Face to Face with Audre Lorde<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
……..<\/em><\/span>What is it you want?<\/em> She asks. She ……..<\/span>I don\u2019t know, honest my answer. She tells me, ……..<\/span>Audre crosses her desk and hugs me. But, ……..<\/span>Cold honest mother love. Her quest\u2014How<\/em> …………….<\/span>Thank you for your push. The grains of sand <\/p>\n “Face to Face with Audre Lorde” is reprinted from\u00a0The Arabesques Review.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Julene Tripp Weaver<\/a> has a private counseling practice in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle. Her book, No Father Can Save Her <\/em><\/a>was published by Plain View Press. She is widely published in journals, and anthologies, a few include Qarrtsiluni<\/em>, Drash<\/em>, Menacing Hedge<\/em>, Gutter Eloquence<\/em>, Redheaded Stepchild<\/em>, and Pilgrimage<\/em>; her work is included in Garrison Keillor\u2019s collection, Good Poems American Places<\/em>.<\/a> Her chapbook, Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues<\/em>,<\/a> contains writing from her work through the heart of the AIDS epidemic. She sometimes does wordplay on Twitter @trippweavepoet and has a website:\u00a0www.julenetrippweaver.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Face to Face with Audre Lorde ……..What is it you want? She asks. She looks at me across her desk, her dark brown eyes deep set. I st, stam, stamm\u2026.mmer and pout\u2014 she, so full of powerful words\u2014what do … Continue reading
\nlooks at me across her desk, her dark brown eyes
\ndeep set. I st, stam, stamm\u2026.mmer and pout\u2014
\nshe, so full of powerful words\u2014what do I want
\nbut a life of meaning and telling.<\/p>\n
\ngo jogging, do something, anything, to move into yourself.<\/em>
\nI know there is no perfect answer, no plan, to make life
\ncome together well. The masters lived, went jogging even,
\nstumbled poorly city to city, traveled wide breached plains
\nto get where they\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n
\nthe best thing she ever did? Throw that poem back at me,
\nask, How old are you?<\/em> Cowering in my chair I stammer,
\nThirty-two. In her booming voice she declares,
\nThirty-two, you have more experience in life than this\u2014rewrite,<\/em>
\nshe throws back my measly attempt at a poem. Huh!?
\nThe word inscribed.<\/p>\n
\n does it make you feel?<\/em> The response she demands
\nto every poem. My shock to feel! Long history of denial
\nsuppressed grief my main reason to write\u2014move this grief
\nfrom the deep down stuck place it hides in an inner
\nbox wrapped, hidden even from myself. Her tough words
\npush all of us, I will not be here someday, you must learn<\/em>
\n to carry on without me.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nin my underwear uncomfortable and humbling to shake out
\nin front of you. All my excellent mistakes. This gratitude
\ncomes deep from the yet closed boxes wanting and afraid.
\nSharp-leaved grasses cut, the words said to me by Audre
\nshearing open the boxes. Her questions echo, strong internal
\nprobes, the way I\u2019ve learned to gauge my life.<\/p>\n