Workshop, Staten Island-Style
 
Writing is: responsibility, not recreation,
we’re told.
 
This is reflected in some of the given scenarios:
a mother who’s lost a son to gun-crime,
a mother carrying twins
to full term, but one’s dead in the womb. 
 
My 90-year-old self — the prompt, the persona,
the trying on of all the shoes in the story
proves elusive.
The clock’s red second hand mocks me.
 
But even Clare, the martyr mum,
who’s come on behalf of her poorly writer son,
is on board and does as she’s told.
 
I’m asking who’d like to go next,
the poet says, as if you HAVE a choice.
 
I hear her all-American voice.
She hangs out her tongue
as if to underline the point.
 
I laugh. Hysterically. Apologise,
in a British way, for misconstruing the task.
I thought it was free-writing I say.
 
I realise the words I’ve written
reveal every real thought I’ve had
in the last forty-five minutes.
She’s having none of it.
 
The lines look up at me,
all 26-lines of them,
which apparently form a Darien
which sounds like a girl’s name.

Alex Corrin-Tachibana
 
If you have any thoughts on this poem, Alex Corrin-Tachibana  would be pleased to hear them.