Author: Dana Henry Martin

The Writing Life. Parting Words.

I wrote the essay below years ago for a literary organization that ran a series whose focus was on discussing poets whose behavior is inappropriate in an attempt to raise awareness and make poetry spaces safer. The series was also designed to encourage those who’d been harmed to tell their stories. The night before I was going to submit it, someone approached the editor who was handling my submission and told them the name of the poet I was talking about. When I agreed to submit the essay, it was on the condition that the subject not be named or identified. The divulgence made publishing the piece more complicated.

At about the same time, I was made aware of the letter that poet was circulating about me that made libelous statements, as detailed in a previous post. There were also feverish attacks coming from every direction on social media and in private online poetry spaces. One prominent female poet called sexual assault and rape as a whole into question, writing: Definitions have become so blurred and a no-accountability and unassailable victimhood is now the norm. According to today’s definitions of rape I have been raped hundreds of times.

That same poet also called anyone who’d been a victim or was advocating for victims part of a stupid little twat coterie, adding that they need to be sent to bed without their suppers. The fact that she writes for a major publication now brings me no comfort. Someone else used the phrase loathsome creatures to describe victims and advocates. Another called them evil. (That one got hundreds of likes from fellow poets.) Yet another said their efforts felt gratuitous, as if the women were taking pleasure in their pain.

I knew a lot of the poets who were making these kinds of statements. They were editors, publishers, friends, even some of my poetry heroes. Though I wasn’t talking publicly about what had happened to me, and I wasn’t part of the group or groups who were doing so, those attacks were on us all. Every one of us.

I couldn’t see how my essay would have helped at that point. I was unable to tell my story before the chance to do so evaporated. I don’t know what difference it will make now, but I want to share it so I can start to be freed from a horrific experience that began more than a decade ago and affects me to this day.

The last section, “Part 4: The Day You Are Reading This,” was designed for a publication date of more than a decade ago. But it’s still pretty spot on. There’s a timelessness to all of this: both to these kinds of abuses and how these kinds of abuses affect people.

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The Writing Life: Parting Words

Part 1. Date Withheld

We are in the hotel where a writing conference is taking place, in a restaurant just inside the registration area. Hundreds of poets and writers flit back and forth like gnats. All dutifully wear their conference IDs on lanyards, all carry satchels, backpacks, and bags stuffed with books. They are on their way to and from panels, readings, the book fair, and the public restrooms, some of which have lines that extend all the way down one hall and into another.

He has chosen a seat in the most visible section of the restaurant, an open space near the intersection of two highly trafficked hallways, as opposed to a spot tucked deeper inside the venue. I feel he has selected this spot for a reason. For the entire event, he seems to have choreographed who he will be seen with—and when, where, and how he will be seen with those people. Being “seen” with him seems to be his way of introducing me, of making the statement that I am of some, however modest, worth.

He even orchestrates who he will walk to readings with. I learn this the hard way when, one night before a reading, it becomes apparent that my friend N and I are not allowed to walk with him the two or so blocks from the conference hotel to the reading venue. I realize this when trying to make eye contact with him over and over as he and a clutch of women stand at a small bar just inside the hotel’s entrance. I wave. I make more eye contact. But N and I are both ignored, my gestures shut down.

N and I walk within six feet of his group from the lobby to the reading, but it is clear we’re not walking with his party. Once we all get to the event, however, he makes a point of coming over to talk to me. He stands in front of me, his relative height a statement in a room full of seated poets. He touches me on the arms and shoulders. He asks for a hug. He leaves for a while then comes back, repeating the entire set of requests and gestures. This happens three times.

This is just a gesture, I think. It’s only a gesture. Maybe this is the way things work at this conference—new people make their way “in” based on how others seem to fawn over them. I’ve never attended this conference before, so I wouldn’t know its politics or social dynamics, though there do seem to be many of both in play, with overlap between the two.

At lunch, he tells me how much he loves my poetry and my thoughts about poetry. I go into detail about the panel N and I just came from, where the conversation turned to the notion of “doing violence” to a poem. One panelist’s points during that discussion are of particular interest to me, including his assertion that all acts of writing are violent, that language is intrinsically violent. Another panelist rejects this idea and feels more than uneasy with it. Why all this talk about violence, she asks the audience.

We have been in contact for several months, since I posted a note on Facebook saying I was looking for a poetry mentor. He works at a respected university and takes on many students to mentor, he tells me when he responds to my query.

The conversation pivots from how much he likes my poetry to how much he likes me. I really like you, Dana. I really, really like you.

He leans in and asks, Is N— in love with you, as he reaches out to hold my hand.

Part 2. Date Withheld

I am on my way to the first residency of my master of fine arts program. Because of the program’s check-in time, I had to fly down the night before. The poetry mentor I met through Facebook and with whom I have been interacting for months lives near where I am headed. He has offered to pick me up and drive me from the airport to the destination. He has also suggested we get two rooms at a hotel near the airport. That would give us some time to hang out and talk about poetry, he said. He could then drive me to the residency the next morning. He knew I had anxiety about traveling and being separated from my husband. He said he wanted to support me so I could focus on the residency without having to worry about the logistics of getting there.

His gesture seemed genuine. I talked it over with my husband and agreed to take the mentor up on his offer. He made the arrangements with the hotel and insisted on putting the rooms on his card, saying his school would reimburse him because he would be making an appearance at the residency, which is a form of promotion for his school’s program.

As my mentor and I stand at the hotel’s registration desk the night before the residency, the attendant only hands us key cards for one room, not two. Because of a flight delay, we are checking in several hours later than expected. It’s too late to get another room; they have all been booked for the night.

I’ve already taken one milligram of Ativan to sleep, and it’s starting to kick in. I am confused as we make our way down the long hall to the room. We had talked after the writing conference. I had explicitly stated that I was not interested in any kind of sexual relationship with him. He assured me that he didn’t mean his comment about “really, really” liking me the way it had come across. He was just trying to express how much he liked me as a person and as a friend.

In the following months, he gained my trust as a mentor. He presented himself as looking out for my best interests as a poet. The fact that he was a poetry editor and taught alongside esteemed poets in a creative writing program—as well as his assertion that he was especially interested in supporting the work of women poets because we face so many hurdles within the literary community—further deepened my trust in him.

He also earned my trust on a personal level. Once, when we were discussing my poetry, he said he saw evidence of sexual abuse in the subject matter. He shared that he, too, had been abused. That divulgence, coupled with the concern he showed surrounding my abuse, solidified my trust in him. I was speaking with a fellow survivor, after all, someone who was expressing a depth of concern for my suffering that few have shown. There was no way he would take advantage of my trust. What fellow abuse survivor would even consider doing such a thing?

The fact that he is an abuse survivor informs my thinking as we make our way to the room. I am trying to see the situation from his perspective, as a fellow survivor who feels he’s bonded with me in a way that makes sharing a room with two beds acceptable, like a slumber party between girlfriends. He has a very asexual, childish way about him, and there is a playful energy between us. Nothing in his behavior indicates he has a sexual interest in me. Over the past few months, I have wondered if he had a sexual interest in women at all. I don’t want to jump to conclusions that might be unfounded. I both trust him and want to trust him.

I tell myself, He’s not doing this. He’s not doing this. He’s my mentor. He’s my friend. I must be misreading this. Could he really be doing this?

I am still picking up on zero sexual energy as we settle into the room. He places all his belongings on his own bed, not the one I will be sleeping in. I am continuing to get more of a slumber party vibe than anything, which is in keeping with his overall childlike energy. I try to write the situation off as his having confusion over the boundaries of our friendship more than anything else. At the same time, my body is telling me a different story. Panic is setting in because I have so many sexual violations in my past. Bedroom spaces are particularly anxiety-provoking. It is difficult for me to sleep in anyone else’s presence, even those I trust.

I step out of the room and call my husband, explaining that it is one room, not two. He is shocked. I tell him that I think it is all OK, that I don’t believe there is anything underhanded going on, and that it feels more like a sleepover than him intentionally overstepping his bounds. My husband asks if I feel safe. I say that I do. I get off the phone and go back into the room, thinking, It’s just one night. Just get through this. You can do it. Everything is fine.

I take another milligram of Ativan, both for my nerves and because I need to make sure I get as much rest as possible to be ready for the next day’s residency. I make sure he knows I have taken two doses of the medicine and that is for sleep. Still not fully aware of the danger I am in—still both trusting him and wanting to trust him—my logic is that he definitely won’t try anything if he knows I am incapacitated. And I am. Two milligrams of Ativan is a sedating dose. The medicine suppresses the central nervous system so anxiety can be overridden and sleep can be induced.

I lie down on my bed. The sedating effects from the first and second doses of the medicine are underway. He asks me questions about my physical and sexual abuse. This seems like a strange topic to bring up at this time, when I am stressed and tired and have said repeatedly that I just want to sleep. Why would I want to explore this territory after I’ve had a very hard and long trip, when I have taken a sedative, and when I need to get some rest for the upcoming residency?

I can’t remember what all he asked and what all I said. My memories of conversations are usually quite clear, but the medicine was functioning as a kind of blur filter. I know he was asking for details about what was done to me and how it made me feel. I know the line of inquiry was invasive. He was asking for too many specifics, almost like he wanted to trigger me into reliving the experiences of abuse. The timing and context felt off. Something else was starting to feel very, very off—not about his questions but about him as a person, his intentions. I was beginning to realize the potential danger I was in.

He asks if he can rub my feet. OK, I say, afraid to say otherwise. At this point, I am trying to think clearly, trying to not pass out despite the sedative in my system, trying to imagine how I am going to get out of this unscathed, and—still—trying to tell myself this can’t really be happening. My “OK” is designed to buy me the time needed to figure out, through the haze, what is going on and how to deal with it. (And to be clear, because of my incapacitation, my “OK” was not effective consent. It also did not justify what he did next or the deception and breach of trust that got me into that room in the first place.)

Everything is getting hazier. I think, There’s no way he’s making some kind of move on me—especially not while he’s asking me to tell him about my sexual abuse. That would be really, really twisted.

He continues to ask about my abuse as he starts making his way up my legs. With a jolt, I suddenly know beyond a doubt what he’s doing. I am scared, terrified. I am paralyzed—both physically because of the medicine and mentally/emotionally. The fear associated with my previous sexual abuse kicks in. When I was molested, I did the same thing: I froze. When I was sexually assaulted as a child by an older child: I froze. When I was raped in high school: I froze. Freezing is related to the fight-or-flight response. It is a third form of automatic response the body can have during a traumatic experience. Because of my previous experiences, because I am isolated in a strange town and in a strange room with this man, and because I am incapacitated by the sedative I have taken, freezing is all my body can do, so that’s what it does.

He keeps moving his hands higher. He is touching my inner thigh. It becomes clear with a shock what he’s doing as his hand grazes my vulva through the long underwear I had put on in an attempt to sleep fully covered up. Overriding the sedative, adrenaline rushes through my body. I am still scared to confront him directly, to call him on what he’s up to. I tell him to stop.

I need to sleep, I need to sleep. I bat him away.

Do you need someone to hold you, he asks.

No, I say.

Are you sure, he says.

Yes, I say.

Where do you want me to sleep, he asks in his cloying, childlike tone.

Over there, I say.

Not here, he asks.

No, I say.

He pushes: Are you sure you don’t need someone to cuddle with.

No, I don’t I insist.

He gets up reluctantly. As he moves to get into his bed, I can see through his clothing that he has an erection. I think he was rubbing my legs with it at one point instead of using his hands.

I lie there stunned. I can’t fall asleep even with the medicine in my system, and I don’t want to. If I do, who knows what might happen. I lie awake, running on adrenaline and resisting the medicine’s effects, until I hear him snoring. As quietly as I can, I get up and attempt to pull pants on over my long underwear so I can sneak out of the room. I stumble, nearly fall. This wakes him up. I tell him I am going to stay in the lobby or that I’ll find another hotel (not that I have a way to get there). I say that I am not comfortable and can’t sleep with him in the same room. He apologizes and says he’ll go sleep in his car. I tell him not to come back. He says he won’t. He leaves the room. I pass out in my bed.

I feel safe, finally. I don’t yet have words for what I have just experienced and won’t for a long time. Phrases like “nonconsensual sexual touching” and “effective consent” are not running through my head that night. What is running through my head is a single thought: At least he didn’t rape me. That is the kind of logic many survivors of rape and child sexual abuse employ when someone revictimizes them in ways that fall short of outright rape. At least he only did x and not y is our way of creating a sense of empowerment and protection in the moment and not allowing the person who has hurt us to strip us of who we are. We feel that as long as it could have been worse, we can still move forward. We can become whole again, or at least we can live with the hope of becoming whole.

About four hours later, I wake up to my alarm. He is back in the room, asleep in his bed. I didn’t hear him come in. I have no idea how long he’s been there. I have no idea what he might have done while I was passed out. My sense—or at least my hope—is that he did nothing. But in reality, I know he’s already done something, even if he did “nothing” when he violated yet another boundary by returning to the room despite my insisting he not do so.

He takes me to my residency the next day. I am still in shock and still processing what has happened as he visits with other poets, lingering for hours before finally leaving the campus. He shakes their hands. He talks to them at length. I am too scared to say anything to any of them and wouldn’t know what to say anyway. They have a relationship with him. They don’t have a relationship with me. He is somebody in poetry. I am nobody. I continue to operate in survival mode, counting down the minutes until he will leave me alone at the residency, all without letting on to anyone that something is amiss.

Part 3. Date Withheld

The day after the mentor drops me off at my residency, he sends me an email. I really, really like you, he writes. He asks if we can take our relationship in a different direction, into the area of physical exploration and play.

Later, I will look at a book he signed for me the day before. In the inscription, he will say that I no longer need a mentor. It appears he’s decided that I do need a lover, and that he should be that lover, no matter what my feelings happen to be on the matter.

It will be months before I tell anyone what happened in that hotel room.

Part 4. The Date You Are Reading This

This poet’s actions had numerous short- and long-term consequences. First, they derailed my poetry studies. I had to take sedatives the entire time I was at that residency and bawled through half my time there, especially after problems cropped up in the program around issues related to racism, sexism, homophobia, and transgender discrimination. I barely made it through the first semester both because my mentor in the program was good friends with the poet and because the program’s director lowered my grade for the residency, stating that I did not “demonstrate a passionate commitment to writing.” At the residency, the director privately scolded me for arriving at the program with the poet, purportedly in order to flaunt him in front of my fellow classmates. That statement could not have been more damaging to me, or further from the truth.

Second, the poet’s actions hindered my ability to promote my own work. I was limited in terms of who I could approach and who I could trust. I was also afraid to reach out only to have another poet take advantage of me. I sent my work out infrequently. I didn’t pursue prizes and awards in case he knew or was connected to the judges. The list of ways I turned inward and did not actively and consistently promote my work goes on and on.

Third, the poet’s actions limited my participation in the broader poetry community. What he did—and the way I felt obligated to hide what he did out of fear, shame, and the belief that my concerns would be written off or, worse, that I would be told I was lying—has haunted me for years. I’ve passed the half decade mark at this point, and I still have trouble finding a way to move forward in poetry. I have met several poets who are deeply entwined with this man. I have been triggered in my community when he’s come to town to read. I have been invited to take part in safe, empowering groups of women poets, only to hear them mention this man as if he really is selflessly and genuinely promoting the work of women poets. I have tried to share space with him on social media, even though doing so never felt safe. (At one point, when I unblocked him recently, I saw that he was connected to more than a quarter of my connections on Facebook.) When my work is published in a literary journal, I check the table of contents first thing to make sure his name isn’t listed alongside mine.

In short, there is a hole blown through me, one only I can see. I carry that hole everywhere. It is impossible to be whole in the presence of that hole.

I’ve heard too many stories like mine to remain silent, including additional stories about this particular poet. I am still trying to find a path that will allow me to move forward in poetry. I am listening to the voices that have gone before me. I am being more careful than ever about who I associate with and who I trust. I am putting words to my experience and, regardless of the consequences, I am saying, This happened. This is wrong. It has to stop happening. This is about me, but it isn’t just about me. The issues in play in my story—power, manipulation, deceit, transgression, and the sexual assault that rose out of those issues—are central to other victims’ stories. My hope is to join the voices that are already calling for an end to the systematic subjugation, objectification, exploitation, and manipulation of women who want to be part of poetry. My hope is for stories like mine to be a thing of the past, not par for the course. I want all of this to end.

The Letter

Several years ago, the poet who sexually assaulted me circulated a letter about me within the poetry community. In it, he made defamatory statements about me, including stating that I was expelled from my MFA program for behavioral health issues. That’s not the case. I withdrew after my first semester of study. It was too difficult to continue there because the sexual assault happened en route to that program’s first residency, the poet who assaulted me was friends with instructors there, and the director lowered my grade for the residency, calling into question my commitment to poetry.

That letter was terrifying. I’d just been diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening disease that affects my immune system. I had thyrotoxicosis, which is also a serious medical condition. And I had follicular thyroid cancer. The letter was circulating among poets when I was too ill to defend myself. It was me against everyone who adored him and believed him and had already been online making statements about victims being spineless or taking pleasure in our own pain. The poet who assaulted me successfully silenced me by lying about me, intimidating me, publicly shaming me, and using my trauma history against me, one he knew well and used as a way to connect with me and earn my trust.

It was too much for me to withstand, so I stopped writing and buried most of myself to salvage whatever remnants I could in an effort to create some kind of life outside poetry. Birding helped me get through it. Weaving helped, too. But when I had a suite of serious medical issues in 2022 followed by serious mental-health issues in 2023, I knew I needed words again. I needed poetry, so I started writing, and I slowly began to connect and reconnect with other poets, even knowing that doing so could lead me back into pain, into misunderstandings, into being labeled and shunned, into being formally and informally blacklisted and, perhaps, right into the arms of cruelty.

If anyone has any concerns or hears any murmurings about me, I hope they’ll talk to me directly and not make assumptions about me based on defamatory, inaccurate, incomplete, or decontextualized information. I’m terrified all over again because my work is appearing in literary journals, and I’m bracing for attacks. That’s why I’m writing this: not to set any record straight, but rather to make my fear transparent, as well as my genuine desire to respond to anything folks may have heard about me.

Hard News, Bad Choices

Several alarming news stories have run in The Salt Lake Tribune over the past several days. They all have ties to Utah and involve children. Each story is horrific on its own, but together, they’re overwhelming. I cried most of yesterday morning. It was too difficult to process this news, especially given what’s happened and appears to still be happening in [REDACTED], so I engaged in several forms of avoidance, including employing maladaptive coping skills that threw my metabolism off and undercut the work I’ve done following a ketogenic diet for mental health, doing intermittent fasting, exercising, getting the right nutrients, and maintaining healthy biomarkers.

I’m writing about this because I can see how something that’s upsetting can cause someone (in this case me) to do one thing that throws something off, which in turn throws something else off, which in turn throws something else off. Then maybe more bad decision-making gets thrown into the mix as things start to slip, and pretty soon a little movement in the ground turns into a mudslide that swallows an entire house, trees, retaining walls, and more.

Yes, the upsetting thing is upsetting, but the behaviors that follow and aggregate are what drive the mind and body into a state of disequilibrium that prevents a person (still me) from finding ways to sit with and work through what’s upsetting to whatever extend they (again, me) are able to.

Here’s what went down yesterday. Upset about the news stories, I developed a sudden craving for brownies. It was an all-encompassing desire. I went to Lin’s, where they sell Num Bars, which are ketogenic. They didn’t have them. (Turns out, the Utah-based company went out of business.) In my desperation, I got no-bake chocolate cookies instead. (This is when the whole ageism incident happened with the cashier, which added to my distress.)

I came home and ate the whole container of cookies, thereby consuming four times my typical amount of carbs, and none of those carbs were good ones. My body can’t tolerate carbs anywhere north of 50 net grams per day. (I have data from my cardiologist and endocrinologist that supports this assertion. It’s not just a thing I’m saying to be dramatic.)

The rest of the day, I made terrible choices or simply didn’t do what I should have done for my health. I failed to take my supplements. I didn’t drink water. I didn’t do my intermittent fast. I didn’t eat enough protein or, really, anything healthy for the rest of the day. I didn’t lift weights, something I do regularly for my metabolic health. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t meditate. I wasn’t mindful.

In short, one bad choice became more than one dozen bad choices.

Here’s the thing: I was terrified of having nightmares last night based on those news stories. I’ve already had several nightmares involving my family in the past couple of weeks, one of which was incredibly difficult to process. So I sabotaged my sleep before I even went to bed. I’m not surprised that I woke up at 3:46 a.m. this morning and had trouble falling asleep again or that my sleep was especially restless according to my Fitbit or that my sleep score was ten points lower than usual.

What I am surprised about is how difficult recovering is for me. I have a seven-day intervention I do when I need to really focus on my metabolic health. I told myself I’d start that intervention today. I didn’t. Instead, I stayed in bed most of the day. I just now made my way to my computer. My food choices today aren’t great but they aren’t stellar, either. My digestion is hosed, again, just after I got it back on track. I haven’t exercised. It was a struggle just to get dressed, to make the bed, and to make my way to the living room, where I stopped for a long while and watched reruns of “The Conners” as I mustered the strength to get to my computer. I haven’t bathed. My hair is weird. I didn’t even have it in me to put on lotion.

And it’s cold and the days are short, which makes getting on track that much harder.

This all illustrates how a single genuinely upsetting thing can lead to a systemic issue and why it’s so important that we recognize these kinds of patterns. I know I’ve been talking about me, but I’m not the only one who experiences this kind of domino effect under stress. Many of us do, perhaps most of us.

Right now, I’m trying to do things that will help my body recover. I’m starting with water. That seems doable. Then I have to process these stories about children without doing more harm to myself. I don’t know how to do that. Process the stories, I mean. How does one come to terms with the kinds of things discussed in this type of reporting, things happening here in Utah, across the country, and around the world? I want all living beings to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering, but we’re often the cause, and children should never suffer the way too many of us make them suffer.

A Cascade of Bad Choices

Several alarming news stories have run in The Salt Lake Tribune over the past several days. They all have ties to Utah and involve children. I can’t be more specific without being censored by Facebook. Two of the stories are linked in my feed if people want to read them. There’s a paywall, but you can get an idea of the subject matter by reading the parts of the stories that are visible.

Each story is horrific on its own, but together, they’re overwhelming. I cried most of yesterday morning. It was too difficult to process this news, especially given what’s happened and appears to still be happening in my own family, so I engaged in several forms of avoidance, including employing maladaptive coping skills that threw my metabolism off and undercut the work I’ve done following a ketogenic diet for mental health, doing intermittent fasting, exercising, getting the right nutrients, and maintaining healthy biomarkers.

I’m writing about this because I can see how something that’s upsetting can cause someone (in this case me) to do one thing that throws something off, which in turn throws something else off, which in turn throws something else off. Then maybe more bad decision-making gets thrown into the mix as things start to slip, and pretty soon a little movement in the ground turns into a mudslide that swallows an entire house, trees, retaining walls, and more.

Yes, the upsetting thing is upsetting, but the behaviors that follow and aggregate are what drive the mind and body into a state of disequilibrium that prevents a person (still me) from finding ways to sit with and work through what’s upsetting to whatever extend they (again, me) are able to.

Here’s what went down yesterday. Upset about the news stories, I developed a sudden craving for brownies. It was an all-encompassing desire. I went to Lin’s, where they sell Num Bars, which are ketogenic. They didn’t have them. (Turns out, the Utah-based company went out of business.) In my desperation, I got no-bake chocolate cookies instead. (This is when the whole ageism incident happened with the cashier, which added to my distress.)

I came home and ate the whole container of cookies, thereby consuming four times my typical amount of carbs, and none of those carbs were good ones. My body can’t tolerate carbs anywhere north of 50 net grams per day. (I have data from my cardiologist and endocrinologist that supports this assertion. It’s not just a thing I’m saying to be dramatic.)

The rest of the day, I made terrible choices or simply didn’t do what I should have done for my health. I failed to take my supplements. I didn’t drink water. I didn’t do my intermittent fast. I didn’t eat enough protein or, really, anything healthy for the rest of the day. I didn’t lift weights, something I do regularly for my metabolic health. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t meditate. I wasn’t mindful.

In short, one bad choice became more than one dozen bad choices.

Here’s the thing: I was terrified of having nightmares last night based on those news stories. I’ve already had several nightmares involving my family in the past couple of weeks, one of which was incredibly difficult to process. So I sabotaged my sleep before I even went to bed. I’m not surprised that I woke up at 3:46 a.m. this morning and had trouble falling asleep again or that my sleep was especially restless according to my Fitbit or that my sleep score was ten points lower than usual.

What I am surprised about is how difficult recovering is for me. I have a seven-day intervention I do when I need to really focus on my metabolic health. I told myself I’d start that intervention today. I didn’t. Instead, I stayed in bed most of the day. I just now made my way to my computer. My food choices today aren’t great but they aren’t stellar, either. My digestion is hosed, again, just after I got it back on track. I haven’t exercised. It was a struggle just to get dressed, to make the bed, and to make my way to the living room, where I stopped for a long while and watched reruns of “The Conners” as I mustered the strength to get to my computer. I haven’t bathed. My hair is weird. I didn’t even have it in me to put on lotion.

And it’s cold and the days are short, which makes getting on track that much harder.

This all illustrates how a single genuinely upsetting thing can lead to a systemic issue and why it’s so important that we recognize these kinds of patterns. I know I’ve been talking about me, but I’m not the only one who experiences this kind of domino effect under stress. Many of us do, perhaps most of us.

Right now, I’m trying to do things that will help my body recover. I’m starting with water. That seems doable. Then I have to process these stories about children without doing more harm to myself. I don’t know how to do that. Process the stories, I mean. How does one come to terms with the kinds of things discussed in this type of reporting, things happening here in Utah, across the country, and around the world? I want all living beings to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering, but we’re often the cause, and children should never suffer the way too many of us make them suffer.

Realms Beautiful and Terrifying

Awake is my least favorite word when I don’t want to be. Our water purifier started making a high-pitched noise a few minutes ago, a steady ewwww like a piece of industrial equipment humming in the distance, at once piercingly but almost inaudibly. I unplugged it, but the sound made me hyperfocused on my tinnitus, so now I’m just a body that screeches and won’t stop.

I took some sleep medicine, something I rarely do. As I wait for it to kick in, night thoughts do their dark work. I don’t ruminate about minor issues like some folks. My waking nightmares are about my father, my family, Oklahoma, me, the ways in which I’ve been purged, and the things I feel like I need to purge that find me at night when I’m closer to my personal unconscious and the collective unconscious than I am during the day.

I had an unthinkable thought that was immediately ushered by my circuitry to every central and distal part of my body. My feet. My hands. My tongue. My scalp. My shoulders. My gut.

What if, I thought. What if it’s true?

This particular thought is a hard one to put on a shelf until I can process it in the light of day. The “what if” feels less like a possibility than a haunting, a visitation declaring what the world is and who I am in it. I don’t like either. I hope I’m seeing an old lady that’s really an owl, like in one of those optical illusions.

The unconscious realms are beautiful and terrifying. I’d prefer a different ratio of beauty to terror right now. I’d rather experience both while asleep, not while sitting in bed awake, my warm dog pressed up against my calf doing what I can’t do: slumber. I feel her breath on my foot. I feel her chest rise and fall. I feel how soft and small and fragile she is. I feel how much I love her and how much I don’t want to be a monster in a monstrous world.

Awake is my least favorite word when I don’t want to be. Terror is my second least favorite. Monster is my third least favorite. To be an awake, terrified monster inside of what is monstrous is nothing I’d wish on anyone.

Unthinkable

Awake is my least favorite word when I don’t want to be. Our water purifier started making a high-pitched noise a few minutes ago, a steady ewwww like a piece of industrial equipment humming in the distance, at once piercingly but almost inaudibly. I unplugged it, but the sound made me hyperfocused on my tinnitus, so now I’m just a body that screeches and won’t stop.

I took some sleep medicine, something I rarely do. As I wait for it to kick in, night thoughts do their dark work. I don’t ruminate about minor issues like some folks. My waking nightmares are about my father, my family, Oklahoma, me, the ways in which I’ve been purged, and the things I feel like I need to purge that find me at night when I’m closer to my personal unconscious and the collective unconscious than I am during the day.

I had an unthinkable thought that was immediately ushered by my circuitry to every central and distal part of my body. My feet. My hands. My tongue. My scalp. My shoulders. My gut.

What if, I thought. What if it’s true?

This particular thought is a hard one to put on a shelf until I can process it in the light of day. The “what if” feels less like a possibility than a haunting, a visitation declaring what the world is and who I am in it. I don’t like either. I hope I’m seeing an old lady that’s really an owl, like in one of those optical illusions.

The unconscious realms are beautiful and terrifying. I’d prefer a different ratio of beauty to terror right now. I’d rather experience both while asleep, not while sitting in bed awake, my warm dog pressed up against my calf doing what I can’t do: slumber. I feel her breath on my foot. I feel her chest rise and fall. I feel how soft and small and fragile she is. I feel how much I love her and how much I don’t want to be a monster in a monstrous world.

Awake is my least favorite word when I don’t want to be. Terror is my second least favorite. Monster is my third least favorite. To be an awake, terrified monster inside of what is monstrous is nothing I’d wish on anyone.

Justine Chan’s ‘Should You Lose All Reason(s)’

Should You Lose All Reason(s), by Justine Chan

I’m reading Justine Chan’s poetry collection, Should You Lose All Reason(s). It’s based on her experience of a Southern Paiute myth she told over and over when she was working as a park ranger in Zion National Park, which is just a few minutes from our Utah home. I found the collection in the Springdale, Utah, library the day Jon and I drove out that way.

Chan lives in Washington state, where we lived for about a decade. Somehow, that makes her work resonate even more deeply for me. I’ve always felt a connection between Eastern Washington and Southern Utah. Where the land is concerned, I mean. The wildlands and the wildlife and how human consciousness is informed by both in ways they might not be elsewhere.

These poems are enveloping. They’re somehow a deep dive that feels like wading slowly into a welcoming body of water. Some parts remind me of Woman and Nature by Susan Griffin. Others remind me of a pillow book, namely the poems Rebecca Lindenberg has written in that spirit.

These poems speak to place, to identity, to what it means to live in a larger, natural world—or to live away from nature. Of who we are and how we become and how we continue. The speaker, I mean. The speaker, but also all of us. Also me, as a reader. (And maybe you if you choose to read this collection.)

Chan writes this place, Southern Utah, in ways that are image- and sound-driven without sacrificing authenticity, vulnerability, or accuracy:

You will get used to never seeing the full red sun as it rises or sets. You will see peregrine falcons and turkey vultures circling overheard, but never the condors.

None of the pictures you take will be quite right. Not in focus. Or the light’s not right. Or there is just too much.

You will bask. You will burn.

The bark of the spruce on the rim will always smell sweet and fresh in between its flaky scales.

The people will forget there was ever blanket poisoning of the public lands. That there are bounties for pairs of hacked off ears. That less, to rescind, must mean more.

Most of Chan’s lines are impressively long, like someone trying to stretch their arms as wide as the mouth of a canyon. The book is actually much wider than it is long to accommodate those lines. (It’s designed to look like an oversized postcard.) Her approach is somewhat experimental: at times bivocal, at times hugging the right margin or drifting cloudlike down the page, at times interspersed with dates and facts, and frequently breaking into song. (She quotes lyrics from sixteen songs throughout the book.)

I hope folks take the time to read this collection. Because. Just because.

Because the air is so hot, full of rasping. The land so full of landmarks and stories you can’t even begin to know.

Because you feel some part of you was / is / will always be secret.

Because the crickets are madness, a roar that fades to silence / if you forget / to listen.

Flip It and Reverse It

I dreamed I had four hands: two regular hands, a smaller hand with three fingers, and an even smaller hand with two fingers. They were arrayed on one side of my body and looked like some kind of tapered wing. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I just woke up and had to tell someone.

Listen. There’s a sprout growing out of the drain in my bathroom sink, and if that’s not a reason to believe anything’s possible, I don’t know what is. Here’s to 2025!

My sweet husband decided to eat the same things I’ve been eating for the past two weeks to see if any of those foods make him ill. He’s trying to help pinpoint the source of my digestion woes. He started with a nutrition bar I’ve been eating in place of the Munk Bars I usually have. Within minutes, he developed severe digestive issues. This is a love story. It might not seem like it, but it is.

What sings of joy in the face of sorrow? Everything. Listen.

Fighting tumbleweeds in the dark through the construction zone to get to Jon’s colonoscopy. Fell ten times this morning after being ensnared on a phone-charging cable that wrapped around and through my legs like a weed-vine. Screamed so loud all of Toquerville heard me. It’s not the first time.

Three death dreams: my best friend, my husband (or was is his brother?), and my mother. Can’t speak. Can only cry as we pass through downtown, lights washing the LDS church and the parking lot spread like a dark, wet shawl around it. We see an ambulance on the highway. A moving van. A semi. Above, the clouded sky looks like scar tissue.

I accidentally typed hibernaculum as Hubernaculum, and now I can’t stop thinking of a burrow full of brumating Andrew Hubermans.

On my screen, a little horse. A little horse who runs all day.

Like a religion, Gen X has its problems.


If I can survive in Toquerville, Utah, I should be able to survive among poets. I am just saying.

A black cow whose white face makes her look like she’s wearing a sun-bleached skull stares at me as I walk too close to her pasture. We watch each other until we both get bored. I wonder if she tells the other cows my face makes me look like someone who could kill her.

Don’t google the news for “bird kills man” or you’ll get pages of search results about the opposite scenario: men killing birds—really shitty men killing really splendid birds. And then your whole day will be borked because you dreamed you were dead, and you had to find a way to get alive again, and you woke up to your dog vomiting, and the unexpected visual onslaught of men killing birds will be so upsetting it melts your ear wax and gives you hiccups that won’t ever stop never ever ever.

If you are ill, do not lie in bed looking up long-lost friends and lovers to see what they’re up to now. You will not like what you find.

The inarticulate mutter. The inarticulable speaks.

I wrote a long poem in my sleep but only remember one fragment: skinned knees where their hearts should be.

I dreamed I lived in a box for so long I was shaped like a box.

I dreamed scientists discovered that the slime of the American eel cured all diseases. People were turning their swimming pools into giant aquariums to cultivate the eels for profit. I needed some slime but couldn’t afford it, so I broke into my therapist’s backyard and stole one of her eels. When I looked into the eel’s eyes, I felt its sadness and fear. It had given up. It was whatever a resigned body is while still alive but no longer living. I drove the eel to a river and set it free, slime and all, and continued my life despite my fetid interior waters.

Once, a therapist told me I was too involved in the lives of animals. She’s no longer my therapist.

What’s alive is just an animated version of what we’ve already killed. What’s built is just a constructed version of what we’ve already destroyed.

I just learned a bunch of stuff about hummingbirds and I’m sad so sad so incredibly sad about how small and beautiful and amazing they are.

The only friends I have are the ones I’ve made in this life that was never supposed to be available to me.

Individuals don’t have mental health issues. Mental health issues are familial, societal, and political and are driven by oppression, inequalities, and our material conditions, as well as by communities, institutions, and governments. Genetics is just part of it and, in many cases, they’re not part of it at all. We have mental health issues as a culture, as a society, as a collective that’s shaped and governed a certain way. Mental health issues are a shared issue, not something someone “has.”

Men, I like you. I feel the need to say that.

Fuck all but six. I don’t know who my six are. Jeremy, Jon, Jose, my dog, who is surprisingly strong. That’s three (plus a dog assist). Good thing I plan to be cremated and have no funeral service or celebration of life or whatever the fashionable things is to call them these days.

My GPS took me to a mortuary today instead of my doctor’s office.

Meet me in Anodyne.

At the intersection of POTS and trauma, my body goes both ways.

Unable to eat food, I drink olive oil and pray my body heals.

I stick my tongue in potassium salt so my legs won’t twitch tonight.

Poetry can heal my trauma, but what about my broken body?

How many times can I fight men who know they’re killing me (and want to)?

I want to live in these lines, but I also want to live in the world.

Tomorrow I will leave the house. I will be able to leave the house.

Tonight my body will sleep. Tomorrow my body will walk around.

—

Diary of POTS and trauma written in American Sentences.

The sky is an artificial construct. What we see is what we get.

Finally, the Anna’s hummingbird has come to rescue me from despair.

You can say certain things to me in Oklahoman that you can’t say in English. For example, you can tell me to simmer down, but don’t tell me to calm down.

Every time you tell the truth, you find the truth.

That big fat moon is still big fat out.

A term I coined in one of last night’s dreams: Fuckallogy, the branch of study concerned with those who do not do a single fucking thing.

Banal conversation from one of last night’s dreams:

Him: What do you call it when something hairy starts to tie you up?

Me: Very Good or Very Bad.

Him: What?

Me: When something hairy starts to tie you up, it’s either going to be Very Good or Very Bad.

Him: What?

Me: Forget it.

Hello migraine, my old friend.
You’ve come to fuck with me again.

I’m writing for Kelly. She survived things you couldn’t fathom from her first days on this earth, things that aren’t unlike what I’ve survived. But she’s dead now, and I’m somehow not dead. I’m writing for Kelly. That’s that. Kelly is poetry. Kelly is the sky. Kelly is everything even though she doesn’t exist. And none of you can touch her or harm her or ruin her.

My poetry work ends up being a lot of self-care after an incident like the one that occurred with the poet who attacked me yesterday. That self-care includes trying to sleep when my heart rate stays above one hundred beats per minute for more than twenty hours straight. It includes forcing myself to eat even though my digestive tract has shut down, I’m nauseated, and half of me wants to never eat again. It includes having a body that can’t feel anything and isn’t part of anything — the world is painted around me in dull colors and isn’t something I can physically experience through any of my senses. It includes putting clothes on like I’m dressing a child who can’t dress herself. It includes lips that tingle. It includes staring out my window for hours without anything registering or stirring within me. It includes dead words, dead music, dead trust, and a future I perceive as dead. It includes knowing everyone in poetry knows a poet like the one who attacked me yesterday or who does worse, much worse, while they look the other way, minimizing or normalizing the behavior, or otherwise allowing it to continue. How is that last realization part of self-care? Because knowing it is better than not knowing it. Disillusionment is a bitch, but it’s better than living with an illusion. We need clarity about poetry. We also need clarity about poets.

Seattle poetry is a Superfund site bounded by clear-running waters that everyone can drink from. Kansas poetry is a brownfield surrounded by more brownfields that march from Lawrence, Kansas, to Belle, Missouri. Utah poetry is a corrective action site. Tucson poetry is a voluntary cleanup site. Oklahoma poetry is a nearly pristine grassland. You can feel poetry in the wind sweeping down the plain and in the waving wheat and right behind the rain.

I’m here for poetry, not toxic poets. I’m getting back to work.

November. Two bees have returned to my sage bush, its scant blooms dry as construction paper. Winter will strip its twigs, turning the shrub into a sketch of itself drawn hastily, without fanfare, and without bees hovering in the nectar-sweet air.

White-crowned sparrows peck holes in my neighbor’s pomegranates while he’s distracted with his leaf blower.

What blights through yonder window bleak. They are the beasts and bayonets are their tongues.

Do whatever you need to survive. — Merry Mignon Guthrie Thornton

—

This is what my mother told me in a letter she wrote on her deathbed. Do whatever you need to survive. There was a lot more to the letter than that, but that was the upshot. Damn, that woman. She was fierce, and I love her fiercely.

Those of us in the United States may be the last people living on the fringed edge of the world’s last great democracy. As the birds sing, as the trees tremble, as time passes. And more time passes and fewer birds sing and fewer trees tremble and there are less and less of us to remember. These years: Carry them in your hearts. Remember them as long as you can. I’m glad I was here, even if here is gone.

Liquid outdistances itself. The field is fathomed.

Here’s the thing. The mind isn’t situated inside the individual body, so when someone loses their mind, we should automatically know that’s a process that extends well beyond the individual.

Facebook is trying to sell me an urn. It’s cobalt blue and depicts doves flying upward. It’s part of the tapestry of eternity, unfolding in shades of solace. It contains the essence of hope, devotion, loyalty, and peace. It has a hand-applied pearl finish. It’s where love finds its canvas and where memories become brushstrokes.

No thank you, Facebook. I’m still using this body. I will not be burned. I will not be scooped. I will not be contained. I do not consent to this lidding, this darkness, this diaphanous idea about what it means to be dead.

I am a double helix of joy and anger.

Worker bees pass nectar mouth to mouth to turn it into honey. Tell me this world isn’t worth saving.

I dreamed about a ghost who was everywhere. She was emptiness, the purest form of nothing. There was a coldness to her, a hardness. She was a white-walled room full of steel and quarry tile. Her air did not move. She did not speak. She did not emit light. There was no outline of her because she was everything. I was not ready for that emptiness, that stillness. I asked her what she wanted, but only I could reply. Suddenly, I heard a brillowy voice say, “Everyone is death walking.” It was me speaking from outside me.

I’d take a cabinet of curiosities over whatevertheheck is going on right now with the actual cabinet appointments.

(I also want to say poetry is magic.)

I just realized something about birds that I should have understood years ago.

My mind, my mindfield, my minefield, my field. Don’t mine me.

I’m too simple. I think poetry is about love.

In my dream, my friend’s birds sang like birds. My birds sang like men and chased me.

My neighbor texted to say Jesus is in my garage with Mary and Joseph. It took me a very long time to realize she meant the package we’re storing for her until she gets home contains part of a nativity scene.

It’s Veteran’s Day. Our Utah neighbors are flying a flag of Donald Trump standing in front of the American flag holding his fist up while several Secret Service agents grip his body. It’s called the Trump Shooting Flag and is available on Amazon.

My neighbor’s texts are full of typos. Yesterday, she told me the Lord would be home Sunday. Today, she told me Life will go on Monday.

Death always loses to love.

Dorothy Allison is the only person who was able to tell the story of a family like mine without having met my family. She is the sibling I never had and very much needed. Through her, I could see myself, my life, and my experiences in literature. That made all the difference. She brought me in from silence and shame and invisibility. She made a place for me in the world.

Well, fuck. Dorothy Allison died.

The singing did not help. The dancing did not help. I’ve taken to the bed. My dog and I are wearing pastel sweaters. We have books. We have mantras. We have the wind. We’ll try again tomorrow.

I’m really missing Kris Kristofferson right now.

We are ephemeral. What moves through us is not.

I just learned that Tyrannosaurus Rexes danced on leks, which are essentially giant dance floors and that they waved their tiny arms as part of their mating ritual. Now, I’m totally imagining them getting their groove and mood on to something like Missy Elliott’s “Work It.”

“Is it worth it? Let me work it

I put my thang down, flip it and reverse it

Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i

Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i”

P.S. They also used their arms to stab enemies and push sleeping Triceratops over at night. Badass.

P.P.S. What song do you imagine Tyrannosaurus Rexes dancing to?

Poets want to be music. Oh, how we want to be music.

Fear is on fire. Fear is burning dirty like something carboniferous ripped from the earth. Fear is sparking inside organs, turning them into what’s left after a carbon-based thing burns. Fear is not bone ash. Fear is not powdered like a colonist’s wig. Fear is no longer fear. It’s singing in the wind, in the trees, high in the air above this land, our land. Do you hear its singed melody? Fear has turned into song. The first thing we did as humans was sing. Why wouldn’t it be the last, the ever, the always?

Why do we have memory? So atrocities don’t recur. What do we do when atrocities recur? Remember them.

Oh, flounced and feathered world, why is hate strangling you in the flaxen hay?

How to Survive in My Father’s World

1. Write poems.

We’re entering a world I’ve known since I was born. This is my father’s world. I know how to survive in it.

Hate can win an election, but it always loses to love.

Hate was on the ticket and won.

A yard that is not my yard. A grave that is not my grave. A poem that is not my poem.

Just as the world’s finally caught up with my awful view of it, my view has shifted—toward hope and toward love, both of which tumble along like empty buckets let loose in Southern Utah’s wildlands during high winds.

Daily, I die in love and fear—the former extinguishing the latter while drawing it near.

Dead, I Wanted to Live

I dreamed I died. I saw my body lying on its side on a gurney. I was wearing a blue hospital gown. I was sort of in the fetal position, but my arms and legs were positioned unnaturally. I’d been turned and folded into myself after my death like someone trying to fit more garbage into a can.

I watched myself from above trying to figure out what happened. My mouth was partially closed around a laryngoscope. A tube had been inserted partway down my throat. Then I felt it: the heart attack that killed me. I remembered the shock, the pain, the flooding warmth like contrast dye used in CT scans, my belt-tightened chest, the last wild hoofbeats of my heart, then nothing.

The staff didn’t try to revive me. This one’s not worth saving, I heard one of them say. They rolled me into a side room that wasn’t monitored and left me there, where I was now watching over my corpse.

I don’t know how long I’d been dead, but the part of me that was disembodied began to feel cold. Everything went starry and black. Time wasn’t gone, but it was everything together all at once, not sequential. There was no past, present, or future. And it wasn’t a human time scale time. It was the universal time scale.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to be cold forever, and I was pissed that the doctors and nurses let me die. I fought my way back to the hospital room where I was lying. The next step was to get back in my body the way I’d always done in lucid dreams when my consciousness became untethered. I laid down inside my corpse, but I wasn’t connecting with it. When I moved, it was just my disembodied self that moved, effortlessly and mass-free. Finally, with great concentration, I was able to move my arm. Nobody noticed because the room was empty. My heart began beating, but there where no monitors to alert the staff.

I was pretty fucked. I knew I didn’t have much time before I died again. I used all my inner strength to throw myself off the gurney and drag myself to the nurse’s station using my fingers. Boy, we’re they surprised. They immediately picked me up and fussed over me. “We did everything we could,” they told me as they dusted me off. I knew they hadn’t.

I knew then that I cared more about staying alive than anyone else cared about keeping me alive. Even when I was dead, I wanted to live, so I did.

I also knew I couldn’t tell the staff I remembered what they did. If a knowing look even momentarily hardened my face, they’d see it, and I’d never get out of the hospital alive. I had to pretend they tried to save me when they actually discarded me. I had to let devils be angels.

There was one hitch. I’d been dead long enough that I could no longer speak or write without every word being replaced with a different one. No matter how careful I was when I communicated, the wrong things came out of my mouth or appeared on the screen. That’s when I realized I should have stayed in All-Time rather than returning to Earth. Living is nothing if it’s gibberish, if every important word is replaced with a meaningless one, like vole when you mean love or oval when you mean love or leave when you mean love.

Five Things Addendum

I want to add to my November 16 post about five things that have happened to me as a female-bodied poet. Poets #1 and #4 are misogynists. Poet #5 is deeply disturbed. But poets #2 and #3 live in a different space.

They’re both sensitive, talented male poets. They embody poetry in ways few do these days. There’s a kindness to them that’s rare, a generosity that can feel unparalleled. But they struggle in different ways, perhaps not unlike the ways in which we all struggle. Those struggles may be part of why poetry is so important to them and why they need it to be central to their lives.

I get it. But when those struggles have a gendered component, that dynamic can draw some poets closer while leading others to be excluded, marginalized, and othered. That othering tends to happen more to female-bodied poets than to non-female-bodied poets.

A female-bodied poet’s kindness can be taken for something it isn’t. A male poet’s expectations can get in the way of reality. A poet who feels snubbed or hurt or like he’s the one who never gets the girl can cut all ties to a talented female-bodied poet in order to avoid those feelings without thinking about the consequences of doing so, let alone the role they’re playing alongside countless other male poets, which is removing support from, blocking opportunities for, and silencing that poet’s voice and personhood over and over during her/their writing career.

That’s why I included poets #2 and #3 in my list alongside two misogynists and a poet who sexually assaulted me. They may be different from those men, but they still did harm. And this body keeps the score, which means other bodies are also keeping the score. It’s time to talk about the damage being done to our work and to our physical and mental health.