Waiting on Him

Text messages just don’t cut it anymore.

call me

call me,

the beggar

cause that’s

all I’ve been

for 5 months.

There’s something about hearing

that morning crispness in the

voice of the man I love

makes me twitch a little

when he mispronounces

“Eucalyptus”

I find myself repeatedly

whispering

his name when I notice

him preparing me

to hang up the phone

“Yeah? I’m still here”

But is he really?

Wear his favorite perfume

Anais, Anais

just in case he can smell it

through the phone.

You know, these smart phones

are capable of anything

these days.

______________________________________________________

I like to play with the structure of my poems, move words around the page and repeat lines/words as well. I repeat the words, “call me” in the beginning of this poem to stress how much I want this person to call me. It also conveys a downward stair-like structure where I become a beggar for his attention with every step of the word, “call me”. This is also a strategy to give a dramatic effect to the line, “the beggar”. I like shorter lines to convey that I was in a state of thoughtfulness as I wrote this poem and when I think about this situation in general.

A huge theme for me has been communication. For this reason, I begin with the line, “Text messages just don’t cut it anymore.” Our smart phones have completely taken over the art of effective communication to the point where I feel like I’m running out of time during phone conversations. I express a longing for more face to face conversations where we can observe each other’s eye color, smiles, body language, facial expressions, and different laughs for different situations. Fragrances have always been important to me, which is why I include the line, “Wear his favorite perfume/Anais, Anais/just in case he can smell it/through the phone./ These smart phones are/ capable of anything/these days.” I write about my favorite perfume in these lines to emphasize how much I prioritize my fragrances and how much this person enjoyed the scent of this perfume. Thank you for reading!

Yours truly,

Isha S. Serrano

(The Winds Sentiments)

Thomas Benke: Looking Around In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, in the Chapter “Looking Around,” says this: Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. Otherwise we’d all just be barking away like Pekingese: “Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it’s your fault, you did this …” Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can’t do that if you’re not respectful. If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you’re going to get them wrong. She goes on to speak about empathy for other people and also, as an extension empathy for yourself. So, in a sense as you try to write believable, relatable characters, you will come to forgive people their trespasses—because no one believes they are the villain of their story, so you have to write “bad,” or “evil” characters from a point of view where they rationalize what they are doing in such a way that it is the right or only way they see is possible. By extrapolation, then, if you begin to forgive and withhold judgment from your less-than-desirable, or annoying characters, perhaps you can extend the same courtesy to yourself and forgive your own trespasses and sins. This, for me, starts to enter the realm of “writing as therapy,” and though I am a firm believer in that—I practice it to this very day—I think I would caution anyone who thinks that simply writing through things is going to lead you to a place of light and love. I am not saying it can’t by any means. What I am saying is I have wrote through my thoughts and my problems and my desperation and depression for decades and I still had enough baggage on my shoulders to supply an army platoon with rations for a year. In any case, when thinking about craft, it is very important to step into the shoes of all of your characters, especially those characters that you see as antagonists and villians. I believe there are very few universal maxims in writing but one thing is virtually certain: every character you write is your version of that human being. Confucius said “everywhere I go, there I am,” and that is never more true than when you are writing. So if you are writing a character that is distasteful to you, it might be effective for you to ask yourself why that is the case. I wrote a blog for Obscura last semester titled, “The Puppy Had It Coming.” The gist of the article was to pose a puzzle to writers. How can you write a scene where an adult human kicks a puppy across the room and the reader at least understands why. I am not saying there is any way to justify the action or for the readers to be on the human’s side unless they are sociopaths. I am saying you need let the reader know how dark the place is in the character’s mind that he is capable of doing that.

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