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Waken to Your Poem

    The following is a guest post by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro, whose poetry appeared in issue 20 of Typehouse.

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    As soon as I wake up, especially if I don’t set an alarm and just let myself rise when my sleep cycle naturally breaks, seeds of poems are waiting to be planted in my journal. I always choose a journal by its tactile quality. Velvet with lace, satin with ribbon, sometimes leatherette (don’t want to kill animals for my poems). I have far too many of these journals bowing my shelves, but I believe that my truest poems have come from what I’ve scrawled in them

    Sometimes I write things I’ve glimpsed in dreams—coneflowers or hibiscus or a house with green shutters and tiny moons carved into the corners. Sometimes I can smell my mother’s Evening in Paris eau de toilette or the smoke from my father’s Lucky Strike. I have even awakened to the feel in my palm of Queenie’s oily, seal-like fur, a pet who has been dead for sixty years. I’ve tasted chocolate brownies, especially when I am on a diet.

    One morning, I awoke to my husband’s voice, his breath, the genesis of my poem in Issue 20 of Typehouse, “Murmur,” which has a double meaning—his heart murmur and his murmuring. When I got over the shock that he wasn’t actually in our room, I wrote down what I heard him say, what I felt. And as the day progressed, I added reflections about the experience to the poem. 


    “Murmur” means more to me over the last month. My husband had emergency open-heart surgery that left him so debilitated that he is in a nursing home. It is so hard for me to wake alone in our bedroom, but what helps me is to listen for him, and write.

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    Rochelle Jewel Shapiro is the author of Miriam the Medium (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her essays have appeared in New York Times (Lives), Newsweek, and more. The Iowa Review, Permafrost, MacGuffin, and others have published her poems and short stories. Currently, she teaches writing at UCLA Extension. @rjshapiro  https://rochellejshapiro.com/

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