Patron Henekou’s “My Neighbors In Lincoln, Nebraska” is #274 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM

*The images in this specific piece are granted copyright:  Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.

The other images are granted copyright permission by the copyright holder, which is identified beneath each photo. 

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*** The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished poets for BACKSTORY OF THE POEM series.  Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7

*** Patron Henekou’s “My Neighbors In Lincoln, Nebraska” is #274 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote that specific poem.  All BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links are at the end of this piece. 

 (Above Right: Patron Henekou in September of 2017. Copyright by Patron Henekou)

Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem
from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until the final form? The poem I choose here is called “My Neighbors in Lincoln, Nebraska”, which I picked from my forthcoming book with the tentative title De l’autre côté de l’Atlantique, & autres poèmes. I can only offer some significant moments in the process of writing this poem, not a complete and detailed step by step process. Sorry about that! (Above Left: Patron Henekou in October of 2017. Copyright by Patron Henekou)

The idea of the poem occurred to me between my arrival in Nebraska in mid-August and October 2017. Having the demise of Eric Garner in the hands of the police in mind, I was very much concerned about my security on travelling to the US. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Eric_Garner 

When my friends who helped me to locate and rent an apartment at a perfect distance from UNL told me I was privileged to have Lincoln Police as neighbors, I was instantly struck by my disturbed feelings: to be happy or not about this proximity, marked by a beautiful tree visible from the window of my apartment. And the mixture of feelings I experienced materialized on the police tree with the passage of time.  (Left:  The police tree in bloom. Credit and Copyright by Patron Henekou)

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I started to write this poem in Lomé, Togo, two years after my stay in the US. The outbreak of Covid-19 begun early March in my country, Togo, and by the end of this month the whole country was confined. I turned this situation into a writing residence in my apartment. The actual writing location alternated between my bedroom and the uncompleted top floor of the apartment where I had arranged a space, among various construction materials, for writing during the day. I would sit on a stool, and place the computer on my lap or on a chair in front of me, and write.  (Right:  Patron Henekoou in Lome, Togo.  Copyright by patron Henekou)

What month and year did you start writing this poem? I started writing this poem towards the end of April 2020 when I finally settled to recount my experience as an African during my stay in the US on a 2017 – 2018 Fulbright postdoc scholarship. (Left: Patron Henekou in May of 2020.  Copyright by Patron Henekou)

How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?)  I can’t tell. This question reminds me of the importance of keeping record of the writing process of my work as a way of building a gestational memory of the poems. Unfortunately, I have kept no drafts of this poem though there have been changes, a number of them, to the first version.   One quite important thing to note is that this poem was originally written in French under the title “N 26th ST & Holdrege” where the police tree stood (it is still there, anyways).  (Right:  "My Neighbors in Lincoln, Nebraska in the French language.  Copyright by Patron Henekou)

Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us? Yes! I can remember a few lines which I am glad to share with you. The title, for example was “N 26th ST & Holdrege.” Now it is “My Neighbors in Lincoln, Nebraska”. Another example is "It’s so/cruel that it can be taken as the title of a famous ballad.” This was initially at the place of lines 9 and 10 of one of the drafts. And there were references to Guy Des Cars and Toni Braxton, namely. (Above Left:  photo of the intersection of N 26yh Street and Holdrege.  Credit and Copyright by Patron Henekou)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_des_Cars 

http://www.tonibraxton.com/

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I can’t tell, precisely. A poem may resonate with different people differently. Different readers may experience different levels of emotional response about a specific line or a particular imagery, or the poem’s musicality. 

I continue to ask myself this fundamental question about how some trees manage to breathe after losing their leaves in winter and rejuvenate in spring, and how care is taken to create and enforce by virtue of law breathing spaces to squirrels and other animals, and the growing awareness of Americans to deal with discrimination against blacks and other ethnic minorities. 

https://globalexchange.org/2020/06/03/global-exchange-stands-in-solidarity-with-the-movement-for-black-lives/?gclid=CjwKCAjwpKCDBhBPEiwAFgBzj74r7EJiLW1oKMqHsBNybBGQerzDZJo3ZsMcpV98kChR5zVfZ7A7JxoC0MsQAvD_BwE 

I just hope that the poem’s movement in the way it weaves and highlights the plights of black people and the afflictions of trees would ring the bell in someone for whatever morally significant action to be taken so that they can “breathe again…”, which echoes Eric Garner’s last words. (Right:  The Police Tree.  Credit and Copyright by Patron Henekou)

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write, and why? The last stanza, as a whole, and the last three lines in particular: 

“I touched its trunk. My hand shook. The afflictions

of trees and our afflictions. A few leaves fell,

again. You will breathe again, dear tree.” (Right:  The Police Tree.  Credit and Copyright by Patron Henekou)

This scene actually happened, and writing it two years later was like renewing the experience once again as vividly as it has been, thinking of a police that does not protect and a winter weather that afflicts trees, pitilessly. 

Has this poem been published before? And if so, where? Yes! Zócalo Public Square.  https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/06/12/patron-kakou-henekou-poem-togolese-poet-playwright/chronicles/poetry/ 

This poem was translated from its original French by Patron Henekou and Connie Voisine (Above Right), Zócalo Poetry Editor.

http://www.connievoisine.com/ 

My Neighbors in Lincoln, Nebraska

I have neighbors

at the corner of N 26th & Holdrege:

the police station and a tree that announces their proximity

to me. I find myself surprised to be happy about

this closeness at first. Did I say happy?

I think of better worlds hardly possible.

Now, each time I pass beneath this tree

I think of the “I can’t breathe” of Eric Garner,

and how these words contrast with my dreams.

 

In this month of October, the police tree breathes less

or it looks that way. Its green welcoming leaves have changed

their color. They look more and more like my skin.

What future is there for tree leaves? Ah, future.

Do I have any myself, in this American city, presumably calm?

What color would it take here on this peaceful street

while in the unhappy streets of Lomé since August 

my compatriots breathe the spice of tear gas?

Time afflicts trees. Humans afflict humans.

 

Returning from campus one evening at the end of October

I stopped by the police tree.

This night, I felt more for this tree.

It had lost many of its leaves.

I touched its trunk. My hand shook. The afflictions

of trees and our afflictions. A few leaves fell,

again. You will breathe again, dear tree.

Patron Henekou is a poet and cofounder of Festival International des Lettres et des Arts (www.nimblefeathers.com ) at Université de Lomé, Togo. He writes in French and English as well, and translates. (Above Left:  Patron Henekou.  Copyright by Patron Henekou)

His poems have appeared in anthologies such as Palmes pour le Togo, Arbolarium, Antologia Poetica de Los Cinco Continentes, and The Best New African Poets Anthology 2017, and in poetry journals such as AFROpoésie, Revue des Citoyens des Lettres, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, Asymptote, Zócalo, Scoundrel Time, etc. 

His published books include a play, Dovlo, or A Worthless Sweat (2015) and two poetry books in French entitled Souffles d’outre-cœur (2017) and Souffles & Faces (2018). Patron is a 2018 African American Fellow at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival in Delray, Florida.

All of the Backstory of the Poem LIVE LINKS can be found at the VERY END of the below feature: 

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/02/will-justice-drakes-intercession-is-251.html 

 

Mary Byrne’s short story “What Doesn’t Choke Will Fatten” from her short story collection PLUGGING THE CASUAL BREACH #225

 *The images in this specific piece are granted copyright:  Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.

The other images are granted copyright permission by the copyright holder, which is identified beneath each photo. 

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

***The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished fiction genre (including screenwriters and playwrights) for INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION.  Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7 

****Mary Byrne’s short story “What Doesn’t Choke Will Fatten” from her short story collection PLUGGING THE CASUAL BREACH #225 in the never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt.  

Name of fiction work? And were there other names you considered that you would like to share with us? I first entitled this story ‘Existentialism for Dummies’ which I rather fancied, but when I asked my nephew to read it and he asked, ‘What’s existentialism?,’  (Right:  Mary Byrne's son Edwyn and her nephew Ian. Copyright by Mary Byrne)

I decided on my father’s adage: ‘What doesn’t choke will fatten’, a nice paraphrase of Nietzsche’s ‘What doesn’t kill me makes me strong’. (My father started life on a farm in south Monaghan and was never short of sayings, quotes, poetry – including Kavanagh, of course – and remembered doggerel from one of his aunts). 

What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I wrote the story around 2011.

(Right:  Mary Byrne in 2011. Copyright by Mary Byrne)

Moving from Paris to Normandy some years earlier, I realised that the houses, villages and countryside I’d seen in WWII films were in fact Norman. My students introduced themselves and their region by saying, ‘The Allies bombed Caen without evacuating it.’ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Goodwood 

(Above Left:  IWM caption : THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE NORMANDY CAMPAIGN 1944.  Sherman tanks carrying infantry wait for the order to advance at the start of Operaton Goodwood.  1944.) 

I began to understand the extent of the destruction that had been necessary to win the war. Le Guide du Routard for Normandy gave percentages of destruction for towns, sometimes up to 80%. When Allied bombing started on the coast, dishes rattled in dressers some 100 kms to the south. Many of the (by then) elderly men in our region had been POWs on farms in Germany. Theirs and other stories emerged. (Right: Between Chambois and Vimoutiers, in the exact location where the MontormelMemorial is situated today, the ultimate and most bitter battle of Normandy took place, from August 18th to 22nd, 1944. Montgomery called it “the beginning of the end of the war")

The clincher was a visit from friends of Polish origin and a visit to the Montormel memorial (http://memorial-montormel.org/history_2_109.html) which illustrates the final battle for Normandy: the ‘kettling’ of some 50,000 German soldiers into the ‘Falaise pocket’ in August 1944. Polish troops from Britain played a major role. The story was building itself around me. 

Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work?  And please describe in detail.  And can you please include a photo? I had no ‘official’ study at home at the time – my husband needed a room for his own work and I was often in Caen teaching – so I tended to camp my temporary study in bedrooms until dislodged by visitors (see two such encampments below). Any writing I did was snatched in haphazard breaks from teaching and happened in notebooks and sometimes in a deckchair in the garden, which was beautiful. (Right: Mary Byrne's writing space. Credit and Copyright by Mary Byrne)

What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I tend to use music to put me in the mood, whatever I’m into (but Mozart when I need to be fast and efficient). However when seriously writing text, even music can be an interruption. I’ve now moved from notebooks direct to laptop and have a proper study (still pretty chaotic though). I drink tea all day. Favourite time varies from morning to evening according to mood and other interruptions. (Mary Byrne's notebooks.  Credit and Copyright by Mary Byrne)

Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference.  This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. The story’s narrator is a German former student of philosophy, who is captured in the ‘Falaise pocket’ in 1944.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falaise_Pocket  

The story consists of his backstory intercut with events in the present. Obviously it was his backstory that inspired me first. When he’s finally released, sometime in 1948 probably, he walks to Germany and, failing to find any trace of his family, returns to France, ‘the only other place anyone had ever cared for me.’ That person is Marguerite, a farm worker like himself: 

I bought an old motorbike and we would take off for the coast, Marguerite having forgotten her idea that we’d never remain friends if we made love again.

Marguerite had this thing about ocean liners, could never get enough of them. So I was jealous of ocean liners, especially American ones. We would spend Sundays in Le Havre, where most of the local boys were getting piecework for rebuilding the town, working as fast as they could. Many of the houses around here were paid and families reared on the rebuilding of towns like Caen, Le Havre and St Malo. I never even tried for such jobs, content to stay with Marguerite on farms. I thought no one would have wanted me anyway, although the French were shipping in cheap labor from all over: Germany, Poland, Italy, North Africa. I just kept a low profile and stayed where I was.

On the quay at Le Havre we stood, keeping our voices down, among American soldiers leaning against American cars, waiting and wanting to go home. Their uniforms weren’t half so crisp or handsome as in the films that portrayed them. But they were better fed than us, from better-fed parents. Good teeth filled their big smiles. They smiled and waited and watched. Marguerite would watch the ships and I would watch her, in a yellow button-down dress with oranges and apples on it, watching those gigantic ships come and go, bearing glamorous passengers and other people’s dreams. Her favorite liner was the Ile de France. Back in the village she would throw her hands together like a child and describe it to friends. One Christmas I found her a poster for the Cunard line. She installed it on the wall of our first house together. By then it was the ‘60s: the crones were being silenced by new clothes, new music, new mœurs. They didn’t like us, but they had no power over us. (Plugging the Causal Breach, Regal House publishing 2019, p.21). 

https://www.regalhousepublishing.com/ 

Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write?  And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? My experience in Normandy left me sad for everyone in and around the war. I admired people’s physical and mental strength. I sensed buried rancour, as in any place ravaged by war. I loved the idea of a Franco-German post-war love affair between two people the world hadn’t managed to break. It was even sadder to imagine how difficult such a relationship might have been for them: they would probably have encountered considerable hostility.  

Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I cannot find any trace of the actual story in notebooks I haven’t yet decommissioned. I can find lots of research about the war etc. It’s possible I wrote it straight onto the computer, because most of the elements of the story were already there in my mind. 

Has this been published?  And if yes, where? Short story first published in Prairie Schooner Vol. 86, No. 1 (SPRING 2012), pp. 132-147 (16 pages)

Published By: University of Nebraska Press

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41441671 

Now collected in Plugging the causal breach (Regal House, 2019). 

https://www.regalhousepublishing.com/product/plugging-the-causal-breach/ 

Or via Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Plugging-Causal-Breach-Mary-Byrne/dp/1947548719/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?crid=3ONQ6JM96R2W9&keywords=mary%20byrne%20plugging%20the%20casual%20beach&qid=1569343738&sprefix=mary%20byrne%2Caps%2C217&sr=8-1-fkmr0 

Biography of Mary Byrne:  “I’m a writer, a voracious reader, former editor and translator, and a recovering academic. I was born in Ireland and started life in the picturesque village of Tallanstown, Co. Louth before moving to Ardee where I attended the Mercy Convent before going to Clochar Lughaidh Gaelscoil in Monaghan. At University College Dublin I studied English and Philosophy and eventually completed an MA in Modern English and American Literature. I’ve worked in Dublin, London, Essen, Rabat, Paris and Caen and now live in Montpellier where I’m working on further collections of short fiction - and planning further travels.” (Left:  Mary Byrne.  Credit to Didier Barthelemy.  Copyright by Mary Byrne)

All of the Inside the Emotion of Fiction LIVE LINKS can be found at the VERY END of the below feature: 

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html 

Hope Whitby’s “Love Letter to a Stranger” is #273 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM

 *The images in this specific piece are granted copyright:  Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.

The other images are granted copyright permission by the copyright holder, which is identified beneath each photo. 

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

*** The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished poets for BACKSTORY OF THE POEM series.  Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7

***Hope Whitby’s “Love Letter to a Stranger” is #273 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote that specific poem.  All BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links are at the end of this piece. 

 

Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form?  On June 10, 2013, I had a heart attack and spent three days in the hospital where a stent was put in. Five days later, I had a second heart attack and was rushed back to the hospital where another stent was put in because the first one failed. I have 48% heart damage. During my second stay in the hospital, someone passed away from the same condition I had, and she received the same treatment. Even though I felt very fortunate to be alive, I suffered from terrible survivor’s guilt. 

For a few months afterward, I was not writing, so when a friend offered me a spot at her writer’s retreat that November at Porches in Nelson County, VA., I went. I needed the stimulation and the encouragement. During a group journal writing session, I wrote of this person who I did not know but was in the same cardiac critical care unit and she passed away at the same time I was waking up from my procedure. 

Every morning, I would thank the powers that be for keeping me here, but I would also question those same powers on why they kept me and not her. I felt a release of some of the weight I had been carrying by writing about it and then sharing the experience aloud with other writers. When I returned from the retreat, I began pulling the poem out of the journal entry. I didn’t know at that time that it would become one of my most requested poems to be read at poetry readings. (Above Right and Left:  Writer's Retreat at Porches in Nelson County, Virginia.)

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem?  And please describe the place in great detail. On some Sundays, pre-Covid, I would take my laptop and have lunch at the café at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. The Best Café (Right) has a lovely view of sculptures, water, and mature trees. You will often see writers there writing because it is a pleasant environment. 

What month and year did you start writing this poem? I wrote the first draft of this poem in December 2013. The white Christmas lights at the museum and around it seemed to add to the spirituality of the poem. (Left: and the two below are Hope Whitby's journal entries.  Credit and Copyright by Hope Whitby)

How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?) I found the original journal entry from the journal writing class. I can share those pages. What I remember about writing this poem, was how I wrote all around the poem before I found its core or its heart. I wrote about things that didn’t happen to try to make the poem sometimes appear more dramatic or sometimes less dramatic. 

I took a break and let what I had written rest and looked at some art, and by doing that, the poem, the true poem came off the page as soon as I opened the document. I deleted everything around those lines because they were merely lines of me just talking myself through the process rather than actual lines of poetry.

Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version?  And can you share them with us? After I found the poem, I wrote the poem in 7 syllable lines so I could tighten up the language. With that version, I shared it with a writing group I belonged to at the time, where a few minor changes were made with punctuation and one line changed to 6 syllables and another one to 8. Those small changes didn’t disrupt the flow of the poem. (Right: Hope Whitby's writing space in her home.  Credit and Copyright by Hope Whitby)

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I want the readers of my poem to come away with an understanding of my release of survivor’s guilt because I don’t have the answers to the big questions. What I would like for a writer to take away from the poem, is form. "Love Letter to a Stranger" is one stanza with twenty-three lines. I didn’t break the lines into stanzas or couplets because I didn’t want the reader to take any pauses. I wanted this poem to move along quickly as if it was happening in real-time. 

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The most emotional part of this poem for me to write was visualizing the stranger departing from this world and ascending to another. I am always aware that the roles in this poem could have been reversed and I could have departed. My hope is when that time comes, I would transition in a beautiful way as she did in this poem.

Has this poem been published before?  And if so where? Love Letter to a Stranger was first published in the 2015 Women Artist Datebook published by Syracuse Cultural Workers and then it was reprinted in 2019 in my first volume of poetry, Traveling the River, published by Life in 10 Minutes Press.

https://www.lifein10minutes.com/traveling-the-river-hope-whitby 

Love Letter to a Stranger

 By Hope Whitby

I was later told that at

the same time my heartbeat, lost

for moments, came back in a faint

green bleep, that you, the woman

in 4C, took your last breath.

I saw you dancing under 

the oak as the sun streamed

golden through its leaves and, Wow,

you were so happy as you

twirled while raising your arms high

above your head. The light, so 

inviting, felt warm on my 

face. And the closer I moved 

toward you, the farther you

danced away until I could

only see your figure bathed 

in white, then you were gone.

I wanted to ask, who are you?

But before my voice made sound,

I felt gentle fingers on

my shoulder bringing me back

to a room with monitors

and intravenous tubing.

https://www.hopewhitby.com/ 

Michael J. Sahno’s Whizzers is #224 in the never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION

 *The images in this specific piece are granted copyright:  Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.

The other images are granted copyright permission by the copyright holder, which is identified beneath each photo. 

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

***The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished fiction genre (including screenwriters and playwrights) for INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION.  Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7 

****Michael J. Sahno’s Whizzers is #224 in the never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt.  

What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? Oddly, I began this novel sometime around 2000, but then set it aside. I had the first few chapters of Whizzers and Miles of Files going around the same time, and eventually put all my effort into finishing Miles of Files. It wasn’t until I’d finished and published my first three novels—Brothers’ Hand, Jana, and Miles of Files—that I committed to completing Whizzers. So even though the first few chapters date all the way back to 2000, the majority of the book was written between 2018 and 2019.

Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work?  And please describe in detail.  And can you please include a photo?  Since I began running Sahno Publishing full-time in 2016, I’ve worked entirely from my home office on an iMac. With the exception of those first few chapters mentioned above, written in another location, all or Whizzers came to being here. Not much to describe, either. It’s a pretty bare-bones setup facing away from the window in order to avoid distractions! 

What were your writing habits while writing this work—did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I listen to instrumental music almost all the time when writing fiction—typically jazz, ambient, or electronic. If it’s morning, I might be drinking coffee; afternoon, anything from water to Thai tea. Although I composed my first couple novels by hand before transferring them to print, I wrote both Miles of Files and Whizzers entirely on iMac.  

My wheelhouse for composition runs from afternoon through mid-evening, but I do my best editing in the morning and have been known to write the occasional bit of a scene right before bedtime.

Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference.  This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. This scene runs from pp. 163-68 of Whizzers. I feel like it should include a trigger warning: bullying, homophobic slurs, profanity, etc. It’s the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever written, but it was even more heartbreaking when I experienced the abuse in the scene.

I can’t see any point in hanging around here longer than necessary, so I just go for the door right away. It opens onto a scene I never expected. Instead of a generic parking lot for a standard issue hotel, outside the door is a church. The room I’m leaving is within a school, as if it were a classroom. It makes no sense, but then, not much seems to make sense anymore. I haven’t even shaken off the experience in the hospital, and now this.

Even more shocking, I’m instantly aware it’s winter here and I’m dressed in a heavy coat, pants, gloves, and hat. I wasn’t wearing them a moment ago—was I? I don’t think so. The jarring effect of the view of the church and the school behind me almost makes me dizzy. I feel sick. I try to open the door again, retreat into the room, but it’s locked.

I know the school, of course. I know the church. It’s St. Joseph’s, Bristol, Connecticut. I don’t even have to guess the timeframe or reason: it’s late 1977 or early 1978. This was my junior high. That church, St. Joseph’s, has a small cemetery attached to it. I can see a few headstones from here. Another six or seven years from this time and my grandmother and grandfather will be buried here.

My breath comes in short bursts of steam as the wave of sadness and rage comes over me. I already know exactly why I’m here, although there’s not a soul around. I’m going to see, and maybe try to somehow comfort, the thirteen-year-old version of myself.

Early adolescence can be the hardest, most turbulent time in life, and mine was no exception. It was incredibly painful because I made a simple error in judgment: after I discovered masturbation, I told another kid about it.

He took my confiding in him as some kind of sexual threat. He decided I must be gay to make such a confession. And when he told all the other boys in the class, they believed him.

This is the time I’m revisiting now. I’m sure of it. Within the space of a few days, I go from a friendly, popular kid to an absolute pariah. Every boy in that class knows me as the masturbator—none of them do it, of course—and they’re convinced I’m gay as well.

Denying it means it must be true. Denying it only makes things worse. I’m attacked in class, attacked on the blacktop basketball court.

I have to fight for my life.

When another of the building’s metal doors flies open and boys pour out onto the cold blacktop in their white shirts and green pants and ties, I stand watching in silence. I’m not usually invisible in these visits to the past, but today I can’t help thinking I must be. What purpose could it serve otherwise? I doubt I’m going to be the adult breaking up children fighting.

Sure enough, this is it—the day I’m attacked on the playground. Ironic word in this situation. There’s no play here, and the ground is covered by this hard, icy blacktop beneath our feet. The boys spill out into a whirling dervish of malice. The shape of this mob is like that of an octopus, swarming and falling in on itself. I hear the words, words misapplied to me, and my outrage rises far beyond just for myself. It’s for all the abused, all the broken, all the damned.

“Fucking faggot.”

“You’re a fucking pussy, man.”

And then I see myself, the teenaged me, in the middle of that savage group of thirteen. The dreadful bowl haircut so popular to the time, and a look in my eyes that I can’t describe as anything other than devastated.

“Leave me alone,” I hear Michael say. “You guys are full of shit.”

Not a single adult around, not even a nun. They have turned this little mob loose outside without a thought of supervision. This must be their only respite from them, a fifteen-minute recess where the little monsters can do as they like. The girls in our class are nowhere to be seen, and I suppose that meant they had a separate recess from us boys. I don’t recall anything about it. So much my mind has blocked, mercifully.

The mob swirls around, and at length I see a boy hit me. My own adult body winces in sympathy pain. It was horrific enough to be that victim, surrounded by a group, in the full knowledge there wasn’t a single friend among them. Yet watching it happen is somehow worse. The outrage in my heart makes the ringing in my ears jump from an eight to a ten.

Michael hits back, but without success. The kid is rangy, taller, longer arms. He’s outmatched, like a boxer with a shorter reach. The mob is almost irrelevant, I can see, though I know it didn’t feel that way.

I step forward, meaning to intervene if I can somehow. And in that moment, I feel a small hand up against my leg.

It’s David, appearing to me for the first time in this brutal tableau, though I have no idea how long he’s been here. He holds up the hand and shakes his head no. I see him mouth the words, It’s okay.

It’s not okay. But I understand now—I can’t move. I’m frozen here, powerless to intervene. I can’t change the course of history one iota. For once, I can’t even talk to any of them.

My heart pounds as I look back to the awful scene before me. Like so many teenage fights, the mob is egging it on, but no one cheers for Michael. The kid hits him again, and then they tussle, an ugly flurry of hooded jackets and flying arms. I know what’s coming, but when it happens, it’s still a shock: the bully pulls Michael’s hood, my hood, over my face. Blows rain down, blows unseen.

But now I see them as they happen. And I see what I couldn’t have seen at the time: the ugly mob of jeering boys cheers the bully on as he fights dirtier. Fists pumping into the air.

“Yeah, get him. Fuck him up.”

I watch the small body sag as little Michael surrenders. He falls, every last bit of fight bullied, beaten, out of him.

The crowd scatters. Back to normal. Who cares? Forget that kid.

At last, David’s hand drops. I look at him and notice that he’s translucent again.

And so am I.

David nods, and I understand somehow what I have to do. It’s the only thing I can do.

I walk to the boy, the small, crumpled figure. His face is red—distorted with rage, shame, silent tears. I hold my translucent hand up and wipe the tears from his eyes. I wrap my arms around him in a hug that he can neither feel nor return.

Then I, too, begin to cry.

Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write?  And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? This scene recreates an incident from seventh grade, when I was not only bullied, but surrounded by all my male classmates, egging on the boy who started the fight. Rarely had I ever felt so alone and despairing. It was, quite literally, me against all of them.

By the time I finished Whizzers, I’d already completed three novels and a short story collection, but never with an autobiographical scene as potent as this. When I finished the first draft of the scene, I broke down and cried. And when I first edited the book from start to finish, this scene made me cry again. For context, I don’t typically cry more than once or twice every few years.

Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything like that. My editor made a few punctuation suggestions, but nothing that would really be interesting to see.

Anything you would like to add? I appreciate the opportunity to share this, and I'm always happy to answer additional questions from readers if I can.

Before he became a publisher or even a writer, Mike Sahno was a speaker. "I started talking at a very young age, and would engage strangers in conversation from my perch in the shopping cart," he says with a chuckle. "They'd look at my mother and say, How old is he?"

Sahno began reading before he'd even been taught his ABCs, much to the surprise of his family.

"My parents were always great about reading to me, and I guess I decoded the language from looking at the words," he explains. "This was in an era when they didn't teach you to read until first grade – it was See Spot run, 'Dick and Jane,' all that stuff.

"One night my grandmother was reading the newspaper, and I started reading an article about the Cincinnati Reds out loud to her. She thought I was making it up until she looked down and saw I was reading it word for word. That got everyone's attention."

Sahno also began writing stories at an early age. In high school and college, he was Editor-in-Chief of the campus literary magazine. The quality of his work led to multiple awards and honors. After earning his Bachelor’s from Lynchburg College, he went on to complete his Master’s in English from Binghamton University at the age of 24.

Sahno served in management positions for several companies, including Director at a market research firm, and Assistant Vice President at a Tampa mortgage company. He also taught composition at the college level.

He became a full-time professional writer in 2001 and, in the following years, wrote more than 1,000 marketing articles on a wide range of topics. His delivery of quality copy put him in high demand across the southeastern United States, and several of his articles won Addy Awards in 2008 and 2010.

Since founding Sahno Publishing in 2015, he has gone on to achieve national and international recognition, gaining over 25,000 followers on Twitter and publishing and selling three novels both in the U.S. and abroad. Sahno has ghostwritten books for entrepreneurs in the U.S., and continues to electrify audiences with his story and his natural gift for entertaining while informing. He is available for professional speaking engagements upon request.

https://msahno.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahno/

https://twitter.com/MikeSahno 

Paypal: info@msahno.com

Venmo: @Michael-Sahno

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SNGWB9V

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Whizzers-Paperback-9781944173104/176408592

https://books.apple.com/us/book/x/id1467299561

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1131955183

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/whizzers-1

All of the Inside the Emotion of Fiction LIVE LINKS can be found at the VERY END of the below feature: 

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html