gearing up for february stories

Greetings, all. I'll be joining Laura Shovan's February Poetry Project again this year, and the theme this time is STORY.  So here's a little story for you:

Once upon a time at a small liberal arts college in Connecticut, a boy from San Francisco and a girl from Richmond met when they both signed up to be editors of the literary magazine, The Cardinal.  The boy did fiction and the girl did poetry, and they both did each other found themselves in love.  From the university library where he manned the circulation desk for his work-study job, the boy passed the time typing notes to the girl on withdrawn catalog cards. From the psychology library where the girl womanned the circulation desk for her work-study job, the girl passed the time perfecting her artsy poet handwriting in notes to the boy on bad copies of reserve articles.  

Eventually the boy realized he belonged back on the West Coast studying Japanese and writing novels, and there the romance could not but end--but it lived on in the layers and layers of catalog cards, annotated poetry drafts, literary magazines, dorm-door notes, mix-tape track lists, fratority party invitations ("VORTEX: The Party That Really Sucks") and letters from California---

ALL OF WHICH THE GIRL SAVED, because they, like the first books she ever read and the first poems she ever wrote, were some of the layers of paper that built her, word by word, line by line, page by page. To let any of that paper go (whatever it may say about the essential core of the girl, even now) would be to disappear, she feared.

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Here's a second version of the story:

Once upon a time a woman, who had moved from her old neighborhood to a new one but continued to read the listserve from the old neighborhood, noticed a post that read, "Hi all- this is a notecard I found on my lawn. Seems to be someone’s special close communication. I will leave it on my front porch bench for the owner to pick up."  The post included a shadowy photo of a library catalog card with a typed note that began "HJM'Dear--How do? I sold 32 Cardinals today. Fun."

With a shock the woman realized it was she in the photo, she in the note. The finder of the note was her close neighbor, 3 doors up. The last days of the move were cold and windy, and during one of them, as she excavated boxes stuffed with paper saved for 55, 40, 35 years and, sobbing, put three-quarters of it into the recycling bin, this one little card--a musty, precious, 2-dimensional snapshot of a moment in 1982--had blown free of the bin and landed in her neighbor's yard. The woman downloaded a copy of the photo and thanked her neighbor, asking her to recycle the card once again.

Without the wind, she wouldn't have remembered.

Without the neighbor, she wouldn't have known.

Without letting go, she wouldn't have learned that even without that piece of paper--all those pieces of paper in her possession--she is still her self.

This is a cascade poem of the kind being written this week by the ever-inclusive Poetry Sisters.

 

Grateful to Jan at Bookseedstudio for hosting us today with the overflowing (how could she help it, having that name?) Sharon Lovejoy alongside. Wishing everyone safe and peaceful last days of January.