#ff00a3

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

Had a meeting with my advisor yesterday, in which she asked me if I would take her and her husband to Chicano Park

She said, I bet he would love the lowriders

Tonight, I was talking to some friends about going to Chicano Park this weekend

Drafted an email to invite her and pressed send seconds before I heard news that her husband had passed

I'm feeling some type of way right now...

#og op oh fuck #ff00a3

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

Keeping my head down if that’s what I gotta do but my spirits remain high af. Give those bitches blue dream 💙

#ff00a3 #I love blue dream #someone send me weed money 😭😭😭 #I’m a broke poet but I’m really good I will sing for you lmao

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

There’s a story that others would like me to write that I don’t want to write

They only see me as a mother and not a woman. I tried to tell them that I don’t become a mother until after I become a woman

That even with a baby strapped to my hip, I wasn’t in it yet. That the moment I realized my kid was my salvation, it wasn’t not when I was 19 and mother to a newborn, it was recently. When my kid had already come into themselves

Why does motherhood have to define us? Why do I keep that part of me hidden? Why do I introduce myself as a woman before I introduce myself as a mother?

Why do you want me to bring back all the resentment of being a young, single mom, when I had already let go of that?

They want me to write about being in love with the man who gave me a son. But he was a boy and I was a girl and we didn’t love each other, we were just horny. It’s the worst story to tell. So basic, and in a way, messy.

Are you crying because he broke your heart? No, bitch. I’m crying because life is hard and I’m a single mom and he could suck my dick and it would still be 10x harder for me than it was for him. He disappeared. He left. I don’t care to write about him

I had to process the pain and the resentment before I could process the love. That processing doesn’t happen without the hundreds of beautiful humans I made love to, before I returned to myself

#ff00a3

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

AWP Seattle — I’m here. I made it. My plane didn’t crash. I didn’t lose my shoe like Cristina in Grey’s Anatomy.

#awp23 #ff00a3 #og op oh fuck

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

Picked this up today!

Studying Ms. Shange’s work as she is the pioneer of the choreopoem

I’ve been reading an anthology of her work and my favorite pieces seem to be from Nappy Edges, a Daughter’s Geography, & For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf

I’ve also been watching interviews of Ms. Shange and how she describes the joy of movement and music and creation — I love joy. I want to live and love right here forever

#ff00a3 #poetry #ntozake shange #for colored girls #nappy edges #a daughter’s geography #for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf #choreopoetry

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

i'm not even gonna lie... im a bad ass motherfucking genius ass poet... these lines are just Oofff so yummy, so liquid and sweet

my presentation could use some work tho. could always use some work...

#this ain't me being arrogant. i've earned this shit #been studying my craft for a decade and a half #ff00a3 #poetry

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

I’m about to get drunk and record some shit

I haven’t recorded my new poems and I gotta sometime in case I accidentally crash my car and die or something

#ff00a3 #poetry #fall in love with my voice i dare you to

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

Gosh, ya'll. I am so tired, I miss being active on tumblr. I miss seen ya'll life updates and creative projects and on a rare occasion your faces.

I'm over here non-stop studying. I've been dreaming too big it feels above me but imma try it anyway

#og op oh fuck #ff00a3

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

If Whitman and Dickinson are the mother and father of modernism, I am certainly a descendant. I hold both. I might love my lesbian mother more than my gay father at this point but it's slowly balancing out...

#ff00a3 #og op oh fuck #poetry #literature #emily dickinson #walt whitman #modernism

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

I’ve been living a graduate mfa poet’s dream and have been focused on nothing and nobody but poetry

Realizing I don’t have to pick up the phone or answers texts or go see anyone if they’re just time and distraction from my work

Literally only my immediate family, my best friend & her cute af toddler, and my poet have a hold on me

#ff00a3 #og op oh fuck #also why I haven’t been on tumblr but tumblr is forever so 💕

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

Sometimes I wonder why i spend so much time doing what i do... and then someone introduces me to another saying something like "this poet is the real deal." & I think there is more to my story than the people who pull me back because they haven't seen the future I've learned

#ff00a3

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

Graffiti on University & Utah —

When I was in Seattle, I was fascinated by all the graffiti. I told my friend (he’s from Portland. I’m from San Diego) that I loved all the graffiti. He was like, “funny you say that because California is the capital of graffiti.” I’m like lol, wasn’t comparing bro. I’m like “that’s probably why I’m drawn to it…” 🤣

I love graffiti!!! If I wasn’t scared of my momma I would’ve been a tagger like my lil brother who isn’t scared 💀 they on that new sticker street art 🖼️

#ff00a3 #san diego #I like to do hoodrat stuff with my friends

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

Meeting hella new people. Everyone is so beautiful. Their poetry is amazing. I kissed several of them last night 🥰😅😂

#og op oh fuck #ff00a3

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

I’m seriously considering putting myself in massive amounts of debt just so I could chase the dream

Sometimes I spend hours frozen with anxiety (most of it financial) that could be spent more productively working on my craft but I’m just frozen and don’t move and stare off into space and I still don’t have money and living is expensive af and being poor is even more expensive

If I didn’t have to think about it though I’d be a lot further in my skills as a poet. I wanted to spend these 3 years absorbed in it and instead I’ve spent the last several months wanting to die cause I can’t afford the future that’s coming and poetry is a penniless game

#og op oh fuck #ff00a3 #this is like the difference between r u dumb enough to go into debt for a poetry degree #vs you’re really going into debt to buy time to which is what you need if you’re gonna write a killer piece #even the greatest people take a decade to do what I’m trying to do in a few years #am I crazy? I’m crazy huh? ok bye ✌🏼

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

I started reading Rick Barot The Galleons

Such a smooth read, I’m more than halfway through faster than I expected

It makes me think about my grandmother and how I no longer have access to her memories. When I was young, I couldn’t have felt that longing for my grandmother stories as deeply as I do now that she is gone.

My favorite poem thus far is titled Galleons 5 — it’s about how we want to remember these stories of the past so accurately, to have as Barot puts it ‘vectors of use’ for our art, but there is something else to consider, the present.

#rick barot #the galleons #poetry notes 📝 #ff00a3 #to be continued...

[hotwheelsandhighheels]

I'm been tracking my productivity in my Slingshot organizer. I got a HOT PINK cover and I love it!

Been trying to log in at least some writing/revising/recording time when I'm actively working on my manuscript and adding to it in some way

Also trying to log in time studying poetry. I started my winter break studying forms and Langston Hughes. Sidetracked into some Bad Bunny for a minute. Kid's dope, what can I say...

Right now I am on my 2nd read through of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

I read it through out loud first and now I'm going through line by line and annotating, paying special attention to the visual cues in each line

I have found that I am drawn to Ms. Shange's pacing and how she navigates that with or without the use of slashes, line breaks, or capitalization (at first glance, you wonder why she chose to use a certain technique here and not there to arrive at the same effect. on second glance, there is a genius to her consistency).

Then I'll be off to find footage of different performances of this choreopoem so I can pay special attention to the blockage, the use of music and dance, as well as delivery of lines. & I'll be annotating along the way lol it'll be fun

Other things I've tracked: my period (yay no more creepy period apps) & my sobriety (no alcohol going on 5 days now, ayee. i didn't give up weed tho. i love weed)

#life update #ff00a3 #poetry #poetry notes 📝 #ntozake shange #for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf