The night swallows every
building I pass. They are
frigid and invisible in the dark, only
light can unfreeze them.
My hair could stand on end in this cold . . .
it feels like it is.
It’s late now,
and only the top of
the Empire State Building
matters anymore.
The bottom half of my head
stays cold and forgotten too.
The dark wanders along beside me
in this big city.
It’s a larger than life
kind of town, so many eyes to watch
what belongs to me,
let them see.
I don’t want to put on a hat.
Let the air prick and my own hair
bite into my skin as I gaze skyward.
My hair could stand on end in this cold,
but only the bottom half of my head
belongs to me.
Let them see.
This poem is about finding your place, and feeling so strongly that you belong there that it seems like you’ve been there before. It is about the connections we share to our past, previous generations, and the homes that we choose for ourselves.
Standing in the Great Hall,
I know
I have been here before.
I heard the echoes
when they were voices.
Smelled the ink and the anxiety
of the stamp poised to grant entry,
to give permanence.
Or something like it.
I had a different face then.
A different posture.
I was carried in the blood
of my great-great-grandparents,
tucked between
the fibers of their coats,
folded into the spaces
left by the letters they erased and
the new ones written in,
making them blend,
making them American.
I am familiar with starting over.
That is a language I still know.
The assonance of your few possessions
in one trunk—they mean
everything and nothing.
You cling to them,
but wonder if you could bear that loss.
You are almost tempted
to pronounce it—to
let go of the handle and walk away.
Perhaps you would forget.
Perhaps you would carry that weight
forever, like you carry your great-great-granddaughter,
like you carry the letters cut from your name.
Silent. Heavy.
The city was different then.
And it is the same.
I was passing through.
But now, I let go
of the handle of my suitcase.
I open the trunk and unpack,
allowing myself to say the word—
Permanence.
Or something like it.
I look at the city
from this island, like they did.
My face is my own.
The letters spell a name wholly different
from the one in the book,
the one etched on the wall.
I trace the letters with my finger.
I say them aloud.
I have been here before.
LILA COOPER
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Junior
HIGH SCHOOL: Institute for Collaborative Education
BORN: Brooklyn, NY
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: Girls Write Now has helped me grow as a writer. It’s taken me out of my comfort zone of plotless short stories and poetry. Even though I do a lot of poetry, I have learned there are other genres that I actually enjoy. I’ve appreciated Robin’s critiques, because she makes me think in a different way about my writing. She helps me see what’s working and what isn’t; she gets it. Sometimes we both obsess over a single word. It’s great to be able to do that together on Saturdays over a cup of tea.
ROBIN WILLIG
YEARS AS MENTOR: 3
OCCUPATION: Chief of Staff, Center for Reproductive Rights
BORN: Far Rockaway, NY
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Summer Residency, Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, Eureka Springs, Arkansas
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: I never studied poetic forms and I was struck, in the Girls Write Now session, by the many rules. Lila and I talked a lot about “Garland Cinquain.” Wasn’t he an informant on an SVU episode? She and I share a love of words and often our time is spent dissecting and rebuilding. At the end of the Poetic Forms workshop, the girls read their pieces aloud and each chose to ignore the rules. I appreciate that about the mentees, and Lila especially—their willingness to explore. Generation F indeed: freedom, flouters of rules, and, likely, founders of a better way forward.
This poem is a recollection of the time I spent in India as a child.
God slipped in between the gauzy white sheets last night
she pulled at the bottom of my slip separating me