So you wanna open my --- box

Because I have one now, and its got some goodies. Ok, so that question was never posed to me tonight at the Mothertongue reading, but I thought it would be a damn funny opening line. You see, they were giving out free sex boxes---yes, they (meaning the Whitman Walker Clinic) were encouraging safe sex during a poetry reading. I often wonder how far to push things in our writing---if we can write about sex in a public forum, but perhaps because it is something taboo, too many people are misinformed about their choices and wind up in positions they would rather not be in, we need to encourage dialogue, because when we discuss sex, we are essentially discussing life. So now, about my life...

I had met Natalie from mothertongue a few readings ago and tonight's readings proceeds benefitted the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence, so there were numerous reasons to go. There are days when we need to be reminded why we do the things we do. Tonight was one of those readings---more raw, words clawing, breath jagged and brazen tongues tying the political to the sexual to the individual collective. I remember going to Open Mic nights at Brady's Cafe in Kent, Ohio to really hear. To see the beauty of what it means to be open, tasted, heard, and alive. I was taken back to those moments of passion when I heard my own voice speaking from inside that place that we name heart, or mind, or soul, those elusive words that I tell my students need to be more specific. Last night I recall asking Robert Pinsky how he translates Biblical text to poetry, hoping to find out more about the art in which we do---b/c I am at a loss to describe the process, of how painting becomes poem in my own work, the nuts and bolts of feeling, perceiving, thinking, describing---but he echoed what I felt tonight--it is like walking or riding a bike. You just move. Tonight the bones shook.