Layli Long Soldier

I do not fear being alone anymore, any more than I fear the "I" in a poem. "I" still do not understand myself completely, and if viewed from the corner of the eye, that's thrilling. "I" am in a lifelong mystery within my own ownership. Yet no one, not even "I" will witness its unfolding entirely. I've heard that the first words uttered as a sentence were, I am different. Is that true                       ? And if it is, it must be true when the thinker says, in language there are only differences. This sacred gap. A recognition. Our distance from one another is ground for my "I" and yours for "you." I'm aware / thus I know / I am different when I ask: can you love the "I" in the poem as much as you love the poem.

from the journal PLOUGHSHARES
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"Diane Seuss: A Celebration, and a Reckoning"

"In her essay, Di writes, 'I love and lust after Myrtle Corbin because she is queered and empowered by her idiosyncrasy. I imagine her in bed at night feeling like the only one of her species in all of Dreamland.' At the very end, Di closes with, 'I experience my own body as a spectacle, an exhibit, a performance, and a condition. My legs are exponential. How do I freak thee? Let me count the ways. Muse, imagination, poetry: who among us can live without her?'"

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What Sparks Poetry:
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke (Riverside, CA) on Ecopoetry Now 

"Awareness of what we are part of, an element of, an organism within, is essential to knowing oneself and one's placement. There is duty inherent to place; balance, sustenance, reciprocity, preservation, protection, beingness, belonging to or being a good guest within. Every step taken has impression. The wonder of magnitude, from dust mites to star dust all over everywhere. What is illuminating, challenging, holding instruments of knowing brings song, language, reason, purpose, poetry."
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