Are You For Real About The Writing Game? If So I'm Carrying; A Small Browning Pocket Knife A Compass

exit music for a sister driving out of state

the wind is crowned in lemongrass as it stumbles from the field, some king that left her throne cold and throbbing — a purpled cheek under a frozen section of steak, the marbled fat of citizens needs veining through a red-velvet muscle.

I breathe in once and hold it, the day and its run-away king at the top of the air, her slipping royalty, the field bright as honey in lamplight or lamplight in honey.

I build a little headache and keep it like an ant under a glass, its sharp frantic body agonizing blackly in the circle of my skull, as if it had a home of sand to crawl back to but my bones kept it from the colony.

this is enough, I’m sure, the king and my thrum of forehead, enough to fill the day to its brim, nothing else could possibly be happening to us. I bow once and the ache follows me down, I think to kneel as a gust trips by, to become knighted and feel the ant itch up to a scarab beetle— scratching the hieroglyph for migraine onto the edges of the over-turned trap of glass and brain.

                  - c. essington

You mentioned Richard Siken in an earlier ask - how do you find new contemporary poets to read?

Largely by asking other readers and or writers who they like. Also by engaging with people who are also emerging writers. Artists supporting artists is great and super underrated. 

Please feel free to send in any more college/ kenyon/ writing/ publishing questions! I have a lot of time today.

she’s small and made of sodium

(just lil new art o mine)

Writing game: How about a phone number scribbled on a bit of paper, two dollars in change, a pen, a receipt for a restaurant, and a pack of cigarettes?

Sure thing, thank you. 

Inventory:1. A phone number scribbled on bit of paper2. Two dollars in change3. A pen4. A receipt for a restaurant 5. A pack of cigarettes

There is a piece of paper in my pocket, folded twice over, like pigeon’s wings, or my tongue in a fight, or how I sleep when I’m sad. It’s white with black print and it says that I should be full by now. There’s also receipt from my dinner. After eating through six truffle mushrooms curled in oil and laid over pasta, I left with some coins in my pocket and not much else, my mouth ringing with salt and linguini and fungi I can’t afford but swallowed anyway. 

I’m not full yet despite the seven digits that sit like a brand by my left thigh, so I take out ink and cross them into black hashes. There is being bloated and there is being starving and I’d rather fit in one of those places than be left alone in the middle, a stranger’s affection listed to me in numbers. 

I light something and watch it dwindle, a white column of paper singing in orange and going grey. I think that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing too. It’s not great, I’m still hungry and aching and made of willow leaves and molars, but I can stand upright in my name and store my grievances on the dark sides of my quarters and breathe like I love it, but don’t really have a reason for it all the time.  

           - C. Essington

Thank you for this and your support,

If you want to play this writing game, send me a theoretical inventory of five items in an ask and I’ll try to write a person for it. 

- c. essington

The Splinters Float

the pine-needle tea that she made before you  woke up and remembered the world flexes with green lines on its way to your lips.

the fire is low, orange, and smoking like your uncle used to.

you have brought candied orange slices cut so thin that they look like warped photographs of fruit rather than actual sugar.

you toss a rind into the fire the orange crinkles the orange and makes it go brown.

The citrus collapses in like an airless chest or a star that’s done being a star.

you take your tea up again, the tea that existed before you started the morning or believed in the sun for the seven-thousand-four-hundred-and-second time. that tea.

you woke up the same way you always have: mid-person, with human humming over your every bone, and a name that slips past your freckles and sinks, like an unskippable stone, into your rivered grey matter.

and then you had tea. and then you had tea.

                         - C. Essington 

THE DEAD IN DAYLIGHT, poems by Melody S. Gee, reviewed by Claire Oleson • Cleaver Magazine

THE DEAD IN DAYLIGHT by Melody S. Gee Cooper Dillon, 55 pages reviewed by Claire Oleson - Communicating soreness, strength, weariness, and victory by tapping a reader’s own muscles for empathy, Melody S. Gee’s latest poetry collection, The Dead in Daylight, uses language to both construct and dismantle bodies and lives.

This is a review I wrote of Melody Gee's poetry collection "The Dead in Daylight" which is now up on Cleaver magazine's blog.

Hi! Your writing is amazing and I always love reading it. I've been having writers block and haven't been able to write anything for a very long time. I don't write short stories or anything like that, but I do write songs and sometimes poems. Do you have any advice for writes block? Or any websites or apps that could possibly help? Thank you for your time! (:

Well thank you, and certainly, I am quite often plagued with  blocks so I’m familiar with that particular frustration. Here’s how I’ve dealt with it:

1. Read, and read broadly: watch how other writer’s approach scene, character, and plot. Don’t copy or steal, but observe and apply techniques. 

2. Engage in small experiences: eat something, go for a walk, stretch, run uphill for as long as you can. These sort of things, when really paid attention to, can get you to words. For example, if you eat a strawberry and really focus, you can often figure out something about its taste and texture that isn’t wholly obvious or stereotypical. 

3. Combine experiences: I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think you have to solely “write what you know” because this will often keep you from writing a lot of things. However, I do think you should try and have a gateway for writing an experience. Example: If you want to write about someone falling from the deck of a ship in a storm, you don’t have to have fallen yourself, but maybe do a trust-fall with someone or take a very cold shower. Theses are gates and platforms you can write from without actually having to drown to write a drowning. 

4. Get away: Stop trying to write and go somewhere far from pen and laptop. Do something you haven’t done, especially if that something involves another form of art. Museums are great.

Most of these tips are about attention. They revolve around really paying attention to where and what you are and what you’re experiencing. I love to write minutia and try to give it greater significance than its mass. In order to do this, particularly in an age where our attention is so spliced with ads and technology and ridiculous needs to never get bored, you’ve got to get away from thoughts and into feelings. Thoughts are excellent seeds for writing, but it’s very hard to think yourself into caring irrationally, which I believe is required in a lot of writing (to care about fiction,) so at some point, you’ve got to have an undiluted emotion to get ink from.

I hope this helps somewhat and I’m sorry for the length. As a side note, in the next couple of weeks I’m going to be starting a writing prompt column that I’ll be posting links to once it goes up. 

Best regards,

C. Essington. 

your writing is honestly amazing you have a lot of talent wow

Thank you so much for taking a look, I really appreciate it. Having people who care about words make it all worth while. 

Throwback weird art time to add some picture to the page. 

Weird art time? Weird art time.

- C. Essington