Episode #22
Wild Roof
Roundtable
Video clips of our discussions are now available. Click here to see our YouTube channel!
In the December episode, WRJ collaborators Ann Keeling and Rachel Lauren Myers join hosts Aaron Lelito and Chris Vogt.
We chat about three of our favorite poems from Issue 17: Bracha K. Sharp’s “Waiting for the Gift,” Julia Wendell’s “August Outro,” and Ian Schoultz’s “grandfather passes in the hall.” Each of these selections pack quite an emotional punch and display a remarkable nuance of craft along the way. They are wonderful representations of the work we love to share in each issue of Wild Roof Journal!
We hope you enjoy our conversation as much as we did having it.
Works Discussed
Waiting for the Gift
When the hand of rain is reasonable,
when from the static I can tell that
a storm is imminent, when air and
leaves and sparrows pause, readying themselves,
for lightning, too,
This is the expected journey of the rain—
but yesterday, the storm brought with it
the pause before the fall, the gasp before the
start and with it, the need to
Fall into the storm, to flow, to stand at the
opened door, hands outstretched and face
tipped up.
Now I am ready to receive the wind, the slap
of wet, the vibration—like prayer,
like praise. And this was why I liked the rain—
adagio of luminescence, beauty of expectation—
And when the storm came, I watched the bubbles form on the
deck and burst there on the spot and I,
alongside the sparrows—
all balanced in wet, dripping trees—
bent my head back
To encourage this gift.
August Outro
A pestering two-beat chirp—
a sound my mother warned
was the beginning of the end.
I was a young girl then,
long before I learned
the portent applied to me,
and what comes achingly fast,
then lingers.
My throat catches
on nectar drunk, decades eaten.
I jitter my legs, rub them together,
spread my human version
of a leathery wing.
I aim to have
ten thousand children.
I aim to attract you,
to pierce your ears
with my outro
and not let go.
grandfather passes in the hall
i invoke your death to take from you
the certainty of your hands
that press steel poles into the lakebed
to lay out the dock
in the spring. i carry you
when i am stuffed with caramel corn
“you better get in on this, kid.” i pick up
a fork from the table and hold it close
to my eye regardless of
your warning. i carry
you like a dark heart in the world
i crawl in. philoprogenitive herds
for shelter and warm disinterest.
i evoke your death and ask it
to be memorable. you said
i looked bored at your deathbed.
i guess i was bored at your deathbed
and squirmed in my little body
away from eye contact. i want more
from you now. i want to cross
the bridge north to a wilderness
clear cut and picked over. legions
of copper miners loggers and fishermen
feeding their winnings down the rivers
over lakes. i want more from you now.
birch trees along a highway
whose paper-white bark makes
good kindling though the tree may die
if the bark is removed directly from the trunk.
“i would only do that if it were life or death”
dad said when we went to the cabin
to clean. i will never build a home or
cure deer meats. i will cross a bridge
far too south. small fires on steel
towers burn off natural gas.
the pavement bathes in fog. i invoke
your death to be remembered by you.
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.
Episode #21
Wild Roof
Contributor Reading
Video clips of the episodes are available on our YouTube channel!
Here’s something new for the November episode!
We invited a group of previous contributors to read some of their work, and unsurprisingly, the writers included here present the kind of thoughtful, engaging, and heartfelt work that you’ve come to expect from Wild Roof Journal.
In addition to the audio available here, there video of the reading can be seen on our YouTube page. Enjoy!
Works Presented
Onion Patch
In memory of my father, Vince
and grandfather, Charlie
With the soil now tilled at my feet, I stand, fork-in-hand &
pause. I turn my eyes to the blue dome, a million reflections
deep. Memories image a chain of connection.
Vince’s “Sweet Pickles” – 2 lbs Any Vegetable 2 lbs Onions –
fell out of Cookery Book of Good and Tried Receipts.
Your backhand script bequeathed my childhood: the
chook house in backyard Thornton; the vegetable
garden edged with onions. Nearby, the compost
heap, your work of renewal. A shadowy presence
opens your boyhood in Kandos: town of coal &
cement dust. The backyard was inclined away from
the door. Again onion leaves leaned in the air.
Your father nurtured these bulbs for survival: soups
and stews through the Great Depression. I turn the
earth again. The steel tines powder the clumps.
Onions become memory stills: you and your
father’s hands hold these vegetables. Now your
digging in the onion patch is closer than I think.
_
(Published in Issue 11, Nov. 2021)
Ebb & Flow
Sea Change
Boston Harbor, Gulf Coast, Chesapeake Bay, Florida’s Gold Coast, a beach in San Diego, then finally returning home to the Maine coast; she had all the moves, my mother, all the right moves until my father left us, left her, left me alone on the island where they’d met 25 years before—
Island
Air thick with the fragrance of spruce trees, crabapples thud in synch with the footfalls of deer hooves, the rush of the brook, its belly full of spring rains and snowmelt—time is tricky on the island, we lose track of it, measuring the passage of moments by the level of the tide, angles of sunbeams, degree of birdsong, dampness of dew beneath our feet, shift of the wind. Time, like speed limit signs and milk expiration dates, is just a suggestion.
Cove
My mother in a dark green canoe with the man who tried too hard to be my father serenading her at sunset, water smoothly reflecting their love; here’s where so many years later I kayaked to escape the mother I had unexpectedly become to my mother, cooking her dinner, buttoning her blouses, here’s where teenage me hid the 6-pack of Budweiser, between the jagged rocky ledges, here’s where I swam every time I returned for a visit, the water like ice even in July, my mother applauding each dive like an Olympic event, the image captured over and over in faded Polaroids, blurred instamatic snapshots, 35mm glossies, and wedged in a shoebox, me diving in, taking a leap of faith, escaping my life and later hers—
Tidal Wave
Sudden and random as grief, it hits, this tsunami of dementia, I should have seen it coming but I was an ocean of self-absorption away, her memory first to go, then the accidents—a bridge, a garage, a parking lot; then nothing makes sense, moldy sandwiches in the cupboard, her fuzzy pink slippers in the freezer, and I return to keep watch over her restless, rootless soul, my mother wandering down the stairs at 3am, the same stair creaking like it did when I’d sneak in drunk in high school, she’s an apparition in flannel in the misty meadow, never quite getting to the edge of the water, and now—
Out to Sea
Her recollections come in waves swept out to sea, returning on the breath of a moment, teasingly, washed to a shoreline on the fleeting flash of a wave, and she is isolated on the island of her mind, aqua, distant, on an island of dreams, the syntax of her life in unfinished disarray and in the end, a teacup of ashes perched on the rocks, Easter sunrise with my mother, me breaking the thin skin of ice so I can scatter her in her favorite spot on earth and even in April, spring is as false as my smile.
_
(Published in Issue 12, Jan. 2022)
Channel
The lamp sends down a cone of light,
lifting me from night.
I require nothing
of myself, my mind.
No one awake to make demands.
No work lists, trying
to remember, scheduling, cross-checking.
Nothing assigned, reading nothing I should.
Watery eyes, pages blurring,
the world’s bewildering ways.
Injustices remain, unspeakable.
I step into the current.
Little fishes, spots of bioluminescence.
My finger touches their backs.
Hope
How we came to it, we did not know.
We were a long way from the ocean.
We walked for a long time.
We could not say why we kept going.
Lack of alternative, possibly.
We drank from a deep hole,
water cooled in earth.
There were tall trees with thick bark.
Needles softened our steps.
Then mountains, snow.
We descended to a coast.
Fish and fruit were plentiful, and we ate.
How we came to any of it less than clear.
We told stories that pretended to knowledge.
Everything we saw was full
of meaning beyond us.
_
(Published in Issue 15, July 2022)
Bone Eater (Whale Fall)
All I know, not know,
for I know nothing
and nothingness,
is a liquid thrum, self-wide.
Endless.
I may die this way,
with no sense of
what death is. I might
begin and end with only this.
Then now, there is a now,
a dragging towards
upheaval, cataclysm,
the gong sound
of an all new order
that animates,
that sings a sad
whale’s song as it begins,
and ends with a tender
laying down in the dark.
I make my way by chance,
as seafarers often do,
to a deep place of blind
and slow-bursting life.
I now know life!
Here I settle
and open to receive
its sustenance.
How could I have known to have
faith that this great gift existed?
I root down in a new
eternally-secret world
that will make me an ancestor,
though there’s not much to me at all:
a translucent cylinder of light
where there is none,
a tiny bit of current
where there is nothing else,
but now awakened,
now cradled and nourished,
an infant at a bony breast.
_
(Published in Issue 15, July 2022)
Geode
Hands craft a legacy
on the horizon,
combing through
clouds. Reach toward
a reimagining. Unearth
a collection: glimmering
tools, precious and polished.
Remember when you wished
to become an archeologist?
Remember the gentle
touch of discovery?
Decades of healing powers
on reserve. Wait for the right
moment to strike, to reveal
what we know to be true.
Shimmer. Strength. An unnerved
love. To the core. Rose quartz
frame and you know the rest.
There’s always an exhale
to reach you when your sails
need a push. Elixirs and petals.
Texts from trustworthy friends.
The right words for those
less-than-right moments.
This bounty. This beauty.
This brilliance. The best
part? We’re all in on it.
_
(Published in Issue 14, May 2022)
Landfill Doggerel
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
the Flower that once has blown forever dies.
–The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
I heard the woosh of the bending sickle’s chine and decided to clean up my rubbish while there was still time. I threw my hoardings into the yard where it grew into a mound; toys, boots and books, a blender with a crack that made a clattering sound, a broken vacuum cleaner musting up the closet, a TV without knobs to shut it off or turn the volume down. In the garage were stacks of boxes and cans of lumpy paint, a mower that wouldn’t start, a bike with a broken chain, a sink with a rusted faucet, and a polyvinyl chloride clogged-up kitchen drain.
Then all at once came a nagging doubt, that it might be better not to throw it out, and get more shelves, or a bigger shed, or maybe buy a bigger house instead.
Straightening the clutter inside my mind, I heaved the mound onto my pickup, jumped behind the wheel and started it up. It bucked and jerked when I let out the clutch; the tires bulged, the frame groaned, it couldn’t hold so much. I stomped on the gas and got on the road, headed for the dump at last.
When I got there, I was not the first, and joined the growing convoy of Humvees, flatbeds, vans with trailers, SUVs. You couldn’t turn around if you changed your mind, they just kept on coming, adding to the line. We slowly crept forward, inch by inch, inhaling the landfill breeze, scented with a mix of garbage and the decay of commodities.
I backed up to the dump dock as the sun was setting low, threw my trash into the dumpster that was soon to overflow with armchairs, couches, cinderblock, and tires, rubber gloves and packing straps,1 plastic chicken wire. They hauled it with a tractor to a methane belching ziggurat and spread it on the towering top. Every day thereafter they added to the peak, twelve hours a day, seven days a week.
On the way homeward I reflected on the dump and how the people of the future would find it in the ground and wonder with amazement how their cities are built on ancient garbage mounds. They’ll brush away the dust to find my sink and faucet, unclog the kitchen drain, fix the TV, fix the mower – start it up, then draw the conclusion we could make nothing last and decide they are lucky they were not born in the past. They’ll pile it on a starship, then blast it off through space to terraform the Martian craters with our toxic waste.2
1 rubber gloves and packing straps: Items among the 100 kg litter ball found in the stomach of a sperm whale washed up on Harris Island in the Hebrides.
2 NASA has ambitions to begin industrial dumping on Mars by 2030.
_
(Published in Issue 15, July 2022)
Tulsa
We drove through the backwoods of Tulsa
In a hatchback red with fading rust
Past red-wood barns, water towers, and
Miles and miles of open field
Where herds of black cattle crowded the golden lawns
Like dust mites circling ’round a sunbeam—
A remnant of a bygone age where men
Knew the land and pasture and prairie
Were one and the same: wild and untamed, endless and
Free, all horizon line and zephyr sky.
There we were, cutting cross country,
Admiring the view like a postcard,
Rumbling down the flat black asphalt
Unaware of the irony—
Enjoying the seeming boundless stretch
While driving along a boundary.
_
(Published in Issue 15, July 2022)
Connectedness
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” – John Muir
On October 30, 2018, feeling disconnected and fragmented, I left my family, my friends, and my home to embark on a bucket list adventure to the remote Inupiaq community of Wainwright, Alaska, a place far north of the Arctic Circle. I worked as the middle and high school science teacher in the small village school. The kids were tough, and I was an outsider. Even as a seasoned educator, my first day in the classroom with the 6th graders was indescribably difficult. Reaching to connect with them, I decided our first lesson would be comparing the animals found in the Arctic tundra to the animals found in Richmond, Virginia, my home of 28 years. They spoke of the majestic raven and I of the sweet songbirds of the temperate climate. As the weeks passed and we continued to learn from each other, I felt trust taking root and relationships budding. We were growing our connections to each other, intertwining our cultures, much like plants use the tiny network of fungal roots to connect and communicate. One day, one of my most difficult female 6th grade students handed me a traced drawing of a songbird. To me, it was a simple sign of peace and acceptance. We are all the same, no matter our climate or culture. We all need the same things—a connection to others and an acknowledgment of our inner beauty and wisdom.
Edward O. Wilson defines the hypothesis of biophilia as “the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms. Innate means hereditary and hence part of ultimate human nature.” Connecting ourselves with nature can provide us the space and breathing room to unearth our own inner beauty, find our voice, celebrate our gifts, and confront our fears. Sitting amongst even the simplest setting in the natural world has positive effects on the physical body and can move one from a state of thinking to a state of mindful being where peace, joy, and clarity are sustained. Discovering our place in nature, our interconnectedness to all living things, fills us with humility, gratitude, and awe. We step outside of our stifling small world into the Big Picture where we can exhale. Backyard garden or bucket list outdoor adventure of a lifetime, our relationship with the natural world challenges us to practice our patience, boost our bravery, and raise our resilience as we learn to go with the flow and connect to life’s circle, reminding us we never have to do this alone.
_
(Published in Issue 10, Sept. 2021)
The New Pattern
I spend too much time beside this small stream,
standing, staring, trying to decide if I belong
to the mosses and lichen or the scavengers
hiding. My dog noses the slush beneath
the branches of oak, maple, the solitary
cedar that stretches its splendor in winter
while everyone else slouches narrow and
naked. Like a child, I try to be surprised
again, to look through your eyes. A red leaf
under ice is the iridescent wing of a fly.
I wonder what to make of the radiant
web on the skin of the water. I think I see
a memory of our bodies in happier times,
our fragile veins like dry lightning, summer
moonshine; or else a sign of my desire
to shatter, crack apart, piece us back together.
How I want to climb this bone-cold bark, weary
my arms, burn away my seethe and fever,
and throw myself to the forest floor to bleed
for you a new pattern in snow and pine straw.
_
(Published in Issue 13, May 2022)
The Hatchet Sun
How empty the lake with no water, weeds, grass and dried cattails
where water once was
where water hid fishes
where water gave deer a drink
The lake lay bare, like a lover, the first glimpse unclothed
where I am toppled by heat
where I struggle for air
where water once was
A lone vulture calls; I squint, raspy drawn-out hissing sound
where birds of prey convene
where water once was
where carcasses now grow
Grunting, like hungry pigs or barking dogs in the distance
where bones turn from pink to creamy yellow
where water once was, and fishes and deer
where the hatchet sun sets
_
(Published in Issue 12, Jan. 2022)
The Final Sting
I held my back up
against the sacrifice
of being nice to you.
What was your favorite album of the week?
Did you sleep with anyone last night?
We looked away, scraping
the connection of our feet
to the asphalt.
But our mouths stood still, frozen
on the fight about smoking weed
and how quickly you gave up,
as we emptied out a gallon of sighs.
Crawling back into each other’s senses,
we tempered the strokes of falling leaves,
letting our chests open to the hives
to be torn apart by love one last time.
My voice trailed inside you
as you turned off your ears,
a bee that wouldn’t stop stinging.
I pretended to still have eyes,
lifting my face to get lost in the hustle
of smiling for the passerby flies.
No time to ease conversation through,
my tears hummed more loudly in place.
Both of us crunched down
looking for branches to hold,
for each other to be anything
but still alive.
_
(Published in Issue 16, Sept. 2022)
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.
Episode #20
Wild Roof
Roundtable
"Extra"
Video clips of our discussions are now available. Click here to see our YouTube channel!
In the September episode, WRJ collaborator Rachel Lauren Myers joins hosts Aaron Lelito and Chris Vogt.
We talk about why Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider” is an old favorite. We also cover an excellent listener question: “What are you values and how do they show up in your work?” And we take a few tangents to chat about John Steinbeck, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, Sylvia Plath’s diary, and more.
Thanks for listening!
Works Discussed
A Noiseless Patient Spider
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.
Episode #19
Wild Roof
Roundtable
Video clips of our discussions are now available. Click here to see our YouTube channel!
In the August episode, WRJ collaborator Rachel Lauren Myers joins hosts Aaron Lelito and Chris Vogt.
We talk about the dynamic poem “I Read a Lot” by Evalyn Lee (from Issue 15) as well as one of Rachel’s favorites, “Monument” by Keith Kopka. In between these poems, we take a detour to consider the question “What keeps you going on a difficult writing day?” (…And yes, listening to podcasts is one of our strategies, so press play and settle in for our chat!)
We hope you enjoy our conversation as much as we did having it.
Works Discussed
I Read a Lot
about war. Why? Blame the journalists.
We are living a dead way of seeing.
Can I intrude on your interruption
to say conflict is an orphan factory?
Let’s exchange the gift of trespass
under a blooming arbor between
cascades of empty bird feeders.
Can I help you? Oh, it’s you.
Goodbye. Time passes into history
at the tidal mouth of a river we do not
cross as a sun rises on the horizon
of our choices. Death brings me here
to talk to you. None of us will get out
of here alive. The war will leave us where
it finds us. Birds will jump fish
fly. A leaf will roll over on its stem
to put its back to face the wind.
I don’t know what to say.
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.
Episode #18
Wild Roof
Roundtable
"Extra"
Video clips of our discussions are now available. Click here to see our YouTube channel!
In the July episode, Kathleen Caprario-Ulrich and Emma McNamara join Aaron and Chris to consider the question of “How do you revise?”
If you’ve ever struggled with cutting, chopping, trimming, and changing your writing in order to take that next step toward completion, then listen up! We cover a few techniques that we have found helpful to our ongoing writing practices.
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.
Episode #17
Wild Roof
Roundtable
Video clips of our discussions are now available. Click here to see our YouTube channel!
In the June episode, Issue 14 contributors Kathleen Caprario-Ulrich and Emma McNamara join hosts Aaron Lelito and Chris Vogt.
Kathleen and Emma share a bit about their creations before we move on to chat about two favorites from Wild Roof Journal’s May issue: Melissa Mulvihill’s prose poem “A Mouthful of Storm” and Dawn Erickson’s short story “Fortson.”
We found so much to connect with between these two selections, so settle in and enjoy the conversation!
Works Discussed
and she asked me, have you ever been in Love?
give me your Love’s seed
let me water it, cherish it
indulge it with unblinking eyes
and soon, my dear
we will have a flower
a daffodil, perhaps
but you must let me water it, cherish it
indulge it with sweet, sunlit smiles
from goodmorning to goodnight
and I’ll be a wild woman—
one of those divine creatures I found mysterious as a child
and soon, my dear
we will have a garden
teeming with overgrown daffodils
but you must let me water them, cherish them
indulge them with scattered specks of summer
till winter creeps on in
and I’ll be a wondrous woman—
not simply in age, nor body, nor spirit
but in Love
and soon, my dear
we will have weeds and pests and moldy memories
our daffodils will be mere dust
but you must let me water them, cherish them
indulge them with spoiled songs
we sang in blissful obscurity
and I’ll be a women-loving woman—
sheltered within the folds and crevices of Aphrodite’s womb,
I’ll mold a fresh woman out of
clay and rumors and Sinners’ Serum
then paint sapphic stanzas on some straight stranger’s tomb
and soon, my dear
we will have a barren land
heaps of nothing will plaster our bare bodies
stretch across our thin skin
soon we will exist as infertile soil
nothing will grow here
and nothing will pity us
and when that day comes, my friend
I will return your Love’s seed
and beg you to plant it elsewhere
A Mouthful of Storm
I don’t like to be reminded of the wind between us. These gusts may have brushed your cheek when you went to work this morning, may have blown your hair back out of your eyes where it hangs low, waiting for you to flip it back, but now, five states later, they’ve turned seiche, bellowing in from the west in the dark, their bodies bent around mine. I say please carry me, but not forever, and they say please understand that nothing gets made until all old things are destroyed. I stand on the bare Lake Erie bed, where there’s nothing but sand left because all the water has raged to the east toward Buffalo. Things become lost between you and me, and yet we see them forever, these old things that sway in the dark, so full of gone and days. This storm is a breath of past that insists on itself. I turn my body into the wind and lean forward, arms spread wide, ears full of the delicate and thin pages of us we have yet to write. I hope the wind will hold us upright. This is everything I can say with a mouthful of storm.
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.
Episode #16
Wild Roof
Roundtable
"Extra"
Video clips of our discussions are now available. Click here to see our YouTube channel!
In the May episode, Ash Good and Eben Bein join Aaron Lelito to consider the question of “How does your writing process begin?”
If you’ve ever felt stuck, stalled, or sluggish as you try getting a new piece of writing off the ground, listen up! We cover a few techniques that we have found helpful to our ongoing writing practices.
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.
Episode #15
Wild Roof
Roundtable
Video clips of our discussions are now available. Click here to see our YouTube channel!
For the April episode, Ash Good and Eben Bein, who both contributed poems to WRJ’s Issue 13, join editor Aaron Lelito. (Roundtable cohost Chris Vogt has a limited presence in this one due to internet connection problems!)
We cover three evocative poems from Wild Roof Journal’s March issue. We even have some “behind the scenes” insights from each of the featured writers!
These poems are available to view below.
Works Discussed
serious child
Bloodguilt
We stood on gravel lips of the vast nuclear lake. It glowed green mucus.
We thought it strange to reflect light but not collect it. We watched
with empty beers sticking to our hands. We waited.
We heard them screech as they emerged, their glass wings shuttering.
Flicking off specks of sand like minuscule landmines bursting from the
skin of the Earth. Sparkly little pockets of pus exploding more topsoil.
We thought it strange to kiss someone but not use tongue.
The Bottle Bees are fragile, their fluttering always chipping their own
appendages that grew from discarded shards years ago. They can hardly
fly, little miner bugs.
Through the smog—No substance; greedy, beautiful things.
He stepped enough to shatter their wings.
Little pops under his feet like squirming cherry bombs.
They were quiet, unable to clink or gleam. They retreated.
We’re humbling
the bottle bees, he looked up and backwards at me with a cracked smile,
china plates barely rescued from rubble. We both buzzed
with drunk discontent. We still think it’s strange to wear a cross
and not know what it means.
The moon calves were starting to graze, we put lilies in our hair that
never bloomed.
Awaiting the Orionids
Awaiting the Orionids,
I prepared my wish, to fall
in love again. To fly
and in descent, not to dive
and crash, but level off,
then glide and rise and dip—
a constant motion, like breath,
dependable, something to call
relationship. I stood outside
shivering, and searched
the sky. Free
of moon and full
of stars. Hours I watched
for the promised rain
of meteors to streak hope
against the black. When faint
gray rimmed the mountain range
and encroaching daylight wiped
away the stars like specks of salt
spilled on a tablecloth,
I went inside and prayed
to rest, and the stirring world
love moved among
got on with life.
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.
Episode #14
Wild Roof
Roundtable
"Extra"
In the March episode, Rachel Arturi Pruzan and Marybeth Holleman join Aaron Lelito and Chris Vogt to consider the question of “What is a book/artwork you have grown with over time?”
Several previous WRJ contributors offer their responses as well. Guess what? We come up with quite the eclectic mix–get your reading lists out for this one!
(…And be sure to check out Rachel and Marybeth’s work in Issue 12: here and here).
Works Discussed
Suggested by Brent Atkinson
Suggested by Vian Borchert
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.
Episode #13
Wild Roof
Roundtable
Video clips of our discussion are now available. Click here to see our YouTube channel!
In the February episode, editor Aaron Lelito and roundtable sidekick Chris Vogt are joined in conversation by Rachel Arturi Pruzan and Marybeth Holleman, who both have been published in Wild Roof Journal (be sure to check out their work here and here).
We cover four excellent selections from Wild Roof Journal’s January issue (Issue 12). How did these pieces speak to us? Listen and find out! Each of these pieces is available to view below.
Works Discussed
By Jove
Emma’s parents had a set of high magnification binoculars, which they set mostly at the water, to observe the pods of dolphins or occasional humpback whales that would swim up the Pacific coastline. Her father also had a proclivity for pointing the lenses in the other direction, to accomplish that most masculine of obsessions: finding out what things were called. Emma might have picked something of this up herself, she thought. He loved to discover the names of various impressive vessels that traveled through the Bay, then look them up to see who owned them, how long they were, how much they had cost, what year they were made, whether there were any more expensive vessels, how many people were on the crew, whether they had any support craft, whether they had helipads, how many sports cars could fit in their hulls, and so forth.
One night, however, with a bright light in the sky driving her father to distraction, they trained the scope towards the stars. Her father said, “Hang on, that’s Jupiter!” (a classic masculine move, Emma thought). “Have a look at that!” Emma expected to see a kind of smudge between the orbs, reminiscent of the many times she’d been told that she could see the Milky Way or even of the too-great portion of her junior year of high school spent looking down a microscope at what her teacher confidently described as a slide full of amoebae.
The sphere was small, but far vaster than its surrounding twinkles, and it was in technicolour, a rainbow prism, perhaps on the red spectrum, a cherry, but yolky too, with glowing blueberry accents. It managed to simultaneously glow. She could see four moons as well, in a straight line and extending much further than she thought moons might go. She had imagined moons, she realised now, as relating to planets the way ducklings relate to ducks: quite close, afraid of getting loose. She saw now that these moons were less like offspring and more like what she’d actually read about: debris from the planets themselves combined with the large rocky bodies that had bumped rudely into them and thus created the debris. Moons weren’t the shy children of the planets but rather the Oedipal sons, trying always to escape their fathers but being pulled into eternal return. Well, not eternal, she knew, she knew that our moon was drifting slowly away from the Mother Earth. In her new schema she imagined the moon no longer as drifting so much as fighting to free herself from the cruel and controlling clutches of a narcissistic mother, a crazy woman of a planet. Her father trained the binoculars on a second smudge, and when Emma peered through the scope she could see not clearly but certainly, distinctively, an orb with, from her perspective, elliptical rings.
When Emma saw the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn with her almost naked eye, she felt a great relief: they had not all been making it up, Copernicus and the rest of them. The planets, space, they really were out there doing the things that she had read about them doing. It wasn’t a grand conspiracy built to replace the God conspiracy (which she was fairly sure was still a conspiracy, just maybe a psychologically useful one). Tears welled up and a lump stuck in her throat. She’d seen so many images of the planets, sherbet candies shaped like Saturn, gods shaped like Jove. She did her best to keep the tears from welling over. What a fanciful thing to weep at, she thought—did she think she was some kind of Victorian? Emma observed in herself the way two different knowledges felt. She had read about the planets, the rings, the solar system before, and she would have said that she believed in those things, believed they existed. Now that she had seen them, she doubted the conviction of her prior belief. It was as though her whole life she’d been holding her breath, without realising it, waiting to see if she’d been fooled, waiting for the illusion to end, the possible world’s physics to come crashing in on themselves, and now she could finally breathe out.
Seeing is believing, she thought to herself: corny. Emma had read that to the Aymara—that indigenous people who live in the high Andes who think of the past as being in front of them and the future behind them where they can’t see it—it was really important whether you had actually seen something or not. It was so important, in fact, that it was marked in the language. Every language marks some aspects. Romance languages mark gender, for example. It is a necessary component of speech to denote what gender something is. Even with recent interventions like -x or -@, gender itself is still being marked. In English, though, gender is not obligatory. An example of something obligatory in English would be… tense, in verbs. We must indicate when a certain action took place. Whereas in Mandarin, context as well as aspect markers can be used (but need not be used) to demonstrate when an action took place. In Mandarin tense is not obligatory. In Aymara it is marked whether or not the speaker literally saw an action happen. Someone might say, “Maria painted this wallpaper (but I did not see her do it),” for example. If someone doesn’t denote the not-seeing, those who hear her would think she was boasting, inflating her own ego, telling a story about a possible world as though it were the real one and she could get away with it, making someone or something up inside her head. Researchers Miracle and Yapita observed that the Aymara often respond with incredulity to written texts: “‘Columbus discovered America’—was the author actually there?” “‘Planets eventually, in the space of the universe, collide.’—who has ever seen such a thing with her own eyes?”
Michael Lockwood, the esteemed author of Labyrinth of Time: Introducing the Universe, might agree with the Aymara in this sense. The formation of the moons is quite uncertain, though Lockwood would claim this is because the past itself is uncertain, not just that we didn’t see it. Of course, it’s lovely to consider how when we look at space we are looking at the past, stars long dead lightyears away. Seeing might be believing, but just how many worlds is it possible to peek at at once?
As Emma gazed up at the celestial bodies, the heavenly spheres as they had previously been known, she thought about how she’d read that Jupiter’s centre may be a giant diamond. This she could not confirm, but the presence of Jupiter she could. Or rather, she could not confirm it but she believed it. She believed it the way she believed in a cherry or a grapefruit, the way she had faith in her feet upon the ground. The universe was more tangible than it previously had been, smaller perhaps or maybe closer. More friendly. Winking at her across the cosmos. And this was the exact opposite of a painting, which was a thing designed to look like something. This was instead a thing that was anterior to itself, the light already old, the body already having careened on through the cold desert of space.
Read full story here:
For the American Robin
The city swells west with new plot markers
assigned to grasslands in Waukee. A robin,
the native tenant, surrendered its abode.
Terrorized by blasts from the quarry
it emerges flushed from a thicket.
Its heart has been shattered in the end.
And yet it fluttered in circles over the old territory,
near the community against the hazy dawn sky
fresh as dead leaves plunge to earth,
as if to bring a scarlet warning – a beacon
signaling erratically, relentless, unadorned.
In the barren gully hedged by switchgrass,
razed, no speck of ground left for it to land
and peck a seed or two – restless, in a field
of sunlight between two elms,
no way to evade the exploding rocks
in the quarry. When it finally takes solace
on a shingle, taken wistfully at the glimpse
of smolder, it glides back to the quarry –
hollow as promises – it dips its beak
in the warmth of rocks just split
into a thousand pieces.
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.
Episode #12
Wild Roof
Roundtable
"After Party"
Clip #1
Clip #2
Video clips of our discussions are now available. Click here to see our YouTube channel!
Join us for the “after party” segment of our most recent roundtable discussion. We kept the fun going for a bit of extra art & lit talk. We hope you enjoy the looser side of of podcast recording process…
In this “AP” discussion, Anna Genevieve Winham and Vian Borchert join co-hosts Aaron Lelito and Chris Vogt to address the question of “What is your favorite break-up poem?”
Check out the selections listed below, which are covered in this episode.
Works Discussed
I Am No Good at Love
I am no good at love
My heart should be wise and free
I kill the unfortunate golden goose
Whoever it may be
With over-articulate tenderness
And too much intensity.
I am no good at love
I batter it out of shape
Suspicion tears at my sleepless mind
And, gibbering like an ape,
I lie alone in the endless dark
Knowing there’s no escape.
I am no good at love
When my easy heart I yield
Wild words come tumbling from my mouth
Which should have stayed concealed;
And my jealousy turns a bed of bliss
Into a battlefield.
I am no good at love
I betray it with little sins
For I feel the misery of the end
In the moment that it begins
And the bitterness of the last good-bye
Is the bitterness that wins.
Morning
I’ve got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death
in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe
chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow
At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes
I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine
although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you’d be proud of
the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle
what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it
is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone
Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I’ll not be cordial
there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is
when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
A Winter’s Tale
Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow,
And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;
Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go
On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge.
I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf
Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;
But she’s waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half
Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh.
Why does she come so promptly, when she must know
That she’s only the nearer to the inevitable farewell;
The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow –
Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell?
The Mess of Love
We’ve made a great mess of love
Since we made an ideal of it.
The moment I swear to love a woman, a certain woman, all my life
That moment I begin to hate her.
The moment I even say to a woman: I love you! —
My love dies down considerably.
The moment love is an understood thing between us, we are sure of it,
It’s a cold egg, it isn’t love any more.
Love is like a flower, it must flower and fade;
If it doesn’t fade, it is not a flower,
It’s either an artificial rag blossom, or an immortelle, for the cemetery.
The moment the mind interferes with love, or the will fixes on it,
Or the personality assumes it as an attribute, or the ego takes possession of it,
It is not love any more, it’s just a mess.
And we’ve made a great mess of love, mind-perverted, will-perverted, ego-perverted love.
“One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop (from Anna Lockhart)
“Snow,” Ann Beattie (from Kaleigh Spollen)
“Here We Are,” Lauren K. Watel (from Erica Avey)
“Home Burial” Robert Frost (from Valyntina Grenier)
Intro music for this recording is “y o y o” by Katie Dey, used with permission from the artist. See her albums at katiedey.bandcamp.com.