Disney in this poem. I see the deep canyons & crevices of flaw & appropriation & harm & misrepresentation & stereotyping that I didn’t as a child, teenager, and even young adult. But I also recognize when something finds the Lifeforce Wellspring & not only reaches in but comes back out with something that touches our soul. We’re allowed to feel & appreciate when this happens and hold that very same hand & arm accountable. And this, I think of myself. ★★★★★★★★★★ And so sweet Halle reminds me that when Ariel & Arielle sing “I don't know when, I don't know how But I know something's starting right now Watch and you'll see, someday I'll be Part of your world” they are singing to themselves. ★★★★★★★★★★★ Do you see it? Turn these page sideways to view the skylines of our world.
Behind The Scenes Kindling
Before You Go…
Here are a few life-giving poems from some brilliant poets:
If You Are Over Staying Woke by Morgan Parker
Portrait of My Father Drowning by Tariq Luthun
The Other - a collection gathered by Sally Bliumis-Dunn
Looking For Poetry by Carlos Drummond de Andrade
The Wild Iris by Louise Glück
A Word on Statistics by Wisława Szymborska
Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III) by Gwendolyn Brooks
Theology by Ocean Vuong
The Visit by Alma Simba
won't you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton
Making a Fist by Naomi Shihab Nye
Something to Believe In by Carl Phillips
After the Dinner Party by Adrienne Su
Borrow by Sarah McCartt Jackson
First Time Brushing Teeth Next to You by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
The Nation by Roy Fisher
Siri as Mother by Hala Alyan
Green Burial Unsonnet by Dante Di Stefano
Mercy by Dessa
We Live We Live by Brandy Nālani McDougall
Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisel Mueller
In the House With No Doors by Sarah Kay
Water-Owl, Cuvier’s Beaked Whale by Rajiv Mohabir
English by Janel Pineda
How It Will End by Denise Duhamel
I Dreamed I Lived in Austin by Albert Huffstickler
She can read poetry and sing a renaissance woman! My interpretation of the end of them singing to themselves is they are singing to the part of themselves that is “free”. I would say their soul that has been around before their self was programmed with society’s software. The one that is often buried but can be reached through singing/poetry or other forms/languages that can feed the soul. I always think of Audre Lorde’s piece about the erotic. They are singing to find that piece of themselves their true being. 💛