Writing Fiction, Part One

 

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Memory kicks me riotously
and I return the favor more
politely, changing names
to protect the innocent,
consolidating time, place,
and personages into
characters that are hard
to stereotype or sort back
into aha(s) of you-knew-
me-when.  Now memory
and I practice surprise daily
kick for kick with no bruising
and lots of problem solving—
conflicts drive the whole
story with failures and 
successes the best action
of all--until a character
stops to rest, musing,
monologuing, languidly 
connecting dots, and 
delighting in learning
something new or in 
the perverse predictability
of it all.  What a dance!

 My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2023 Susan L. Chast

To Express a Thought

 

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A thought wants me to express it, but no
words come—not from honey nor from hunger.
The thought escapes assemblage and sculpture,
so I’m moved to try lighter fleeting arts
like music and dance—words optional—or
mime: 

A solitary figure in baby blue, gender unknown, yearns toward light coming in high basement windows, and the figure moves slowly, faster, slow again.  A second ungendered figure in light blue leans in one window and plays saxophone as if singing to the central figure, who, startled, stops yearning and sits down to listen.  A third figure in darker blue climbs from another window into the basement, touches, and sits facing the central figure.  The two lean in to touch forehead to forehead.  Then the sax player leaves and silence descends.  The second figure leaves.  Alone again, the central figure is alert, with calm, sure, collected moves, then leaps up, and sways to an open and sweet stop. 

The thought wanting expression is almost

satisfied by the mime.  If only sounds,

figures, costumes, lighting, and set were here, 

they might expand the thought into being. 

Again, let me try words:   

Alone, longing, sound.

Saxophone calls, shadow joins.

Memory kicks in.

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2023 Susan L. Chast

 

What is Precious

 

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey,        stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies

and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal.

We have stopped for a moment

to encounter each other,

to meet, to love, to share.

This is a precious moment.

It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”

                    ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist 

 

Say life is ever-where and always,
but we are only aware when we stop, look around,
and interact with other lives and other life forms
such as an ant, fox, microbe, and planet
in our “little parenthesis in eternity.”
 
Do stories exist beyond the parenthesis that
do not originate here?  I wonder urgently what
life is when the eye/I/ego position dissolves outside
the parenthesis of past, present and future. I wonder
if this world’s traumas follow us out beyond.
 
Here we know too many traumas in too little time.  
We cling to anchors that have no practical use in
planetary ecology, anchors such as domination,
privilege, whiteness, and class difference
that prevent us from being open and giving.

And so our infinity stories are escape stories,
stories of reward and punishment.  Only when
we wash the film of domination off our eyes
can we write new stories of yearning and sweetness
beyond and within our precious lives.
 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2023 Susan L. Chast

Seeing the Faces

 

Sometimes when I close my eyes to look for
the face of Jesus, faces of my former students
appear to me. This is no longer surprising, it's
both a surreal trick of the eye and a deeper truth.
I see them living gifted or harmed by how teachers
stewarded our time and place, by our capacity for
compassion. Each student gifted us, too. Even when
I felt frustrated, I was not harmed, but gifted. I'm
grateful for my meetings with students everywhere.
Children of God, they grow into a world with greater
taking and greater danger, and, therefore, need for greater
giving, greater teaching, and greater learning. I can't
protect them with prayers or with hugs real or imagined—
only with openness to hear and love them. And with
greater determination to fight for safety in any society
they enter—a gift for them and for their children, too.

As for their faces—now that I am mostly alone,
I welcome images that resurrect the best days
of my life and clarify their living nature.

Day 30, the last day of the One-a-day Poetry Month challenge for dear, rainy, creative, tired April.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2023 Susan L. Chast

Saturday

 

A day of rest to celebrate
with naps, bagels and oranges,
things that sparkle dull eyes, seduce
tastebuds, and smooth away age’s
aches, lines, and loneliness.  Music
accompanies both joy and care
as it‘s both now and memory,
both solo flight and public square.
A day of rest gives more than time
as possibilities come clear,
a day of rest is a jewel
accessible and most sincere.

April is Poetry Month, Day 29. 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2023 Susan L. Chast

The USPS, Part II

 

Turns out my fault is that I sent a letter
in our digital age.  It was a “Congratulations
I paid off my mortgage” card I hand-made:
That goofy feeling of happiness to pay off
a 22-year debt, and I didn’t think to send it
electronically!  Well, yesterday, I cancelled
my certified check and made an electronic
payment instead.  But I want the USPO to pay. 
They mis-routed and then held my letter for 12
days without notifying me. I’m armed with

receipts: for the first sending, for the cancelled
check, for the extra days of mortgage due,
and for my ruined happiness.  I’m armed
with these poems—poems that are not poems,
but wails.  And then—I’ll sleep.  Struggling
with corporations is tiring work.  I’ll win
quickly or let go quietly.  I used to love
the USPO and stick with them through thick
and thin.  Not anymore.  Nevermore.

April is Poetry Month, Day 28 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2023 Susan L. Chast