[Critique Group 2] Pieces for November 28th Critique Session

[Abbie Taylor]

###1. Poetry from Valerie Moreno

Doors


Doors open, doors close--

doors of light, doors of thought,

doors of  challenge.



Some open easily welcoming,

some I push with all I am;

they open a crack, just  enough 

to keep me separate.



Doors slide and let me in,

slam before I have a chance.

So  many doors, I knock,

pound, can't find a key to open.



No matter, I'll try another

and  another until I find you,
uninhibited.

###2. Poetry from Brad Corallo

Music and memory

Stepping into the shower this morning
to the liquid strains of Pastorale,
the awareness of profound loss, 
fell upon me like a familiar, tattered garment.
The bitter-sweet strains
both tore, and comforted. 
How perverse the human heart.
So much self work
to move on;
and I have.
I truly have! 
Yet these moments, far less frequent
can still shake the very pillars of my wounded consciousness, 
and Shatter the Sun.
For a moment or two, before
with the water of my cleansing;
they are lost in the nonjudgmental, swirling, ever receiving drain. 

NOTE: “Pastorale, music of nature and grace” is a 1997 acoustic music CD by Eric Tingstad & Nancy Rumbel. It was profound background to the tragically lost relationship with my beloved.

###3. Creative Nonfiction from Abbie Taylor

HOW I MET MY IDEAL PARTNER THROUGH NEWSREEL

In the winter of 2002, I was single and living in Sheridan, Wyoming. A couple of months after subscribing, I decided to pose a question on Newsreel. Being a writer who attended workshops away from my computer on a regular basis, I wanted to know if there was any way to transfer a document from a Braille notetaker to my computer. At the time, most notetakers didn’t use standard word processing formats, so the answers I received weren’t satisfactory. 

One of these came from Bill Taylor, who lived in Fowler, Colorado, where he grew up and where he once owned a computer store for twenty years. I don’t remember his answer, but I do recall him asking me about my writing. I responded that I wrote fiction, nonfiction, and poetry and that I worked as a registered music therapist in a nursing home. He then wrote back and said his mother lived in a nursing home. We had a little something in common.

Over the next couple of years, we corresponded, mainly by email but occasionally by phone. He’d downloaded over a hundred songs on his computer, and he sent me some of these on cassettes. I emailed him some of my writing. In the spring of 2003, when I started work on my first novel, We Shall Overcome, I sent him chapters, and he responded with feedback.

In the spring of 2004, on our way to visit my brother and his family in New Mexico, my father and I decided to stop in Fowler to see Bill, although it was a bit out of the way. Bill and I visited for about half an hour, and I discovered that he, like me, was a fan of Dr. Pepper. The following December, we returned, on our way to New Mexico for Christmas, and took Bill out to breakfast. At that time, he suggested we kiss under the mistletoe in his living room, but I thought he was joking.

In January of 2005, I received a Braille letter from him in the mail and the shock of my life when I read it. He was asking me to marry him. At first, I thought he wanted me to move to Fowler, an idea I didn’t like, since I’d lived in Sheridan for years and wasn’t about to start from Square 1 in a new town. However, when I spooke to him on the phone after receiving his letter, he told me he wanted to move to Sheridan. He was tired of his home town, where there wasn't much to do. Although I still didn’t know if I loved him, this was definitely a game-changer.

A couple of months later, he came to Sheridan to visit and proposed to me officially at a restaurant in the presence of family and friends. Something clicked, and I said yes.

In July, he moved to Sheridan, and I quit my job at the nursing home. In September, we were married. I wish I could say that was the end, and we’re still living happily ever after, thanks to Newsreel, but that was not to be.

In January of 2006, Bill suffered a stroke that confined him to a wheelchair. He spent nine months in the same nursing home where I’d worked, and I brought him home in September of that year. We’d hoped he would be back on his feet some day, but in January of 2007, he suffered a second stroke, not as severe, but bad enough to set him back to the point where he could never walk again. I cared for him at home until he passed in October 2012.

Despite the trials and tribulations of him only having the use of one arm and leg and me being his caregiver, most of our time together was happy, and we both looked forward to the arrival of Newsreel each month, first through the mail on cassettes, then via digital download. You can read our complete story in a memoir I published in 2016, My Ideal Partner: How I Met, Married, and Cared for the Man I Loved Despite Debilitating Odds. To learn more, visit my website at http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com. This book is also available from Bookshare.

If I hadn’t met Bill, I probably would still be working forty-hour weeks in the nursing home and may not have published four books. If not for Newsreel, I wouldn’t have met Bill. I hope this audio publication continues for at least another sixty years.

###4.  Poetry from Leonard Tuchyneer

Home in a Scroll  or Home, Home on the Page
Uncle Wiggly lived on paper pages,
nestled between textured lime green bindings
of my early childhood cherished book,
as actual to me as anyone,
and lives today in a memory nook.
Grimm’s pages, strewn across my bedroom floor,
warned me of a world of deadly fire,
and If I dared not to follow the rules,
I could be cooked in a boiling kettle
by a hungry ugly vicious old witch.
Little Sambo turned tigers to butter,
so if I ran around fast as a churn,
I could escape from wolves, tigers and bears.
churn tigers to butter, bears to honey
and wolves to harmless, toothless grandmothers.
My first time ever library
held a dusty, toasty scent,
cuddled me in its sweet bouquet,
a child’s blanket swathing me
and showing me I’m safe at home.
Though I can no longer read with eyes,
the musty, smells of aging books,
textures of page and bindings,
and allure of new and ancient stories
still enfold me in their timeless lore,
secure behind my ever-after door.

###5. Poetry from Alice Massa

Fugue in Five Senses
by Alice Jane-Marie Massa
On stage, at the concert grand,
thanks to the braille music the pianist studied,
she smiles with joyful confidence
as her long fingers stretch over octaves
of cool ivory keys
that share warm melodious notes
with an audience, unseen beyond the spotlight
which smells of the heat of this solo moment.
Then, the applause bounces into her ears
as she bows
and takes into her talented hands
the comforting harness and leash
of her cherished guide dog--
her second sight--
that leads the pianist stage right,
where someone hands her
a fragrant, single, apricot-colored rose
and a chocolate raspberry truffle
to celebrate
her "Fugue in Five Senses."

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author http://abbiescorner.wordpress.com
http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com
abbie at mysero.net
Order my new memoir at http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com/memoir.htm