I
want to write an honest sentence. I
gave each old
woman
a flower and asked her
to describe it
without using the words "beautiful" or "gorgeous"
or "nice" or "pretty." It's
so pretty,
they said. So
beautiful. “She
won't let us use those words!” There were lavender petals and dots.
What color are
the dots? There were long stems. How long? 20
inches, they wrote. Are
they all green? Mostly
they recognized the flower as described. I
asked them to express an emotion by adding
to their descriptions, but without
using
those
words.
An
Englishwoman
named Fleur
(how
do you know who I am? Because you came to my last workshop)
erupted
with the story of her homeless brother and their
mother
killed by a drunk driver, all having something to do with a yellow
chrysanthemum
(though
she didn't remember which flower she'd started with, it
might have been purple)
and
by that time I had given up getting them to WCW's "The Great
Figure"--the
poet's insertion of
the word "tense”--but
I shared it with them. I
feel anxious about my children when I hear a siren,
one woman said. So it's you and not the truck! As I
looked
at
them, they
were pulling
their
flowers and
stems closer, holding
them to the light.
--21
May 2018
[based
on a facebook post]
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