Blood oranges from California bought and consumed in Florida. A few full days of AWP. Driven there and back by my foster mother. Walking alone through vast hallways. Sitting in meeting rooms. Cruising past publisher’s book and journal displays. Eating free candy. Dodging Blank stares. Gray haired girl invisible. Recipient of Limp handshakes. And Surprise compliments. Heart felt handclasps from people I’d never met in the flesh. Panels which blew through my brain with fierce language and panels of numbing self congratulation. Days of eating alone and PTSD shakes. Bone weary. Of escalators and air conditioning. Now I wait in a lounge chair at my foster mothers house for my long lost brother who is coming to pick me up and take me to lunch. Another exile from a rambling childhood. Another foster child grown up yet not quite over the trauma. As translator Michele Gil-Montero said in her amazing panel on translation : “tragedy is always present, always new, a return to immediacy.” The work of literature to survive that continuing time warp and translate through pain and sorrow and joyous reunion our shared humanity onto the blank page. #fostergirls #daughterofnoone #makeyourownway #awp2018
