From Pittsburgh

 

After a brief visit to Provincetown, I left New England behind & have arrived in Pittsburgh! The first few cities I chose were pretty random (Niagara Falls, Providence, Provincetown, Pittsburgh) but now that it doesn't feel like I'm being hunted or running, I can focus on choosing where I go next. I don't feel as scared as I did when I initially left home so I can share that my next two destinations are Detroit, then Minneapolis. My first stop here in Steel City will be White Whale Bookstore. I'm pretty sure they have a section dedicated to Banned Books! 

Tonight, I'm going to spend an hour working with the Conversation, taking notes & using the revision prompts to try out different ways of seeing poems I've already written. One of them is "Take the last line of your first draft and use it as the first line of an entirely new poem" & I'm excited to try that out. It's easy for me to churn out drafts, but the important part of the process (for me at least) is the cutting & polishing. In Psalms, in the very first poem in the collection I talk about how a new draft is like a rough, lumpish, common stone. I need to take time working with it before it starts to even resemble a gem. They aren't all geodes though, sometimes, it's just stays a rock, something you thought might have a core of crystal but you carve & carve and suddenly you realize you just have a handful of gravel. 

Anyway, learning new techniques for revision will be helpful. Especially since I'm going to be editing the poems from Psalms for the print version that I've promised myself I'll have ready this week. It gives me a chance to clean up the pieces from the digital version that I panic published (I really did think I was going to die!) but I also need to now design the spine & back cover artwork. Should be fun!

Pittsburgh won't be like Providence. Not as many adventures or outings--I think I'll be spending more time with my nose to the grindstone here. There aren't any live poetry readings, or slams or open mics BUT there is one that's on Zoom? So I'll need to make sure I sign up for that if there's time, unless it's a Black History Month focused session, in which case I'll be be an enthusiastic audience member. 

Once I start heading west (San Diego is my eventual west coast destination) it's going to feel more real that I'm putting thousands of miles between me & Virginia. This will be healing (putting distance between me & the dangerous situation I ran from) and also painful--but my best friend told me today: "I wish I had your bravery, genuinely. It's so cool that you're putting yourself out there and on this big gay adventure." They told me this, I think, to remind me that it's going to take bravery to keep up with this journey--and while I don't think of myself as a brave person, knowing that they see me like that? It helps, and makes me feel less like a coward, less like a monster.