Susan M. Schultz

I want to write an honest sentence. I want to write a sentence I can own, not in the way I own objects but how I take responsibility for the air inside my room, breathing as a form of attention that enters without staying. Nothing stays, though "it stay hot" denotes a change of condition. He who cannot own his failure tries for a better one, destruction without hope of renovation, a blackened high rise to remind us there's more to life than structure. Strictures bind us to our dog, who is pet inside the house and animal outside. Nasal appraisal, one neighbor calls it, nose to the grass, a way of reading in no particular direction, though leaves require particular energies to decipher. A swift intake of breath is not grammar or syntax, less an unfolding than a claim on the air that's instantly repaid. Her nose on my arm tickles, a greeting that is also inventory. Palm fronds shield us from the asphalt ribbon they put down on our field, the better to protect their golf carts from injury. A two cart parking lot adorns the front of the ever-growing shed. Cart Path Project, it's called. Black ribbon on a green field, no Barnett Newman that. Stations have not opened, though concrete ribbons run across the Leeward side. Look at the earth, my father would say, its rich reds or clays. I took to looking up instead, but age pulls us down a peg, pushes our eyeballs into what's left of the commons, pulls up fences like blue tape. The blue whale game, while horrifying, may prove to be a hoax. The girl painted blue whales, but her family had no idea she spoke Russian. Each one cuts a blade in our emotional skin, leaving a ribbon of blood behind our eyes. The Senator's surgery was more complicated than had been thought, so he couldn't get to DC in time to vote against others' health care. Irony prevention is what we need, with small co-pays. She teaches irony by showing her students a bus marked by a huge sign advertising safety, a bus that has just run into a car. The car resembles a crushed maroon paper flower, or the sculptured trash can a president throws his deed inside. "I will not own this," he says; he only owns what he destroys, the negative space charcoal is good at getting at. My daughter learned perspective last week; this week she's on to ceramics and soccer. I haven't seen monks play, but her passes sometimes defy physics. Space is time that's been thrown on a wheel.

from the book I WANT TO WRITE AN HONEST SENTENCE / Talisman House
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"In summer 2017 I woke up one morning with the sentence, "I want to write an honest sentence," rolling around in my head. So I wrote a prose poem that began from there. The sentence wouldn't go away, so each time I wrote a prose poem (through October 2018) I started with "I want to write an honest sentence." This is the second of the 62 poem sequence." 

Susan M. Schultz on [I Want to Write an Honest Sentence.]
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Nick Ripatrazone highlights new work from Eduardo C. Corral, Shane McCrae, francine j. harris, Khadijah Queen, Benjamin Garcia and Luke Hankins. He writes, "McCrae is a contemporary mythmaker, a poet who is able to lift his art to a spiritual plane. His new book continues a sustained, complex engagement with the ineffable."
 
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Towards a More Conscious Leader: "This guide by Ama Codjoe, published in the National Guild for Community Arts Education’s Guild Notes,  provides arts leaders with a framework for assessing their own privilege and adopting ways of 'seeing, listening, and being that can deeply transform not only your leadership practice but your life.'"

Black Liberation Reading List: "This reading list, curated by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, features books about antiracism and by Black writers."

We Need Diverse Books in the Classroom: "We Need Diverse Books, an organization advocating for literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people, provides free diverse books and author visits to schools around the country in an effort to address the literacy gap that affects marginalized youth."
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