how the story found me

An old woman rocks in my subconscious

sending songs, hidden messages, spor—

//record scratch//

I dream a lot in Danish

when I wake up from a danskdrøm

I confuse the two languages

until the coffee kicks in,

this morning as I worked on a draft of this poem,

I centered

it on the word spor

I said the old woman who wanders

in the woods of my mind

who knits in the rocking chair of my subconscious

she shows me the spors,

the hints of what passed this way

when I wasn’t paying attention,

and what lies ahead in wait

except the word in English is “footprints,”

or “animal tracks”

the dashes left in snow by a frightened rabbit

punctures made by the chasing wolf

maybe she is future me, that old dame

maybe future me sends my dreams /

mine drømme

to now me, or past me, as warnings/advarsler

or advice/råd, or maybe she’s just messing with me

and cackling

my nightmares repeat over and over

until I pay attention, pay my respects

to whatever is eating

at me; one night, just as my oldest

started middle school

I heard a girl sobbing, brokenhearted

I jolted awake and checked on my daughters

convinced that I’d heard one of them, but no,

the crying girl was lost in my head

and she wouldn’t let me sleep

because she couldn’t speak

and she needed an interpreter

so I started writing in the middle of that night

the stream of unconscious eventually merging

with my waking self, a year of scribbling

mostly before dawn

turns out the mother word is spor in Old English,

Germanic, Old Norse, and survives

unchanged in Danish

pops up in modern English as spoor

borrowed from Afrikaans in 1823

so I wasn’t as trapped between languages

as I thought

and the hour spent swimming

in multilingual etymology

was its own reward

the first publisher I sent Speak to rejected it

I never thought anyone would publish the story

let alone read it

I am often distracted, diverted

from my path when I explore old wounds

it’s a defensive reaction,

a way to modulate my feelings

and cope with the discomfort,

like telling jokes at a funeral,

not appropriate, but less damaging than gin

too many grown-ups tell kids to follow

their dreams

like that’s going to get them somewhere

Auntie Laurie says follow your nightmares instead

cuz when you figure out what’s eating you alive

you can slay it

Speak, Draft One, Page One

(from my journal)

FIRST MARKING PERIOD

I’m looking for the key

to open the door

to this story

an overheard motel

room conversation

if they would just turn down the television

I could hear the words clearly,

maybe find the magic

formula.

No outline. Not this time,

just a character on a page,

the stage

spotlighted

and alone

with her fear,

heart open,

unsheltered.

Melinda, age 14.

Trapped in a year with no calendar

pages, just day after day

of 14,

cuz the hands of the clock

in biology class are frozen

at five till three.

two

Polyhymnia

It is my first morning of high school.

I

have seven new notebooks,

a skirt I hate,

and a stomachache.

(opening lines of Speak)

I began high school (my fourth school in four

years)

with six polyester skirts, not just one,

all sewn by my grandmother,

who loved me so much

she didn’t want me to start

the new school in hand-me-downs,

cuz the rich kids would laugh

she sewed me six skirts

the colors of autumn

so I could wear a brown turtleneck

with all of them. I armored

myself that first day

(two weeks after the boy raped me)

with incantations grandmaternal;

love-sewn skirt, unheard prayers,

a penny in each loafer, I walked to the bus stop

then to the gallows

my first day of ninth grade had no assembly

no “First Ten Lies They Tell You in High School”

no showdown with Mr. Neck

Speak is a novel

rooted in facts, to be sure,

but a story bred with its own DNA

an invasive species growing out of a stump

of a tree hit by lightning

growing from the girl who survived

the overlap of my stories and my life

is a garden courtyard, sky-strung with stars

and scars where planets were torn

from their orbits

the courtyard where that stump grows

is surrounded by stone walls

three miles high, carved

with thousands of locked doors

and secrets that bloom open

in the moonlight

conspiracy

They said if Speak sold a couple thousand copies

we’d be lucky, cuz teenagers didn’t like to read

I had no expectations or hopes

I never thought it would be published at all

one day a man called me to tell me

I was a finalist

for the National Book Award

confused, I called my editor

who explained that I needed to buy a dress

a fancy one, cuz this was a seriously big deal

country mouse in New York City

I scurried to events, anxious, unsure

tried to blend into the wallpaper

my fellow finalists more comfortable

with the shiny new world that required dresses

or suits, riding in cabs instead of on the subway

student journalists gathered to interview

us, the Fab Five Finalists, onstage:

Walter Dean Myers, Monster

Louise Erdrich, The Birchbark House

Kimberly Willis Holt, When Zachary Beaver

Came to Town

Polly Horvath, The Trolls

and me,

the spotlights in our eyes made it hard to see

our interrogators, but the questions were

thoughtful.

When it was over the kids filed out,

and we headed for the door

toward lunch at a posh restaurant

on someone else’s dime

but Walter

Walter was deep in conversation

with one of the students,

talking books and Harlem

and other important things

I waited by the door for him

Walter was the first established author I’d met

he welcomed me into the world of books for kids

with joy, wisdom, and grace, he taught

me everything I know about my responsibility

to my readers, starting that day

cuz he didn’t go to lunch at all, he waved us off

that young man was filled with questions

and Walter had some answers

and questions of his own

he made the time for a reader

because integrity required it

that’s what we’re called to do

the award dinner was mad stressful, the chairman

of my publisher’s company sat at my table

he’d flown in from Germany for the event

and didn’t look happy about it

that made two of us; my dress itched,

my shoes pinched

nervous-thirsty, I drank gallons of water

constantly racing to the bathroom to pee

Walter sat at the table next to mine

throughout the evening, he’d turn

and tell me a joke

point out how glamorous events

like this had nothing to do with the sweat

of writing,

but the desserts were good

when the time came, we enjoyed

Oprah Winfrey’s speech

Steve Martin pronounced my name right,

that was impressive,

then the chair of the Young People’s Literature jury

approached the podium

she talked about how much kids love to read,

how they found books through family,

friends, librarians,

the people who would read aloud to them. . . .

Walter looked at me and arched an eyebrow

he and I wrote for the kids

who didn’t have those people

children with scars

inside and out, kids whose childhoods

disappeared in the rearview mirror

a long time ago

he leaned forward and whispered, “We’re screwed”

which made me laugh, we clapped

and cheered for Kimberly

because she wrote a great book, too,

then Walter poured me a glass of wine

first one of the evening but not the last

we toasted each other

we celebrated writing for the kids

the world doesn’t want to see

earlier, when the student journalists

interviewed us

one commented about the friendly vibe

of the Fab Five Finalists, asked

“Aren’t you supposed to be competitors?”

Walter took the mic and smiled

“No,” he said. “Not competitors.

We’re coconspirators, and we like it that way.”

That was when I knew I was home.

tsunami

tens of thousands speak

words ruffling the surface of the sea

into whitecaps, they whisper

into the shoulder of my sweater

they mail

tweet, cry

direct-message

hand me notes

folded into shards

when no one is watching

sharing memories and befuddlement

broken dreams and sorrow

they struggle in the middle

of the ocean, storms battering

grabbing for sliced life jackets

driftwood

flotsam and jetsam from downed

unfound planes, sunken ships

and other disasters

if they can keep their heads up

they swim for the nearby

Melindas

to help them save

themselves from drowning

in that hungry sea of despair

as they lift up their sisters

and brothers

and those who claim their space

beyond old definitions

they tell their stories

and speak their truth

earthquakes in deep water

send ripples to the surface

that crave the shore

thundering

toward land, sounding

like a freight train

the fatetrain, monsooning,

pulls back the shallows

exposing the bones of ocean

messages in bottles

tossed overboard

Hwæt!

the chorus swells the tidal wave

tsunamis overcoming gravity

knocking down the doors

blowing up

girls and boys tell me, shame-smoked raw

voices, tears waterfalling,

about the time

IT forced its dick

into her mouth

or his mouth

or their mouth

stopped up the breathing

scared shut the screams

the mouth they want

to eat with, smile

with, sing with, paint

with glitter, lip-

stick, and stain

with grape popsicles

or wine from a dark sea, a mouth

to whisper with love, to open

wide and swallow

what love offers, hungry

always for more.

Apologetically bile-gagged,

they tell me

they know they should feel

grateful

because they weren’t . . . . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . . . . should feel

grateful

because they weren’t . . . . . . .

“raped”

and they set the word

“raped”

between quotation marks

“         ”

feeling somehow wrong

about admitting their pain

knowing that others

hurt differently

I wasn’t “raped”

locking the word

into a cage

“         ”

filled with legal definitions,

a cage built on quicksand

a shame-forged prison of self-doubt

those marks jail

their truth

behind a false narrative,

an unholy competition

that no one wants to play.

Let the lawyers keep score,

if you must

let the court tally the points

for conviction or against

for six months in the county lockup

six years in the federal pen

Pain won’t be contained

by bars or marks

your scars deserve attention, too.

collective

a what? of teens

a wince of teens

mutter of teens

an attitude, a grumble, a grunt

a disenchantment of teenage girls

a confusion of teen boys

when I talk about Speak to a class

or an auditorium full of teenagers

there’s always that guy

in the back row wearing a jersey

soccer or lacrosse or football

he’s a good boy, he asks

the first real question—

“Why was Melinda so upset?

I mean, it wasn’t a bad guy with a gun

who dragged her down an alley;

she liked the guy, danced with him,

she kissed him,

so what’s the big deal?”

a kiss of boyfriends

a dance of rapists

what’s the big deal?

asked at every kind of school

all over the country

curious boys honestly inquiring

their friends squirming

a quest of knights errant

a smirk of dudes

the question is born out of true confusion

no one ever told him the rules of intimacy

or the law, his dad only talks about condoms

with a “don’t get her pregnant” warning

his mom says “talk to your father”

so he watches a lot of porn

to get off

to be schooled

porn says her body is territory

begging to be conquered

no conversations required

you take what you want

an occupation of men

those boys taught me

to talk about consent

get real about consequences

respect the room enough

to tell the truth

cuz, lordy lord, they need it

other boys pull me aside for a private

conversation, they say one of their friends,

a girl who was raped

is depressed and cutting and getting high

to forget what happened, they want to help

make it better, they want to kill

the guy who did it

they’re trying to be righteous, honorable

but they’re not sure how

a vengeance of puppies

some boys talk about being abused by men

of becoming a locker room target

of never using the bathroom in school

not even once in four years

cuz that’s a dangerous place

if you’re not an alpha running with the right pack

a few became bullies

tired of being teased, beat on,

made to feel small, left out in the cold

they attack the quiet boys

the isolated, who walk in the shadows

some of the bullies are homebred monsters

built by Frankendads, limb by limb

filled with regret and juiced by shame

a retribution of scars

my husband did the math, calculated

I’ve spoken to more than a million teens

since Speak came out, those kids

taught me everything, those girls

showed me a path through the woods

those boys led me

to write Twisted,

my song of admiration

to young men paying the price

for their fathers’ failures

the collective noun I’m seeking is “curiosity”

we have a curiosity of boys

waiting on the truth

and when their questions

go unanswered

the suffering begins for

an anguish of victims

emergency, in three acts

ACT ONE

Once upon a time, a year or so after Speak

was published

a high school in New Jersey invited an author

(guess who)

to speak about a book (you know the one)

Picture this: the author (yep, you guessed right)

takes the stage for the first presentation

and stands in the spotlight

owns the microphone

preaches facts about power

and bodies and sex and violence

speaks up, on fire

INTERMISSION, BUT BRIEF:

One thousand students tumble out

next thousand students roll in

Showtime!

ACT TWO

The author (still me) opens

her mouth, my mouth, but instead of spitting

words,

the fire alarm erupts

silencing me.

It is the only way Principal Principal—

quaking in his shiny black shoes,

either terrified of parents

or guilty as hell—

can think to shut me up

the entire school mingles in the drizzly parking lot

a group of girls gathers

around me quietly, quickly

speaking

of the boys who touch

them in the halls, pull

them under the stairs

rape

whomever they can get drunk enough

on the weekends

the alarm bells keep ringing and ringing and

ringing

but no rescue arrives

ACT THREE

When the screaming alarms are finally silenced

Principal Principal tells me my day

is done

talking about sex

and rape

and bodies

and touching

and consent

and violence

is not appropriate for the children

under his care

because

those things don’t ever happen

in his school

librarian on the cusp of courage

“I loved your book,” says the librarian

“Prom, not Speak.”

I open my mouth to—

“Course I can’t have it in my library,” she adds.

I close my mouth

“The main character,” she rushes on

I listen

“She’s disrespectful to authority,

cuts class, sleeps with her boyfriend . . .”

I wait

“We can’t have those kinds of examples on the shelves.”

Bingo

“And by the end of the book?” I ask

“Well . . .” She touches her crucifix.

I wait

thinking of the miles of empty shelves

in the hearts of her students

“Well”—

blinks her doll-blue eyes—

“she does change and grow by the end.

And the prom scenes were fun.”

Exactly the opening I was

hoping for

now we can have a

conversation

She drops her eyes to the concrete floor.

“I can’t afford to lose my job.”

She runs.

inappropriate dictators

A public school superintendent in Florida

proclaimed

“As of September 8, 2017,

no instructional materials (textbooks,

library books, classroom novels,

etc.)”—THIS “etc.” SLAYED ME—

“purchased and/or used by the school district

shall contain any profanity,

cursing”—REDUNDANCY IS A SIGN YOU DIDN’T

PAY ATTENTION IN ENGLISH CLASS—

“or inappropriate subject matter.”

“Inappropriate”

was when I burst

into flames

Without Freedom of Thought,

there can be no such Thing as Wisdom;

and no such Thing as publick Liberty,

without Freedom of Speech.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1722

So many problems could be solved

with just a teeny bit of knowledge

about American government,

the Constitution,

and the function of the Supreme Court, like

in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26

v. Pico, 457 US 853, 872 (1982),

when the Supremes memorably sang:

Supreme Court precedent

condemns school officials who

remove books “simply because they

dislike the ideas contained in those

books and seek by their removal to

‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in

politics, nationalism, religion,

or other matters of opinion.’”

Censorship is the child of fear

the father of ignorance

and the desperate weapon of fascists

everywhere.

innocence

censoring my books

in the name of “innocence”

will not build the fence you want,

it’s not a defense

against danger or stranger,

the friend or foe

whose hands want to know

the feel of your child

your baby girl or maybe

your boy, a toy for their

yearning for violence, depravity

the gravity

of which will pull your child

into wild denial

her pain untamed

by your drugs prescribed,

or her drugs street-dirty. . . .

nothing can offer relief

from the reality that you

failed and jailed

her happiness in a grave

too deep for forgiveness

the false innocence

you render for them

by censoring truth

protects only you

the word

The opposite of innocence

is not sin,

despite what you’re told

the Bible says.

Don’t get me started

on the real meaning of

“abomination,”

or the contradictions,

omissions the bishops let slide

or translation errors,

or the scribes who lied.

(Eve ate the apple

because Adam

was afraid,

for the record.)

The opposite of innocence

is not sin. Dearly beloved,

the opposite of innocence

is strength.

wired together

Movie shoots bedazzle authors

even one set at a grimy high

school in Columbus, Ohio,

96 degrees

9,000 percent humidity

air-conditioning shut down

for reasons unknown.

I tried to stay out of the way,

slowly melted into a puddle

of author sweat, worrying about making

mistakes, even though the story

was all mine.

The electrician hunted me down.

He looked like the guy in the Dire

Straits video “Money for Nothing.”

’Member him?

He looked like my great-uncle;

big square guy,

head like a paint can,

hands the size of catchers’ mitts,

smelled like work

He found me standing

at the back of the infernal gym

next to a table covered

with cables and rolls of black, sticky tape.

He put down his tools and studied

his calloused hands,

cleared his throat, and whispered,

“I’m Melinda.”

I wasn’t sure I heard him right.

His iron-gray eyes

met mine. Ten thousand volts

arced through the air

then he spoke louder,

“I am Melinda,”

and I could hear

I could see the little boy hiding

inside him.

I stuttered,

twitching in the electric

atmosphere, wishing

I had the right words.

He wasn’t there for a chat.

He picked up a roll

of black, sticky tape

meant for insulating,

for holding things together,

and said,

“A lot of us working on this film

are like her,

cuz, you know”—

he blinked and the tears escaped—

“it happened to us, too.”