by Sydney Chandler, WB Intern
Sharing creative work puts all of us as writers in a vulnerable position, and this is what we ask our WB Attendees to do every time they visit The Writing Barn. We ask our visitors to crack open their imagination and reveal their drafts, their craft, their fears, and their unique stories to a group of fellow writers. I, like most writers I know, am a writer of solitude. I share my works in progress only with the clacking keys of my computer. To me, this idea of revealing work to fellow writers is quite daunting, if not downright scary. And so, with the help of the WB staff, I have curated a post that does just that – The Writing Barn staff has shared below pieces of their own imaginations. Since we ask our WB Attendees to open up every day, I thought it only fair that we as staff members and interns do the same. Considering it is National Poetry Month, we decided to share a poem each. From the WB Staff, we thank YOU, our attendees and teachers, for being fearless, persistent, and incredibly inspirational. Please enjoy! – Sydney C.
Claire Campbell
Program Director
Untitled
The professor said
The mention of a lady’s slipper
Was surely an allusion to murder–
A woman’s shoe left to molder,
Its fabric torn loose by squirrel teeth
Sequined buckle picked clean by the birds–
While the students were convinced
It was a forest flower,
White petals and a drooping pink pouch.
Something that didn’t belong, sure,
But something with roots.
“It’s the name of a flower,” they told him. “It is literally
A flower.”
The professor–whom they secretly made fun of
For always talking
With his claws,
Fingers curved at the knuckle when he expounded,
Said “huh”
And the workshop was over.
The students filed out into the sun.
“It’s a flower,” said one. “I know it is.”
Did the bloom sink right to the forest floor? The marsh? The leaf mold?
Did it shudder as it fell?
Did the creature inside it unfold and collapse?
Did it wish everything unseen,
All it had witnessed
As it bobbed and bowed
On its oh-so-breakable stem?
Claire Campbell received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College and has worked over a decade in teaching, communications, and program development for nonprofits including ENACT, Learning Leaders, Legal Outreach, and the Whole Kids Foundation. She has taught writing to students of all ages, including college and public high school students, and adult writers suffering from early memory loss. She is the co-creator of Homemaking at the End of the World, a post-apocalyptic lifestyle blog.
Kat Shuttlesworth
WB Intern
Untitled
inevitably, they will ask:
“what do you like to write?”
and, inevitably, I will think
oh, boy.
I don’t really know.
first of all, it feels like a lie to imply
I write because I like it.
but how can I tell you that,
middle-aged woman I haven’t seen since
second grade who asked what I study
at my liberal arts university?
how can I find the words through which
you will understand what I mean?
feelings boil up and
over my chest and drip burning down
until I
recreate them;
fill the deep, dangerous silences:
find a naming
that will switch steam to mist.
is this poetry?
do I like to write it?
I guess I must
if I do it so much.
Kat Shuttlesworth is a student at Southwestern University studying English & Feminist Studies. When she’s not contemplating how to dismantle the patriarchy or knee-deep in a literary analysis paper, she’s doing yoga, playing Skyrim, or making vegan sushi. Most nights, her apartment filled with friends, she’ll burn some incense and break out her journal to record how she’s feeling at the moment.
Sophia Velasquez
WB Intern
What I Never Told You
I remember days of adoration. My tiny body
soaked in oats and rose until the bathwater
turned lukewarm. I’d watch my mother from
behind the porcelain as she combed a wire
brush through her thick blonde hair. She’d tilt
her head forward and the golden threads would
almost reach the floor, the hairdryer humming
to the beat of the comb. My baby eyes grew wide
when she’d apply lipstick and a bit of something
brown to her beauty mark. She’d hook gold hoops
into her earlobes like magic, and iron something
linen, standing in her underwear. I would breathe in
her words and her smell and her steadiness to
remember how to be like her, someday. She’d
pull me out of the tub in a cloud of Chanel N°5.
Wrapped in fresh towels, I’d inhale that thick scent
lingering in her hair. She smelled like womanhood,
and I was her lineage, her little girl.
I wish this had been our last conversation—
retrospect of days enclosed by white tile. But I
didn’t see it coming, no one did, so I rambled as
her smile grew heavy with Dilaudid. I just sat, watched
her subconscious mumble and hoped that somehow
she was thinking of a younger me, when I only knew her
as angel, woman, queen. As I watched her, she
was still gorgeous in her suffering, graceful in
her grief. No hair or lipstick or linen, but
alluring in quiet, in patience, in her new choice to be free.
Sophia Velasquez is a senior Writing and Rhetoric student with a focus in Creative Writing at St. Edward’s University. She has published work in Austin Monthly Magazine, the Sorin Oak Review, and various blogs including The Writing Barn, International Studies Abroad, The Odyssey, and Spoon University. Her creative work centralizes around poetry, and she hopes to publish various collections in the future. Sophia’s latest project is a chapbook titled The Rite of Revival, which will be read and released independently at Malvern Books. Sophia keeps her website up to date with her latest poetry and blogs, and hopes to continue sharing creative and professional work with the writing community. sophiavelasquez.com
Jessica Hincapie
Programming Assistant
When Asked What I’m Going “To Do”
with a Master’s degree in Poetry. I mean I won’t be performing
open-heart surgery if that’s what you’re asking, unless you count
the time the moon split down the middle like a peach, pouring out
one million moments spent barefoot by water. I was there for that.
Everyone survived. Funny how ‘write poetry,’ never seems a suitable answer.
Yes, I won’t leave with a knack for knowing different species
by their name, but I once walked into Audubon’s office, his birds
lifeless in their glass. If you were to ask me which stocks
looked good for investing in, I could tell you what I know;
friends are far more willing to paint your room purple
than they are willing to paint it back to beige before the lease lapses.
Certain things we cannot control but you may feel better
by admitting how happy flowers make you when walking the dog,
because soon gold will be the lesser metal. And sure, some friends
from high school are starring in movies now but the other day
when he walked into the room, all of the bugs in the walls
stopped moving and the ceiling ceased its false snow. He looked
right at me without any trouble breathing and I swear some god
in the multiverse was scoring our soundtrack and it was real
because I could hear it.
Jessica Hincapie is a creative writer and teacher living in Austin, Texas. She received her BA in Writing and Rhetoric from St. Edward’s University, before working as Program Assistant at The Writing Barn, in Austin TX. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas (2018) where she served as Bat City Review’s Online Content and Web Editor. She is an experienced teacher and workshop facilitator. She is the recipient of numerous poetry awards, including honorable mention for The Gulf Coast Prize in Poetry (2017). You can find her work in print and online in The Indiana Review, Four Way Review, Sorin Oak Review, Gulf Coast Online (2018) and more. She’s currently working on her first collection of poetry.
Sydney Chandler
WB Intern
Autumn in Chicago
I remember the sound
of the leaves as he scattered
more and more over me
and my red knit sweater.
Koosh, they sang,
the leaves sifted – koosh.
The dead leaves wriggled
around me, beneath
me, on top of me still.
Are there worms in the leaves?
He smiled.
So many!
He laughed, a high pitched
heek – heek – heek sound,
and I remember thinking
it was all going to be
okay. My father finished
burying me.
Click.
He took a picture of my face,
one that I keep hidden
in a shoebox
in the land called Attic,
where I am smiling,
my young face floating above
the orange and grey
of autumn.
Sydney Chandler is finishing up her senior year at Saint Edward’s University. She is studying Creative Writing with a focus in poetry and fiction. When she is not busy napping with her dog, she can be found typing away on her beloved laptop, attempting to conjure up worlds out of thin air. Sydney’s work can be found online and in print in Sorin Oak Review, Voices, and New Literati. sydneyechandler.wixsite.com