[Crwt-undergrad-info] [CW-Grad] UCR MFA Alumni Fwd: "Description of Symptoms" by Allison Benis White

Tue Mar 21 07:59:02 PDT 2023

Lovely!

On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 8:27 PM Alejandra Castillo Chavez <acast241 at ucr.edu>
wrote:

> So good! Thank you for sharing! Congratulations to professor Allison Benis
> White.
>
> -Ale
>
> On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 6:08 PM Allison Hedge Coke <allisonh at ucr.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> "Description of Symptoms" by Allison Benis White Poem-a-Day | Poets.org
>>
>>
>> Now my hands buried / in my hair, resting on piano keys
>> [image: Facebook]
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=4752ac027c&e=9de57db1a5>
>> [image: Twitter]
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=dab969694f&e=9de57db1a5>
>> [image: Instagram]
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>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=b82f94ba62&e=9de57db1a5>
>> March 20, 2023
>> Description of Symptoms
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=efcbb59356&e=9de57db1a5>
>> *Allison Benis White*
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=271186dff0&e=9de57db1a5>
>>
>> Now my hands buried
>> in my hair, resting on piano keys
>> in the back of my head.
>> This is the music I am playing
>> through my mind: a dark room singing
>> a song that will not have children.
>>
>> *
>>
>> Lying on the floor tonight, snowflakes
>> cut from paper laid over my eyes, a hand
>> carved from wood laid over my mouth.
>> If the truth is the thing you must not say,
>> I will speak for the vase now
>> as it falls: it is better never
>> to be at all.
>>
>>
>> *
>>
>> A hand on the back of my head
>> made of glass, my love, my eyes,
>> filled with wire, life. Once
>> I watched a bird’s shadow cross a field
>> in the wind: a black hat that could not stop
>> tumbling. My eyes are sore
>> from seeing, my lips from speaking.
>>
>> *
>>
>> How a ribbon curls when pulled
>> across a scissor’s blade, I am practicing
>> transformation, pain. How the dark hair
>> of imagination, uncut, grows down
>> to the floor. What is left
>> but to make a world, a war?
>>
>>
>> *
>>
>> Or a landscape in which to stay alive
>> *(ghost flower/house of breath*). Another wish: language
>> drilled through ice, through my life.
>> If grief is love with nowhere to go, this is
>> my mouth turning into snow.
>> This is somewhere.
>>
>> Copyright © 2023 by Allison Benis White. Originally published in
>> Poem-a-Day on March 20, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
>>
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=3df0ea7af5&e=9de57db1a5>
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>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=8d707b2a22&e=9de57db1a5>
>>
>> “This poem was written after filling out medical intake forms for a
>> doctor’s appointment last year. I was grieving for a friend who had ended
>> her life, and I was experiencing symptoms I could not quite articulate. The
>> poem surprised me with its ending, reminding me that language is a place
>> for love to go.”
>> *—Allison Benis White*
>> [image: Allison Benis White]
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=4114bcdf09&e=9de57db1a5>
>>
>> Allison Benis White
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=02bb344e79&e=9de57db1a5>
>> is the author of *The Wendys *(Four Way Books, 2020) and *Please Bury Me
>> in This* (Four Way Books, 2017), winner of the Rilke Prize. The
>> recipient of the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of
>> America, she is an associate professor at the University of California,
>> Riverside.
>>
>>
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=531b8dde42&e=9de57db1a5>
>> [image: The Wendys]
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=6c4892b334&e=9de57db1a5>
>>
>> *The Wendys*
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=4ae0f638ed&e=9de57db1a5>
>> (Four Way Books, 2020)
>>
>>
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=fd2d5e9ec8&e=9de57db1a5>
>>
>>
>>
>> *“A Horse Grazes in My Shadow” by Mat Rasmussen*
>> *read more*
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=aa5627c3fb&e=9de57db1a5>
>> *“The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity” by Mary Jo Bang*
>> *read more*
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=cf023ca29d&e=9de57db1a5>
>>
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=d0678fd923&e=9de57db1a5>
>> Thanks to Diane Seuss
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=dd5bb8e634&e=9de57db1a5>,
>> author of *frank: sonnets
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=fca230d7fc&e=9de57db1a5> *(Graywolf
>> Press, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or
>> listen to a Q&A
>> <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=5b8df9101f&e=9de57db1a5> about
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