Timothy Geiger

Timothy Geiger on “Maybe Mice”

“Maybe Mice” was written during a one-week residency at the Sundress Academy for the Arts outside Knoxville, Tennessee. It was an incredibly productive week that allowed me to draft nine new poems; and for the opportunity, I remain incredibly grateful. I stayed in a tiny cabin called “The Writer’s Coop” about a quarter-mile back in the woods, with no electricity or running water, and heated only by an old cast iron wood-stove.

Under a canopy of oak trees, on a moss-covered deck looking out over a small “holler,” I sat bundled in a blanket and wrote as the first cold-spell of November began to settle over the countryside. I remember being dumb-struck by the sounds of all the birds that called that small valley their home. I could hear them, but rarely did I see them, as they spent most of their time in the branches above. Isolated away from civilization as the cabin was, every sound was clear and echoed off the hillsides. I could hear warblers, and chickadees, and occasionally the screech of a red-tailed hawk, and sometimes if I looked at just the right moment, I caught the sight of anonymous tail-feathers through the branches. Somewhere at one end of the holler, a small spring bubbled up, and when the wind was right I could hear it as well. I spent one afternoon looking for the source of that spring, and though I could hear it, I never could find exactly where it began.

Likewise, that quality of what was hidden translated to inside the cabin as well, where every night I fell asleep to the patter of something (maybe mice) crossing wall to wall above the oak paneled ceiling. I liked that I could imagine what those harmless critters looked like, but liked better still that I could picture them building an entire city concealed out of sight, a city built entirely in my imagination. Like the birds, and like the origin of the fresh-water spring, I never once saw them. In the quiet of that forest setting I spent so much time just listening, and through the act and effect of listening I felt my imagination triggered anew.

Most of the poems I wrote that week are about things I never witnessed, but those poems became a testament to the power of listening closely. Whether hidden by oak leaves, or among the timothy grasses covering the valley floor, or overhead behind a wood paneled ceiling, I realized just how little it takes to make a whole world out of the dark.

Patricia Behrens

Patricia Behrens on “New York City Field Notes: Spring 2020”

At 18 years old I left the small town in coastal Massachusetts where I grew up and came to New York City to go to college. I fell in love with the city and never left.  

In the spring of 2020, New York City became the epicenter of the new Covid-19 virus. Many residents fled.  Those who stayed sheltered in place in a locked-down city with lives suddenly frozen in place.

Illness and death affected our friends and neighbors and entered the apartment buildings where we lived. People lost jobs. We worried about how bad things might get. Ambulance sirens were constant. Their howling was like wind that died down occasionally but never entirely went away.  I could forecast the next day’s death numbers by how the sirens sounded outside my windows.

During this time the city was also eerily beautiful.  

Except for the sirens, the city was quiet, stripped of its usual constant noise. Central Park West outside my door was free of traffic, as if it had been cleared for a parade. The air was fresh—light and clean. 

People talked about the sound of birds in the parks, which, suddenly, we heard. We wondered: had the birds always been there?  Had their sound simply emerged as the usual city noises receded? Or were they part of a new influx of wildlife drawn by our now more natural city?  We speculated about it; no one seemed to know.  

Deprived of my usual exercise at gyms and pools, I walked the city.  Tourist sights that I had never imagined seeing without people—Times Square, Bethesda Fountain—stood almost empty.  And I thought, someday, when we look back on this time, we will not only remember the anxiety and grief, we will also celebrate these moments of beauty. 

But we weren’t able to talk about them at the time—at least I wasn’t—because it felt wrong to celebrate anything, except for the clapping at 7. Then the whole city would briefly come together at open windows to clap and bang pots and pans and ring bells in shared recognition of healthcare workers and other essential workers.  The 7 o’clock ritual gave structure to our days.

The poem “New York City Field Notes: Spring 2020” was written during this time about this time, in an early effort to grapple with its contradictions.  

The poem doesn’t try to come to terms with them—for me, and for many others, I suspect, this will need to come later or perhaps not at all. It is just meant to be, as the title says, among the field notes. 

And it also should be said that the cherry trees that appear in the poem are themselves hardy city survivors.  Some say that they include one or two gnarly centenarians that date back to Japan’s 1912 gift of Yoshino cherry trees to the United States.

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KATIE KELLEHER

Katie Kelleher on “Empty Seat SERIES—Cowee Mountain”

The “Empty Seat Series—Cowee Mountain” is part of a larger photographic work. The Empty Seat Series of photographs was created through solo hikes up mountain trails and overlooks across beautiful Western North Carolina, explorations through windows of abandoned buildings and alleyways, treks across creeks and into tunnels, and emerging from exploding colored smoke. The empty chair represents that which is unseen yet is present wherever I go: my mental illness. To other viewers, it has represented an overseas or absent loved one, someone who has passed away, or even one’s own mind and sense of self in a Gestalt Therapy manner. Many of the locations, such as Cowee Mountain, were chosen for their natural elegance and to juxtapose nature with manmade invention.  

Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Elizabeth Kerlikowske on “Any Way You Slice It” and “Suburban Garnish”

My grandparents blessed me with boredom.

Growing up, my sister and I were taken from our city life and removed to a cottage on a lake in northern Michigan.  It was us and old people. They liked to go on rides to obscure (The Nook in the Woods, surely you’ve heard of it?) destinations, eat lunch, drive back to the cottage, Gran and her sisters or her friend Merle. Sis and I in the back seat, me reading, Sis biting her nails.  Every so often, Gran would turn around and yell, “Put that book down and look out the window!” Nancy Drew slammed shut, and I put my nose to the glass.

When it rained, I discovered rain drop wars, where individual drops blown against the window at 55 mph joined other drops, became rivers, invaded other pools and dissolution ensued. It is a short step from that to understanding that all objects have a voice, and if you look and listen, you can discover them. A healthy relationship with personification helps.  

In “Any Way You Slice It,” the toaster is a substitute for the wife, watching her husband go crazy, stuck in the kitchen, secretly glad all this bad stuff is happening to him. I don’t know that when I’m writing, though. It really is just a toaster. When he turns his violence to the toaster and she sails for the first time in her life, it’s a little like the end of Thelma and Louise: this moment of release, never mind what comes after.  Because the toaster has a good landing, there’s hope for a better life, that someone walking past just needs a toaster!

Even as a kid, I thought houses looked ridiculous in bows. They are the height of “Suburban Garnish.”  Lights are okay. Maybe candles in the window, which can also be kind of spooky. I wondered how the house felt about it. Neighbors decorating their houses the way you would dress up a dog or a kid, who then exhibit this passive yet slightly hostile patience. Because neither the toaster nor the house go anywhere, there is a sense of stability to them both I find comforting.

I became serious about writing when I was sixteen.  My junior year, I wrote a story for my English class that I thought my super-Christian teacher would love. He called me out into the hallway. Instead of praise, he said, “You should see a psychiatrist.”   That was when I understood the power of writing. I did not see a psychiatrist until 20 years later.