*This is a continuation of my first imitation so you might want to read that first before reading this so it makes more sense.

Tom pulls Natalie from behind the dumpster saddened by the blisters on the lips he used to kiss. He pulls her sallow, bruised arms behind her and lightly clicks the cool, silver metal around her frail wrists. He puts his hand on her back as he leads her towards the flashing blue lights and feels a knot forming in his throat blocking his air.

“Daddy?” Natalie asks looking up into Tom’s eyes as if they are her father’s.

He protects her head as he gently guides her into the back of his cruiser.

“Daddy?” she asks desperately.

“How could I have let this happen?” he thinks as he catches her reflection in the rear view mirror. It seemed like yesterday they were watching her parents’ dancing, he envious of their love. He hoped as he watched them that he was seeing Natalie and his future. He had been working, bagging groceries, saving to buy her a ring. He wanted what her parents’ had. He thought he would have it with her.

He flips the blue lights off and drives through the darkening streets to his home. He takes off the cuffs. Natalie is passed out, no longer a threat. When he picks her up the softness of her neck catches him off guard; nothing but bare, undisturbed skin. He had kissed her there, on that soft, undisturbed skin, as he tried to convince her to leave her father’s birthday party with him. But she didn’t want to disappoint her father. Maybe things would have turned out differently.

He sets her down in his bed, removes her tattered clothes. He touches her blistered lips and watches them return to the smooth, fullness that he remembers. He touches the needle marks in the delicate curve of her arm and they disappear. As he touches each part of her body, her skin comes alive, no longer fading quickly from yellow to blue. It seems that he can save her, from the pain, from the outside world, from herself. He falls asleep next to her hopeful of his new future, of the life he has breathed into her with his touch, until he wakes up the next morning to an empty bed.

After shift, he comes to find her each night behind this dumpster, thrown out like yesterday’s trash. He touches her cold body, bringing it back from the darkness it had fallen into. When she opens her icy eyes she only calls out for her father. But he takes her to his home anyway, tries to salvage what has been lost, having faith that one day he will finally save her.

This short was for a class assignment. It is an attempt to imitate Toni Morrison’s Beloved with a little bit of Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being.

A conversation with Sage Cohen

author of Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry

As the holidays approach in a down economy, Sage Cohen proposes that poetry can provide a meaningful way forward. Author of Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry, Cohen sees poetry not just as an art form, but a way of life. Following is our conversation about the possibilities of poetry today.

It’s the holiday season. Why poetry? Why now?

In today’s economy, many people are seeking alternatives the typical holiday spending frenzy. The good news about hard times is that they challenge us to find creative new ways to give, share and create meaning. Poetry can be a powerful instrument for conjuring such alchemies.

These days people have less cash than usual. How can poetry help?

Poetry can’t change our bank statements, but it can change the way we think about wealth and prosperity. In fact, it is my lifelong relationship with poetry that has taught me that income is one thing, but prosperity is frequently something else.

For example, a few years ago, I heard Mary Oliver speak. She reported that a critic of her poetry complained that she must be independently wealthy to have so much time to lie around in the grass and ponder nature. This made the poet laugh, because the critic was reporting in an underhanded and confused way about a truth that Oliver tapped into long ago: the act of lying in the grass and listening to the world IS wealth.

The truth is, we don’t need to go anywhere special to tune in to poetry. Our lives are already inundated with sensory information that is the raw material of poems. All we need to do is slow down, pay attention and write down what moves us, intrigues us or stirs our curiosity. This does not require an inheritance or a 401K. It simply requires a willingness to welcome the abundance that is already ours, and to follow the golden thread of language wherever it leads us.

What poetry can give us is something far more valuable than money could ever buy – it gives us ourselves. Poem by poem, we write our souls into existence. Weighted in words, the spirit that animates us becomes palpable. By the same token, each poem we read offers a small window into the human condition, in which we may better recognize some glimmer of our own being.

The world seems to be falling apart around us. Why should we be focused on poetry when it can’t help change anything?

You’re right; poems may not stop the clubbing of baby seals, domestic violence, child trafficking, dog fighting, genocide, conflict in the Middle East or whatever it is that feels most difficult on any given day. But as the motorcyclist must lean into the turn to prevent a fall, poems become a kind of machinery of transport, giving us a context for leaning into the pain that we meet and safely navigating through it.

My father always said, “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” And poems are the treasures that can be exhumed from those undesirable experiences. Just think all of the great, poetic opportunities for understanding that lie coiled at the heart of every mistake, heartbreak, disappointment, and regret.

What if you were to literally look to your poetry practice as a way of moving through what pierces you to the core? What injustices might it help you examine unflinchingly? What epicenter of pain or grief might it help you enter and consider? How might you relax into the universal truths of divorce, death, intolerance, and change, and make a poem offering that illumines these truths with compassion?

How do you recommend that readers get started with their holiday poem-making?

I always remind people that their ordinary lives will offer more than enough source material for poetry. The following exercises are designed to get folks mining their own daily experience to see what inspired thoughts and language might be awaiting them below the surface.

1. Choose an activity you do regularly that is the absolutely most routinized, unremarkable event of your day. (Mine would be doing dishes.) Write down the answers to these questions about it:

• Notice the physical feeling of this routine. Which muscles are involved? What kind of rhythm or tempo does it involve? Are you cold or hot, energized or depleted?

• How do you feel emotionally when you do this?

• What are the smells associated with this activity? (I use lavender soap, so my sink smells like a French garden.)

• What do you see when engaged in this routine? (I look out at the butterfly bush and magnolia tree in my back yard. I enjoy watching meals erased from plates and glasses.)

• Pay close attention to your thinking. What images and ideas bubble up as you are doing this activity?

• How does the time of day or weather or location (indoors vs. outdoors, your home vs. someone else’s home, summer breeze or snowfall) affect your experience?

2. What wildlife, plants and trees do you see out your window at home, at work, or en route? What do they look like, feel like, sound like? What are their names? What are the visual cues and references in your home and/or workspace?

• Make a list of the 20 things you come into contact with most.

• Write down something else in the world that each of these 20 things remind you of. For example, the red teapot reminds me of the robin red breast. The worn wood of the mirror over the sink reminds me of the door to Grandpa’s barn. The curlicue pattern on the silver platter makes me think of storm clouds.

3. Think of someone you see regularly in passing but do not know well, like your mail carrier, barista or neighbor. Write a poem that imagines what their life might be like:

• Who do they love?

• What have they lost?

• What do their pajamas look like?

• What are their aspirations?

• What do they eat for breakfast?

4. Explore your holiday archives:

• What was your biggest holiday surprise?

• What holiday is most meaningful to you and why?

• Who do you yearn to see during the holidays?

• How has Santa (if you have a relationship with Santa) satisfied you and let you down over the years?

• What is the most embarrassing thing that ever happened around the dinner table with your family at holiday time?

• What outfit comes to mind when you think back on past holiday celebrations?

This should give you a foundation of source material to start playing with. Circle a few words or phrases that interest you, and let those be the kindling for your poetic fire.

Don’t know where to go next? Freewriting can be a useful way to take your ideas and language a little further into the realm of the poetic. Set your timer for 10 minutes, sit down with your notebook, and keep that hand moving across the page, no matter what, without stopping, for the entire 10 minutes. You’re not trying to be brilliant here – just to get loose and let words start coming without thinking too hard. The more you practice, the looser you’ll get. And the looser you get, the more your language will surprise and delight you.

I’d like to send readers off with a thought about poetry and holiday cheer

Egg nog, move over. Rudolph, there’s a brighter light guiding our sleigh tonight.

I’ve never experienced any holiday cheer that rivals the state of grace that poetry invites into our lives. That is why I often give poems I’ve written as holiday gifts. I print them on pretty paper, place them in an attractive frame and presto – the most treasured holiday gifts I’ve ever given only cost me the time I spent creating them.

Try it! You just might get hooked.

Wishing you all a peaceful and poetic holiday season.

* * * * *

Sage Cohen is the author of Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry (Writers Digest Books, 2009) and the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World (Queen of Wands Press, 2007). An award-winning poet, she writes four monthly columns about the craft and business of writing and serves as Poetry Editor for VoiceCatcher 4. Sage has won first prize in the Ghost Road Press poetry contest, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and been awarded a Soapstone residency. She curates a monthly reading series at Barnes & Noble and teaches the online class Poetry for the People. To learn more, visit www.sagesaidso.com. Drop by and join in the conversation about living and writing a poetic life at www.writingthelifepoetic.typepad.com!

*Read my reviews of Like the Heart, the World and Living the Life Poetic.

If you are wondering why I have been MIA from my blog it is because I am participating in NaNoWriMo. Stop by and visit me to check out my progress: TheNightWriter

See you soon!

My latest Halloween short “Just Before Dawn” has been posted on The Campfire Pages: Halloween Edition. Take a look and let me know what you think! You can read many more fabulous Halloween stories there too!

You can read my other Halloween short “Reclaiming of the Soul” here!

Happy Halloween!

Well, my birthday is today and that got me thinking. I have never been too good at New Year’s resolutions, but maybe that’s because I’ve been celebrating the wrong year. I think from now on my goals will follow the time span between my birthdays. I have definitely made progress over this past year. It seems as each year goes by my life seems to get a little bit less complicated. I am just beginning to fully embrace the idea that I create my reality and that the Universe is abundant in every way. I am going to take this next year to test this belief by having a positive mind, solidifying goals, taking action where I can, and leaving the rest to the Universe. What is it that always stops me from moving forward? That cursed how. I am going to try this year to focus on my goals and leave the unknown “how” to a Higher Power. 

My goals for my 36^th (technically 37^th) year are as follows: 

• Relocate to a beach community
• Continue earning MFA
• Complete my first memoir
• Receive funds to support my writing
• My son’s successful enrollment in college
• Create a long-term healthy eating plan
• Incorporating exercise into my daily routine
• Make my health a top priority
• Significantly reducing debt and monthly costs
• Replace TV time in my family with reading, music, and arts
• Find alternative ways to earn money rather than traditional 8-5 job
• Continue my journey towards healing the past
• Embrace the Law of Attraction consistently
• Be a more positive/less complaining person
• Downsize/Simplify
• Build lasting relationships with others 

I am sure these goals will evolve as I grow and learn and I will update them accordingly. I truly want to make this year my best year ever and am finally willing to do what it takes to make that a reality. Why wait till January when I can start right now?

*To see progress on my birth-year goals go to my newest blog: http://livefromtheheart.wordpress.com

Pauline Campos over at the Aspiring Mama blog is hosting a monthly essay contest for mom’s who are battling post-baby weight. Below are the guidelines. If you would like additional information please visit her blog at www.aspiringmama.com and click on the Baby F(Ph)at Essay Contest tab. You can also find Pauline on Twitter.

* Stories must be between 500 and 1,500 words and be told in first person. This is your story…not your neighbors. Make sure to include a short bio with contact information. If you have a link (such as a blog) you’d like posted with your entry should it be selected, please make sure to include that information in your submission.

*Essays should focus on the topic of weight. Suggestions include:

—Your expectations prior to becoming pregnant versus the reality

—How pregnancy changed your body

—How you lost the weight

—Acceptance of your new shape

—Balancing the needs of your children with your own

* No anonymous or author unknown submissions.

* Send only one submission per month.

* Please submit only stories or poems that have not been previously published.

* Submissions should be sent to aspiringmama@gmail.com with “Essay Contest” in the subject line, along with the month you are submitting for (Example: Essay Contest-November).

* By submitting a story, you give www.aspiringmama.com the right to re-publish and distribute your work on this website, and in any other formats (including, but not limited to, the site’s Twitter feed, RSS feed, and possible publication in a book).

* Monthly submission deadline will be the first of every month with publication of winning entries scheduled for the 15th. (Read: the first deadline is November 1 and the winning entry posted on Nov. 15.)

*Warning: Contains Adult Language.

The smell of garbage, now too familiar, makes Natalie wish she could go back home to the smell of her mother’s Chanel perfume. She holds the pipe to her lips, hits it, and lets her head fall back against the brick building in the alleyway caught up in the rush. The buildings and blackness start to spin, her eyes follow them around and around, her smile widens as her mother appears dancing with her father. It’s his 40th birthday and there are so many couples dancing, smiling, spinning around and around like the tiny ice skaters on her mother’s Christmas display.

“You’re lucky to have parents like that,” her boyfriend, Tom, says as he runs his hand up and down her back, “Very lucky.” His parents divorced six years ago, when he was ten, and they still aren’t speaking to each other.

Natalie hears loud, angry voices and the music transforms from symphony to a deep, throbbing bass and though she can feel its vibration, the dancers continue to smile and waltz as if unaware that anything has changed. Tom bends down and kisses her and when she opens her eyes she sees her father driving, the road disappearing beyond the headlights. Her mother laughs, leans towards her father and kisses him. When her mother jerks away Natalie is blinded by light and the sharp slice of the windshield into her head.

“What the fuck you think you doin’, whore?” Mason, Natalie’s boyfriend, says. He’d slammed her head against the brick building and she can feel the blood snaking down the back of her scalp. “You don’t get paid when you sittin’ here wit’ the trash.” He grabs her arm – his pale, dirty face replacing her mother’s, his laughter becoming louder as her mother’s fades away – and throws her into the street.

Natalie gets in the next car that stops, her only purpose to get enough money to score more crystal. Mason took her pipe. She has to replace that, too.

The man drops her off at the same corner he picked her up on Parker Street and she stuffs the twenty dollars into her bra and starts walking towards Bidder Street where she knows she can score.

“What you got this time, Nat?” Z says as he opens the door.

“Ten.”

“You look like shit.”

“I know, Z, please.”

Z walks into the kitchen and Natalie swipes a pipe off the small table in the living room. He comes out, hands her a small bag, and she pulls a ten out of her bra before walking out the door.

Natalie walks down the alleyway off Parker Street and slides in between the dumpster and the brick building before sitting down. She hopes Mason won’t find her here, but even if he does, she has his ten dollars, so he can fuck off. She lifts the pipe to her lips, feel the burn as she hits it, and smiles at the feeling, at the darkness, at the relief.

But then the spinning started, the car in flames, her mother’s screams, her father trying to get her mother free, the cool grass calming Natalie’s burning face. She can’t move, can only watch as her mother’s screams fade and her dad collapses. The fluorescent lights click on and off as Natalie floats down the halls of the hospital, loud voices all around her.

Somebody’s angry, yelling. Her dad. Drunk again.

“Get out. You look just like your goddamn mother. I can’t do this anymore. Get the fuck out.”

Natalie walks out the door of her home, the sound of the deadbolt fastening behind her.

Lights are clicking on and off, on and off, blue against the walls.

“Hey, get up.”

Someone grabs her arm, but gently. Natalie can’t see, her eyes unable to focus. She is confused by the scratchy sound of people talking and the bright lights. A man pulls her out from behind the dumpster and she tries to focus, tries to force the shadow into light.

“Daddy?”

*This was an assignment for class. I attempted to immitate the style of Chekhov’s Sleepy.

**This post is part of #FridayFlash which can be found by following the link or searching the hashtag on Twitter.

All that is left of her is the reflecting moonlight on her midnight hair. The rising mist has swallowed the rest of her and her silken cape. 

“Serena,” I yell, my voice crumbling with the leaves beneath me. 

Where could she be going so late at night? What could be so urgent? 

The moon shines – a flashlight in a dark, musty basement – catching the skeletal trees as they chant their secrets to the blackened sky. 

I know I must follow her, but I am afraid of the slithering shadows and their sharpened claws. 

“You must go to her now.” 

I swirl around and around searching for voice. 

“I can only protect her for so long.” 

It is the mist that speaks. 

I run now, into the forest, my bare feet leaving permanent impressions in the yielding floor. The trees move as I come upon them, opening a passageway, their bony fingers pointing the way. 

The mist begins to clear and I see her now, fallen, sobbing. 

“Serena, what has happened?” 

She looks at me with silver eyes and I turn away in fear. 

Her crying becomes ragged echoing off the tombstones and edges into a howl. I know I must save her, but how? 

I follow her crooked finger as sparks make contact with a metal object against a tree. 

A shovel. 

I run towards the tree, picking it up, and run back to her as quickly as I can. 

Her finger again shoots deep, blue sparks burning a circle into the forest floor and I begin to dig, somehow knowing this is something I must do. 

Clank! Clank! Clank! 

I bend down and wipe the surface of a rusted, metal  box. 

Here lies… 

The rest I cannot see. 

She pulls a large, iron key from her cape and slides it into the box. 

An explosion of light blinds me and I fall against the ground. 

She speaks: 

Oh dearest, fairest light

you know what is right

bring back my gift of sight

this enchanted, moon-filled night

and I will leave without a fight. 

If you turn against me

I will never, ever flee

bring to you such misery

take what’s mine away from thee

and forever you will cease to be. 

She repeats again and again. 

And the struggle between light and dark begins.

Inspired by Soul Food Cafe’s Halloween Prompt “Three”

Due to popular demand I have decided to remove this last paragraph from the story and place it down here so that you can still read it

I awaken in the softness of my bed. Morning broke. 

That was the strangest dream I have ever had. 

I stand in front of the mirror curling my crooked fingers around the handle of my silver brush raking it through my silky, black hair, my eyes a smoky, smoldering hue of gray.

It is a daily ritual, one concocted by me to help my special needs son relieve stress. He wakes up at the ungodly hour of 4:00 am and is often bored and restless by 6:30 – the time we now leave for the park. Each morning, except for when it rains, we walk the same exact route so as not to add stress to his already overworked sensory system. As we walk down the shadowy trail we see the sun begin to stretch its tentacles above the trees in an attempt to free itself from the solid earth below. The moon, sometimes drunk on coffee, will decide to stay planted in the sky no longer afraid of being outshone. 

“Mommy, look,” my son will say, head moving back and forth in amazement, “the sun and the moon are out.” 

We have discussed their alternating schedule, how the moon will go to sleep when the sun wakes up, but sometimes things happen differently and to my son, this difference is okay. 

We walk by the playground first where the ghosts of children are still playing on the red bucket swings. They sway and the breeze whispers, “Can you see them? Can you see what I see?” and I do. 

We continue around the curve following the tarry path towards the lake, thin golden rays splaying across the dark-painted wood fence, and we see the sun stretching, just a sliver above the trees. The spirits dance across the cool water, playing while they can, knowing the sun will soon warm them into nonexistence. 

The geese laugh at us as we continue to walk. My son screams at them, “laugh again, laugh again,” and they do. Sometimes we bring them treats and sit a while giving them nourishment as they in turn nourish us. 

We are moving closer towards the next curve that leads to the big hill, the one my son always says he cannot conquer, and yet stands at the top waiting for me, cheering me on. I pause and take a moment to consider walking across the golden path the sun has left across the water, wondering if it is as solid as it looks. But I am lured away by my son’s screams and turn the corner and see the wide golden path shrink into a single ray of light that will soon become a distant memory. 

“Maybe next time,” I think. 

We are coming along the last curve towards the parking lot; the ghosts have all disappeared, overcome by the glaring brightness of the sun. There is a small spot where the path has been broken and my son must walk across this brokenness every day as he heads towards home. 

I drop him off at pre-school, follow his exact regimen: the bathroom, washing hands, his standing by the window, me waving at him before getting in the car, backing out, waving at him again until I and the car are just a distant memory.

*This personal essay is in response to an assignment in my MFA class to write an essay on the mundane.

My favorite song to inspire my memoir writing…