What Nancy Lanza Knew

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What Nancy Lanza Knew

by

Sonya Huber

I was in the grocery checkout line when I learned that Adam Lanza killed his mother. Over the following days, the facts wavered in the Internet deluge: she did work at the school or she didn’t; she was nice or high-strung; she worked or she didn’t. In that moment, though, I wasn’t judging her. I started to cry as I paid for my groceries, and the cashier cried along with me. That’s what women were doing in the grocery store that day, piecing together information, opening up the same conversation with strangers, hurting each other with facts so we could all bear the eventual load together.

I admit that I am quite rattled by this, partially because I live about 40 miles from Newtown–close enough to have friends whose kids attend that school district, and close enough to know people who know families in which children and grown children have been murdered.

I’m rattled—as is the country and beyond—about the invasion of guns into a school for young children, an institution which is not exactly a home but is more domestic than most public spaces. It is, in a way, an extension of the home, a place we trust as special and separate. Its invasion is a public form of domestic violence, a targeting of our most vulnerable, an attack on many families. The blog Legal Justice School Info clarifies the connection: “Although Lanza allegedly killing his mother could be considered an act of domestic violence (and the RI Coalition Against Domestic Violence calls murder-suicide ‘the ultimate act of domestic violence’), the murder spree that extended to the school far exceeds the typical domestic violence scenario.”

I was devastated by the death of the children and school personnel, but I—like most people—kept coming back to the issue of the family in a fruitless attempt to seek out causes. Driving home, I began to think about Nancy Lanza as a victim of domestic violence—an analysis also pointed out briefly in an excellent Ms. Magazine blog piece by Soraya Chemaly entitled “Why Won’t We Talk About Violence and Masculinity in America?” I want to explore why this might matter, but I don’t have any wedge-shaped thesis to drive into this problem; I can’t split it open or solve it. I am just bringing this to my fellow adults as we encounter each other in the grocery store of despair.

First, we think often of domestic violence as that committed by an intimate partner or spouse, but many definitions cover violence committed by one family member toward another. Within that category is a specific subset of Child-to-Parent Violence (CPV). I’m interested in the specific risk factors for CPV, but first I want to think about Nancy’s life and what little we knew of it.

What we have begun to see is that the hell of Nancy Lanza’s life had probably been unfolding for years, even since her son Adam was five. I imagine she knew what her son was capable of and had no idea how to stop it. Or, worse: that part of her knew while another part of her mind shrouded that fact in denial in order to function and to have hope for the future.

I have lived with a person beset and stricken with mental illness, and that day-to-day life can be excruciating. I never mothered that someone with mental illness, and that life I cannot imagine. All I know or can imagine is that one’s hope and desire for recovery for one’s child must be boundless, and anxiety must grow even as you fear to tell friends and neighbors the truth. She had horrible trouble brewing at home. Maybe she saw it coming. But if she saw it, what could she have done? Her co-workers might have thought she was crazy for “putting up with” her sons, or maybe they just had sympathy. They might have spouted out impractical advice—“kick him out”—that she knew was impossible. She might have worried that she was complaining too much.

I can imagine her daily pretending mingled with hope: “I’m fine” and “He’s doing better,” the fear when he wasn’t taking his medication, the not knowing whether he was having a good day or a bad day. Trying to get mental healthcare for a family member who is almost an adult or fully adult presents a host of daunting complications; you can’t push too hard or you will offend dignity and autonomy, and everything will blow up in your face and you’ll be seen as “controlling,” triggering the paranoia and aggression. She must have worried herself sick and let it take up so much space in her head. Then occasionally I imagine there were good days and bursts of clarity, apologies, and moments that connect to good memories. I imagine it was not all hell, but such a wide range of unpredictability that it became its own special kind of hell, the kind that erases hope for the future with the amazing demands of the present.

Maybe she even made a step for the positive, decided she couldn’t take a certain behavior any more. I imagined this: that she had told her son “No.” She had worked up the courage to do something different. Maybe she’d just refused to give him money. Maybe she’d insisted he see a doctor. Maybe she’d just told him not to do something that was insulting, or maybe she’d insisted he do something besides play video games.

Nancy and her husband split “about a decade ago,” when Adam was ten. He was described as “really depressed” by a neighbor after the divorce. The divorce was finalized in 2009, which meant it was most likely long and contentious, a six-year process. What is it like for a single mother to go through a six or seven year divorce while also trying to control a child with multiple behavioral challenges? Before an official divorce, a husband is often not obligated to pay child support. For that six or seven year gap between the separation and the legal divorce, also the time of Adam’s adolescence, we have no idea about the couple’s finances or the stresses Nancy was under.

In those situations, for a woman alone with her children, the world seems and is a frightening place. We live in a culture where single mothers can be blamed for everything while ex-husbands seem to disappear into a kind of invisibility and are praised if they make any effort at all. Being a single mother is often incredible isolating, and I cannot imagine the experience of having to quit work, leave one’s connection to the outside world, in order to care for a mentally ill child during that same experience. That was a decision Nancy Lanza made.

Like most victims of domestic violence, Nancy Lanza does not have public sympathy. The commentary surrounding her death have been almost unanimous in judgment. Even progressives and liberals by and large have implicitly branded her a “gun nut” who was apparently asking for what happened to her because of her predilection for weapons.

More than one of my friends has been threatened with a gun during their marriages; divorce in such instances is a terrifying prospect. I know that in the aftermath of a scary divorce, I seriously contemplated buying a gun. (I didn’t because I knew I was the last person on earth who should handle a gun, and I believe in calling 911). I didn’t want to shoot someone, but I had moments of incredible vulnerability in which I worried about my safety and in which I knew that ultimately I was the only person around to defend myself and my child.

That is the reason why I turn to the cipher in this debate: the ex-husband, Peter Lanza, and I am intrigued by the utter lack of attention paid so far to the father of Adam Lanza. The only attention paid to him has been to list his regular alimony payments, his “academic background,” his new marriage, his new red-brick household in Stamford, CT, and his good suit-wearing job as a Vice President of Taxes for GE Energy Financial Services. He looks like a nice guy and he’s painted like a nice guy. He might be a nice guy, but all our stereotypes of class and race point us in the direction of assuming he’s a nice guy. An article in the New York Daily News ends with a huge nod of sympathy toward the pain Peter Lanza must be going through. The comments on below that article focus on excoriating Nancy Lanza for causing this entire catastrophe.

The stress of caring for a child with difficulties can strain any marriage. What if Peter Lanza put the entire burden of controlling Adam’s escalating behavior onto Nancy, and she was so disgusted and trapped that the only solution she could think of was to escape the marriage to have one less problem to deal with? That’s not as uncommon as you might think. Some male parents belittle and demean female parents for not being able to “do their job” of controlling or “fixing” a child. I’m not saying it’s true; the only thing that’s true is that we have no idea, and it’s strange that the man’s role in this complex dynamic is invisible.

Peter Lanza’s lawyer describes him as very upset about the divorce. This article claims Nancy “divorced” Peter as if it were a spurious decision. Let’s put it another way: for some reason, she felt like she had to leave that marriage.

We have no idea what kind of guy Peter Lanza is. I am worried that class bias will obscure yet another series of secrets in yet another home. It’s clear, based only on buying power, that there was a huge power imbalance in the home based on economics alone: tax accountant versus substitute kindergarten teacher. Studies indicate that one risk of CPV includes an unequal division of labor in the home, which means that the children see the mother being exploited and her labor being undervalued on a regular basis, they will see her as slightly less than human and not deserving of respect. We don’t know if this was the case—but we don’t know it wasn’t. Another risk of CPV includes whether the child had previously witnessed domestic violence in the home; a study by Murray Straus and Ariana Ulman in The Journal of Comparative Family Studies (34:1, Winter 2003) declared that CPV was “rare” when the child had not previously witnessed violence between parents and more frequent when the child was a target of corporeal punishment. Other risk factors for CPV include all of Adam Lanza’s context: being a white male in a single parent family.

I’m not saying Peter Lanza is to blame because I don’t know anything—and now, none of us may ever know. But if we are going to get into a family’s business in the search for answers, we should know that our search for blame and vengeance should not easily and comfortably rest where sexism and prejudice so often naturally settle: on women because they are women, because they are tasked with caring for our children when no one else will.

***

Sonya Huber is the author of two books of creative nonfiction, Opa Nobody (2008), shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize, and Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir (2010), finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year. She has also written a textbook, The Backwards Research Guide for Writers: Using Your Life for Reflection, Connection, and Inspiration (2011). She teaches at Fairfield University. More at www.sonyahuber.com.

The Weight of a Gun

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Tawnysha Greene

The Weight of a Gun

by

Tawnysha Greene

When I was eight years old, I shot my first semi-automatic weapon, but that wasn’t the first time I had ever held a gun. When I was three, I wandered into my grandparents’ bedroom where I found a loaded handgun on the bedside table. I picked it up and played with it, alone, until my grandmother found me with it several moments later.

Guns were everywhere when I was a child. Growing up, my father served as a chief warrant officer in the Army and always carried a weapon on exercises and deployments. One of his gun holsters, a leather one that went over the shoulder and had a pocket that hung along the ribcage, was one of my favorite playthings, and when I was young, I would take it from my parents’ closet and pull it over my head, pretend that I was him.

While I never went shooting with my father, I would go with my grandfather to empty fields near his house and shoot cans and bottles with his pistol and a .22 rifle. I was a better aim with the rifle, but the pistol was my favorite. I liked the weight of it in my hands, the kick of it against my palm when I pulled the trigger, and the plume of dust that would fly up on the ground where each bullet landed.

The weight of a gun feels different now. The last time I shot a gun was over Thanksgiving weekend. I went with my husband and his father to some property that my father-in-law owns, and we spent the morning shooting at empty coffee cans and Gatorade bottles. We brought our 9mm, a gun my husband owns and keeps in our home, but I found that I no longer shoot a gun the way I had as a child. I pause more between each shot. I miss the targets often. When my husband watched to see why I was missing, why the bullets didn’t fly to the side, but popped up, the hot brass hitting my face after each round, he saw that I was flinching before each shot, my hands twitching as my eyes closed the split second I pulled the trigger.

I know what these guns can do now. As I helped my husband and father-in-law clean up our targets for the ride home, I looked at the wreckage–the coffee cans now riddled with holes, the tin splitting and bending back where the bullets had gone through, the Gatorade bottles, now warped and unrecognizable, their tops gone. As I looked at these things, I thought to earlier that morning when we had gone to buy ammunition and had to go from place to place to place, because everyone was sold out. Bullets are one of the first things to go on Black Friday, the clerk at the guns counter in Wal-Mart had told us.

In the aftermath of the school shooting at Newtown, Connecticut, I think back on the ruined targets I collected that morning and can only imagine what kind of damage these bullets would have done to a human being. As I watch the news stories of the devastation of the mass shooting that claimed so many lives, I am reminded that targets are not always things. They are not cans in an empty field. They are not the inanimate targets in my father’s Army field exercises. The targets are people. They are our neighbors. They are our friends. They are our family. They are us.

Coming from a military family where I had been taught the targets were “bad guys,” it was easy to overlook the damage such guns could do. Guns were a necessity and weapons to be proud of when deployed and at home. My father had served in Iraq. My sister’s husband is currently deployed in Afghanistan. My cousin is currently serving in Kuwait. On Facebook, sometimes, they post pictures of themselves in a helmet and bulletproof armor, in their hands a fully loaded M4 carbine assault rifle mounted with a grenade launcher. These guns are indicative of their bravery, their loyalty to their country, and their strength as soldiers.

When my father returned home from his deployments, he would turn in his guns and a designated soldier would sign them in at an armory room and lock them away. This room was patrolled by security guards and soldiers regularly took an inventory. Guns had their purpose and they had their place. When I grew up and left for college, I found that that guns had their place in the civilian world as well, but in a more personal sense–for the protection of our lives and the people we love.

I understood why we needed one. One of the windows in the house we own is loose in its frame from where an intruder had broken through before we moved in. Earlier this year, all of the cars on our street were broken into, various things stolen and the culprits still on the loose. When my husband bought his gun, he underwent the waiting period and background check, filled out the paperwork, and paid the necessary fees. He obeyed the requirements, and we have always kept the gun locked away, unloaded, the ammunition and gun in separate locations.

However, while I have found there are responsible gun owners who follow the rules in the civilian world, these regulations are not working as evidenced by the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut and every mass shooting that came before it. Regulations for the sale and use of guns need to be more uniform across the states, more thorough background checks performed, and gun owners themselves need to be more conscientious about how they use and store their guns once they have passed these regulations.

Furthermore, we need to distinguish exactly what is necessary when preserving the second amendment. When early citizens of the United States passed the right to bear arms, the weapons of the time were a musket or a pistol that fired a single shot at a time and took up to a minute to load again. Today, we have automatic assault rifles that unload an entire magazine full of bullets in the span of mere seconds. While regulated, these guns are legal to own and operate in the United States. However, are these guns necessary to protect our homes and our families? No, they are not.

We need to understand that with the right to bear arms comes the necessity of honesty about what exactly that right entails. As civilians, we need to realize the distinction between weapons for protection and weapons for mass slaughter. Guns were not misused in cases like the shooting at Newtown, Connecticut–they were being used exactly as they were designed and intended–and while there are conscientious gun owners who abide by gun laws and operate their weapons safely, there are so many more gun owners who do not. As a result, we need to take a hard look at our priorities as a nation. What do we value more–our gun rights or the lives of those we love?

We need to address gun control and more importantly, address the people behind these guns. Too often, attackers have exhibited warning signs before mass shootings such as the one in Newtown, Connecticut, including strange or violent behavior, and too often, we choose to ignore these signs. While many counseling centers are readily available, the social stigma of battling a mental illness or seeking counseling is an unfortunate barrier that prevents so many from getting the help they need. We need to reach out to our neighbors. We need to be there for our friends and family and offer them assistance. We need to know when we, ourselves, need help.

There is a free counseling center at the college campus where I teach. They take walk-in appointments. The counselors call and check in on those who have sought counseling. I discovered these things when I referred some of my own students there. It is easy to ignore the warning signs, because the topic may be personal or uncomfortable and we feel it is none of our business, but it is our business. It is our business to notice when someone is struggling, to listen when they say they need help.

While mass shootings like this one spur outpourings of sorrow and moments in which we cherish our family and our children more, we cannot wait for another tragedy to prompt us into hugging our children tighter and telling them more often that we love them. We need to do this every day. We need to reach out to those around us and listen. We need to take notice when something is wrong. We need to understand the weight of lending an ear and the weight of embracing those who need it, and hope that one day, that weight will outweigh the need to take up a gun and kill.

***

Tawnysha Greene is currently a Ph.D. candidate in fiction writing at the University of Tennessee. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including Bellingham Review and Raleigh Review and is forthcoming in PANK Magazine.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: STEPHANIE BRYANT ANDERSON

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SOMETIMES THE BLOOD GOES COLD
By Stephanie Bryant Anderson

My sleeping bones live, like snow on snow,
I hear them speak: another day, another night.

Another. Another.

Sometimes
                                   (in the hours that you’re gone)

the blood goes cold.



(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Stephanie Bryant Anderson lives in Clarksville, TN, and is pursuing a Bachelor degree in English and Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry. She is currently shopping for an MFA Program in Creative Writing. Her work has been published widely in both print and online journals; she has recently been nominated for Best of the Net, twice for the Pushcart Prize and storySouth Million Writers Award. Stephanie is one of the founding and managing editors at Up the Staircase Quarterly. A few of her publications include The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Connotation Press, and THRUSH Poetry Journal. She is currently working on her first full-length poetry manuscript.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem brings us love and longing through the haunted lens of the otherworldly. There is something of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale in Bryant Anderson’s lyric, in “sleeping bones” that “live, like snow on snow.”

Want to read more by and about Stephanie Bryant Anderson?
Stephanie Bryant Anderson’s Blog
Up the Staircase Quarterly

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: RABBI RACHEL BARENBLAT

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Verzi-Headshot

SUFGANIYOT
By Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

In oil, pale circles roll and flip,
doughy moons inflating.

The fun part: poking a finger
inside, giving a wiggle and twist,
pushing a dollop of jam
knuckle-deep, then two, ’til
the cavity gleams raspberry.

Latkes are pedestrian.
These puff like a breath held.

There, and here,
a million women finger
these cupped curves,
probe the soft center,
push the sticky treat inside.

We glance at each other, faces hot.
We lick the sweet from our hands.


(Today’s poem originally appeared in Zeek and appears here today with permission from the poet.)


Rabbi Rachel Barenblat was ordained by ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal in 2011. She serves Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, MA. She holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington, and is author of four poetry chapbooks as well as a collection of Torah poetry entitled 70 faces (Phoenicia, 2011.) Her second book-length collection, Waiting to Unfold, will be published by Phoenicia in 2013.

Editor’s Note: Tonight at sundown Jewish people across the world will begin the eight-night celebration of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. This is a holiday that reveres oil—that magical substance that lit our way in days of yore and ensures Hanukkah will not be forgotten by the mouths to come. Every year I follow my mama’s recipe for sufganiyot, deep-fried treats that take the concept of the doughnut to a whole new level. While I have yet to perfect my own sufganiyot, my mama’s are inspiring, like today’s poem. (And like my mama herself; let’s be real.)

With today’s piece Rabbi Rachel Barenblat elevates these phenomenal holiday treats from the realm of the epicurial to a heightened world where femininity, sexuality, and deep fried delicacies become one. Welcome to a lyrical orgy that conjures up a feminist reclamation of the kitchen scene from 9 1/2 Weeks. As I sink my teeth into these soft, hot desserts this Hanukkah I will be thinking of Rabbi Rachel Barenblat and the women of the world who are making tradition their own.

Want to read more by and about Rabbi Rachel Barenblat?
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat: The Velveteen Rabbi (Official Website)
Velveteen Rabbi (Blog)
Buy 70 Faces from Phoenicia Publishing

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: BRETT ELIZABETH JENKINS

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FAILED HAIKU
By Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

My hip bones carry/ around the names of the dead/ like sagging parentheses./ When I sit they heavy me./ When I stand, they pull/ down my shoulders. When/ it rains, they tender/ and swell until I’m full/ of an air that goes in my bones./ I go to meetings/ and stare. I go to the store/ and buy the wrong salad dressing./ I turn off all the lights/ and unplug all of my appliances./ I walk quietly to the edge of a cliff.


(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)


Brett Elizabeth Jenkins lives and writes in Saint Paul. She is the author of Ether/Ore (NAP Chaps, 2012), and in 2012 was nominated for Best of the Net. Look for her work in Beloit Poetry Journal, PANK, Potomac Review, RHINO, and elsewhere.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is working on a number of levels, from its title that echoes both personal and formal failure to its ability to capture a sense of loss and locate it within the body. Moments of unique lyric imagery and quiet contemplation come together so that the poem reads like a deep breath and a sigh.

Want to read more by and about Brett Elizabeth Jenkins?
PANK Magazine
Brett Elizabeth Jenkins’ Official Blog – The Angry Grammarian
Buy Ether/Ore from Nap

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: STEPHANIE KARTALOPOULOS

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FERTILE
By Stephanie Kartalopoulos

Somewhere after the houses burning from
beneath their heaviest frames, after

the red that rises in the wake of a recessed heat.
Somewhere after the third time

you told me to find my own hell
because I am too small to enter yours.

I am searching for the things that a younger you
begged me to depend on,

the implement to help me throw open every sallow curtain.
The issue of daybreak is important;

I am looking for what has left me here,
the something more

or less that rides out beyond
the tumbled light,

the color of river water after
the stones have been rinsed.



(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)


Stephanie Kartalopoulos teaches writing and literature and is completing her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Missouri, where she was the 2008-2012 Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry. Stephanie’s poems appear and are forthcoming in a variety of journals that include Barn Owl Review, So’wester, Thrush Poetry Journal, Pebble Lake Review, 32 Poems, Harpur Palate, Phoebe, and Laurel Review.

Editor’s Note: The experience of today’s poem lies, for me, in the world underneath. In the story behind the story that we, as the poem’s spectators, can only speculate and wonder about. I was first drawn to this piece in the wake of Hurricane Sandy’s Breezy Point fires, to the idea of excavation and the uncovering of lives in the wake of destruction. What I found in my own experience of pulling remnants from the aftermath of this poem was not only a haunted quality, but also the strength of a poet who rebuilds her own scarred story with lines like, “Somewhere after the third time / you told me to find my own hell / because I am too small to enter yours.”

Want to read more by and about Stephanie Kartalopoulos?
Pebble Lake Review
Waccama Journal
Barn Owl Review

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: STEVIE EDWARDS

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By Stevie Edwards:

POEM WITH PEARS IN IT
After Robert Hass

Everything in the college cafeteria
is the fleshy color of canned pears
and so am I because it is winter.

*
Because it is winter and fresh fruit is impossible,
or at least too expensive,
I spoon canned pears into a blue plastic bowl
and guzzle the syrup straight from the can
like nobody raised me with any manners,
that’s what my mother would say,
and she’d be mostly right.

*
My mother would say, and she’d be mostly right,
that I am a beast. Sometimes I see Hannah with her shirt off
because we are roommates and sometimes it happens
and she has a pear tattooed on her side and sometimes
it happens that I am hungry and I’m not supposed to
put my mouth there because we are roommates.

*
Because we are roommates
in a time of fresh fruit
we share bites
from the same soft pear
and let the juice stick
to our bald chins
and say it is good.

*
Say it is good. Say it slides
               good on you tongue.
Say soft. Say bites. Say
               the juice sticks good
to your chin. Say it’s a pear.


MY FIRST STAB AT LIVING A DOUBLE LIFE

Because we were too proud a family
for the free lunch program
and cheese and deli meat were too expensive
for daily sandwiches, each school night for a decade
I smeared PB&J over cheap wheat bread
and shoved it into a flimsy sandwich bag.
Because I knew real hunger
was when the loaves ran out
and there was almost always a loaf
of frozen bread in the deep freeze to unthaw,
I told the soon-to-be cheerleaders
who lived in subdivisions
with names like storybooks,
who mocked the constant sameness
and smallness of my lunch offerings,
that this blandness gumming
the roof of my mouth was my favorite,
that I could have their stupid meat
and crackers, their juice boxes
and pudding cups and fullness
if I willed it. For a month each girl
came to school carrying carefully cut
triangles of PB&J and bragged
hers was the best, and I knew
I could turn any nothing into want.


WE WERE TRYING TO WRITE A LOVE STORY

but were we flailing on the bare, rough
mattress or failing? If to fail is to want
wilderness and achieve only small puddles
of salt—if to salt is what we do to wounds
to make them feel more wound-like,
then we must’ve been filling
our anatomies with stinging,
which was a failure at mercy,
which is a component of loving.
Did I hear him singing a blues
that bent August into a woman’s room
with no windows to cool the viscous night?
It must be possible to bend a woman
into a window. He must have tried
to jump out of me. He must have
tired his jumping muscles.
Could I have ever born him up
into the glad light of spring?
Do I mean born or raised and can you
raise a sad-boned man into anything
like light? If to find blood inside
a store-bought egg is to bear
sadness, if we were scared to eat it,
then aren’t we human, soaked
and salted and saved?


FORGIVE IT ALL

At Macy’s on State Street, in the year
of the good paying office job, I selected

an armload of spring dresses to try on,
a present to myself for my birthday.

Forgive the salesclerk who told me
not to play dress-up with the merchandise

when I wasn’t going to buy any.
She couldn’t have been speaking to

my well-starched shirt collar and woolen
trousers. There must have been some

darting hustle left in my eyes. Forgive
me. I dropped the half-dozen dresses

on the floor in front of the fitting rooms
and stomped off muttering, I’ll take


my damn money somewhere with
manners. Forgive me for wanting

them so bad I went to the Macy’s
three Subway stops away where

the salesclerk didn’t mind the trash
in my bloodshot eyes and I wept

in the fitting room and bought
the most expensive frock. Forgive

the looming credit card balance
I should’ve paid down from years

with no dresses and tattered shoes.
There was a glad whimsy music

to that dress— the tiered
gingham skirt and crisscross

back—worth the stomping off,
the weeping, the reckless want.


(Today’s poems originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appear here today with permission from the poet.)


Stevie Edwards is an MFA-poetry candidate at Cornell University. Her first full-length book of poetry, Good Grief, was released by Write Bloody Publishing in April 2012. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine, Head Honcho of Brusque Magazine, and an Editor of 4th & Verse Books. Her poetry has previously appeared in Southern Indiana Review, Rattle, Verse Daily, PANK, Thrush, and several other literary periodicals.

Editor’s Note: It is no wonder Thrush Poetry Journal featured six of Stevie Edwards’ poems when they typically feature no more than three pieces per poet. These poems are addictive. One unfolds into the next, riveting in their confessional nature, a feeling of kinship arising as poems read like shared experience. These pieces are successful as narrative poems, as short stories or flash fiction, and as poems bearing the torch of the lyric tradition, when they shine brightest with lines like, “Did I hear him singing a blues that bent August into a woman’s room…” In reading these poems I find that it can be difficult to discern whether my heart is broken for the poet, the narrator, or myself.

Want to read more by and about Stevie Edwards?
Buy Good Grief from Amazon
Stevie Edwards Official Website
“What I Mean by Ruin Is…” in Rattle

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: TAWNYSHA GREENE

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BREAKING BREAD AT AL QALZAM
by Tawnysha Greene

My first time alone
with the women in Saudi Arabia,
abayas, head covers off and I see

their faces, their hair free. Hands touch
me, lead me down
a line of greetings, kisses, whispers

in Arabic that I try
to return, trilled rs, long ms,
they laugh, because my words are

Egyptian, not Saudi, not
ours, they say. I watch, follow
what they do, sit on the ground, drink gawa

from tiny gold cups, nibble whole fried fish
with my right hand. We break bread, strangers,
now friends, uncovered, naked

in a way, because they speak to me of love.
They motion with their hands, point
to themselves, each other, then

at me, pause to see
if I understand, stop between streams
of Arabic to say daughter, sister, lover.


(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)


Tawnysha Greene is currently a Ph.D. candidate in fiction writing at the University of Tennessee. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including Bellingham Review and Raleigh Review and is forthcoming in PANK Magazine.

Editor’s Note: When I first read today’s poem I was reminded of Reading Lolita in Tehran, a fantastic book I read recently about women in Iran and their relationship to their country, their government, their gender, and the veil. I was also reminded of Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet whose soft-spoken reflections on the Middle East are often humbling, and, in particular, of Shihab Nye’s poem “Red Brocade,” one of my favorite poems of all time. Today’s poem is rich with sisterhood, with women bonding in their own sacred space—a tradition that dates back to a time before the patriarchy and remains a critical aspect of the feminine to this day. While I was drawn to all of these aspects of the poem, it was one stunning moment of emotional lyric that made me fall in love: “naked / in a way, because they speak to me of love.”

Want to read more by and about Tawnysha Greene?
Mandala Journal
Salome Magazine

RESTORE HETCH HETCHY VALLEY

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

The Hetch Hetchy Valley as it looked in 1913. Photo from the archives of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

RESTORE HETCH HETCHY VALLEY, VOTE YES! ON PROPOSITION F

by Matt Gonzalez

A fascinating challenge facing today’s environmental movement is how to best approach the reversal of past decisions that altered once-pristine environmental spaces for the sake of urgent man-made needs.

There is one school of thought that says, leave it be, let’s move on to the next battle to save this space or that resource. But there is another very compelling view that urges fighting to win back the right to restore once unique and diverse ecosystems.

Some types of environmental restoration projects are well-known; restored wetlands, for instance, or coal mine reclamation projects. Recently though, larger dam removal projects have started, a number of them in Washington state. These include the breaching of the 120 foot Condit Dam on the White Salmon River to finally allow access for Pacific salmon and steelhead runs. Also, Washington boasts the largest dam removal project in history which includes both the over 100 foot Elwha Dam and the 210 foot Glines Canyon Dam which will allow passage by migratory salmon and trout species for the first time since the dams were built about 100 years ago.

San Francisco voters will get a chance on November 6th to take a similar step toward studying the viability of restoring the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park when they vote on Prop F, the Water Conservation & Yosemite Restoration Initiative.

First authorized by a Congressional Act of 1913 to primarily provide drinking water to the San Francisco Bay Area, the O’Shaughnessy Dam was built on the Tuolomne River in 1923 which flooded the Hetch Hetchy Valley under 300 feet of water. While it destroyed the valley’s ecosystem it created the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, located 65 miles northeast from the city of Merced, which since 1934 has provided water to the San Francisco Bay Area, recently estimated to serve 2.4 million people yearly.

The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir also serves to provide energy in the form of hydroelectricity, with a capacity of over 200 megawatts a year. The water is transported from the reservoir by the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct which is made up of 170 miles of gravity-driven pipelines, dams, and other reservoirs. Hydroelectricity is produced by the Kirkwood and Moccasin powerhouses, which have capacities of 118 and 100 megawatts, respectively.

Can it be restored?

At first glance the very idea of trying to restore what John Muir once called “one of nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples” seems impossible, maybe just downright wishful thinking.

But many experts are starting to see renewable energy as the game-changer. If the city could harness solar and wind alternatives to make up for hydroelectricity losses and address water needs by simply collecting and storing the same water at a location downslope from Yosemite, perhaps the equation becomes more balanced and achievable. Also pursuing water recycling and utilizing the advancing science of desalination are just starting to be explored. But a serious, and well-funded, study is needed to truly begin exploring all of our options.

21st Century engineering advancements provide the opportunity to start discussing and evaluating whether restoration of this natural treasure is possible. Of course, it will be a large undertaking with a variety of concerns that must be considered. But there is no doubt that the project will attract the most creative and ambitious minds in areas encompassing many disciplines.

There is a preliminary belief that Tuolumne River water could be captured by other reservoirs that are downstream from Hetch Hetchy, the Cherry and Don Pedro reservoirs for instance. Furthermore, any shortfalls could be supplied via greater conservation efforts, newly discovered groundwater supplies, and water purchases when necessary. Voters should keep in mind that it’s the Tuolumne River that provides San Francisco’s water, the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is simply one of nine reservoirs used for water storage within the greater Hetch Hetchy Acqueduct.

There’s also the issue of better conservation. San Francisco is notorious for not recycling any of its water. We treat rainwater as sewage and wash our streets and flush our toilets with drinking water. By contrast Orange County, not known for progressivism, recycles 92 million gallons of water a day.

Any loss in hydroelectricy could be made up by increasing our investment in renewable power such as wind and solar, which we should be doing anyway. Already renewable energy advocates are noting that the 42 miles of above-ground right-of-way between Yosemite and the city could be fitted with enough solar panels to generate at least 40 megawatts per year—a proposal the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has never seriously considered because they currently aren’t required to do so. Who knows what other ideas will emerge by studying the issue?

Opponents say that such a study will cost too much. But Prop F supporters have proposed that a restoration study be paid for by committing 0.5% of bond monies voters approved in 2002. $8 million of the $1.6 billion dollar bond would be sufficient to get a reliable plan together voters could consider.

Former Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel has proposed restoring the Hetch Hetchy Valley, as has the national Sierra Club and three former superintendents of the Yosemite National Park. A 1988 report prepared by the Bureau of Reclamation for the National Park Service states: “[The Hetch Hetch Valley] restoration would renew the national commitment to maintaining the integrity of the national park system and keep in perpetual conservation an irreplaceable and unique natural area.”

When the O’Shaughnessy Dam was first constructed, water management technologies were in their infancy. Now that these technologies have evolved, studying alternatives is highly attractive to environmentalists who see these major restoration projects as finally possible in the 21st century.

Despite the optimism, many are skeptical. After many ongoing legal controversies and broken promises, they should be. But this measure simply asks that the issue be on the table, and studying its viability will at least result in enhanced dam removal understanding that will benefit better ecology everywhere.

Voting yes on Proposition F will compel government to explore the alternatives. Nothing can be implemented without a further vote of the public in 2016, after a plan for action has been made available for public review, discussion, and debate.

Help give John Muir the victory that eluded him 100 years ago, vote yes on Proposition F, and take one step toward restoring the once pristine Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Matt Gonzalez is a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: NICOLAS DESTINO

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

FANTASY
for Jeffrey
by Nicolas Destino


We loved wind so much that we
talked about buying kites. When we
finally bought kites, we continued to
talk about flying them on windy
days.

We talked about disasters, where the
kites would tangle into wind, how far
into things we loved, upward and
away from the sticky beach.

When we reviewed all possible
outcomes for disasters, we went
there, to the sticky beach, with our
kites, to the boardwalk where a sign
alerted us that all wind was cancelled
until we were ready to lose one
another.


(“Fantasy” will appear in Heartwrecks (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013) and is printed here today with permission from the poet.)


Nicolas Destino’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Barge Journal, 580split, 322 Review, and others. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Goddard College, and his first full-length collection of poems, Heartwrecks, was released by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2013.

Editor’s Note: The Eastern Seaboard is struggling through the aftermath of disaster. ‘Superstorm Sandy,’ as the powers that be have dubbed her, has devastated New England and neighboring areas, hitting hardest in New Jersey and New York City. Your faithful editor of this Saturday Poetry Series has been without power, internet, and cell phone reception for days. But in times of crisis people come together and rise to the challenge. On the micro level, this poet and editor has been taken in by her neighbors, poets and artists with electricity and mean Italian cooking skills. Nicolas Destino and his husband Seth Ruggles-Hiler have opened their home to me and mine, and in the process of this disaster-togetherness I have had the opportunity to read Nicolas Destino’s Heartwrecks from cover to cover. I am humbled in the presence of greatness.

Today’s poem, from Destino’s forthcoming debut collection, was chosen for the ways in which it resonates with the disaster at hand. The power of the wind, the survival and destruction of the beach and boardwalk, the contemplation of possible outcomes of disaster, and the fact that, in the end, it is our human bonds that matter most. A deeply personal poem in nature, “Fantasy” speaks not only to love and loss between two souls, but to that which is far more powerful than us, from the heart through the forces of nature.

Want to read more by and about Nicolas Destino?
Bellevue Literary Review
322 Review
Verse Daily