Chapter Twenty-Six
B EING IN WORKSHOP WITH SOMEONE you’re avoiding is hell. When you’re fighting with someone, all you want to do is hide from them. To expunge the world of your existence, so you don’t have to confront whatever catalyzed the argument in the first place.
It’s a problem, then, that our second-semester workshops are first-years only. Meaning that I’m now in a smaller table in a smaller room, inches away from Will. And Erica Go.
It was supposed to be a delightful surprise. When Paul emailed everyone saying that he would be out of town this week and Erica would lead the workshop in his place, I had already submitted my poem, the result of a tense weekend when I felt like I’d ruined my entire reputation in the MFA.
Clearly, I can’t do what I set out to do. So fine , I thought. I’ll give everyone what they want.
I hate my poem. That probably means everyone else will love it.
Will sits across the table from me, his eyes down, focused on the poems in front of him. We haven’t spoken since the night of the reading, the last six days a blur of skipped Writing Center shifts and stiff body language in nonfiction workshop. It’s not like we’ve broken up—we never made anything official, after all—but the promise of something more, the thing that’s lingered in our movements since AWP, feels like it’s damaged. Badly.
“I am so excited to do this workshop with such an intimate group.” Erica clasps her red-nail-polished hands on the table. “We’re going to have a lot of fun together next year, once I’ve been officially instated as a visiting professor. Let’s let today be a little preview of my workshop style. I tend to be a pretty active leader, but my role is still mainly to facilitate discussion. I hope you all talk more than I do.”
Hazel is beaming so hard I need sunglasses to look at her. “Can I go first?” she asks, and Erica nods in delight.
“I Break Up with a White Boy at a Café” feels like it’s part of a series, a follow-up to what she read last week at the reading. It’s pithy and clever. And it’s vulnerable. The speaker presents the boyfriend as an antagonist, but by the end, she’s thinking of her own complicity. I’d never noticed until last week how mature a poet Hazel is. Everything is moody with sharp images, but there’s a lot of her personality on the page, too.
“I love the call-and-response of the speaker and the man,” Kacey says. “You go into the poem thinking the white boy is going to be the villain, and he still is, but it’s much more complicated than that, isn’t it?”
“Fantastic point, Kacey. What do you think, Leigh?” Erica asks.
I stiffen. Kacey already said my one observation, and I have nothing left. I scan my brain quickly, searching for something intelligent to say.
“The images.” I pause, trying to edit the sentences in my head. Erica nods, and I continue, “The specificity of them really works for me, especially the ones that describe the café and the boy in the same way, like he’s this sort of background music, sucking energy away from the speaker.”
Erica’s eyes light up. “Yes! I caught that, too! I wonder if it could even be heightened in the third stanza—”
Everyone continues discussing the poem. Then they stop. And it’s my turn. I wish I’d submitted something else, anything else. But I didn’t. And I already used a health emergency to get out of a bad situation. I have no more cards to use. I have no choice but to read my poem.
I begin:
Aubade for a Stranger
A doe waits in a field
of fire and salt and ravens
with empty eyes.
I am a lexicon of ash.
When moon fills this
landscape with shadows,
what will I see? And what
will see me?
On a Wednesday in October
a stranger crosses
my path. We meet next
to the dirty river
under clouded sky,
my limbs limbless.
A corpse is just
a body until it dies.
With the last line, my body’s a corpse, too. It’s as if I’ve cosplayed August. My face is bright red, my armpits soaked.
“Thanks, Leigh. Who wants to walk us through ‘Aubade for a Stranger’?” Erica asks.
Hazel volunteers, as usual. “So we have an aubade—an early-morning poem—in eight couplets. Um, it’s in first person. Quite short lines. I think there are two characters in this poem—the speaker and a stranger, but it’s possible that the speaker is the stranger.”
I guess as the poet I should probably know. But I don’t. I have no fucking idea. I just tried to write something dark and edgy, like everyone else does. If there’s going to be constant problems with my persona poems, fine, I’ll swing the other way. See if they like this , whatever this is, better.
That was my strategy, at least. But now that I’m here, the words hanging in the air, I know I’ve made the wrong move. My classmates have their faces down, reading or pretending to read. Erica’s head tilts as she waits for someone to begin.
“My issue is that there doesn’t seem to be an entry point for the reader. This is quite, uh, a departure from your usual work, Leigh, and um, it’s interesting, but I’m just not totally sold yet,” Kacey says.
“I actually like it,” Jerry says. “It’s minimalist, and in that way it’s quite striking. The images feel like they’re coming from a consistent palette, and they’re quiet but well constructed.”
Will is frowning. Because we’re sitting at a much smaller table than our usual first-and-second-year workshop, I can see his copy of my poem clearly. It’s blank. He hasn’t commented anything at all.
There’s some more back-and-forth from Hazel and Kacey, but eventually it dies out into silence.
“Leigh, interesting piece.” Erica’s voice is kind, but her face doesn’t have any of the bright curiosity I saw when I commented on Hazel’s poem—I killed that spark with my stupid aubade. “I think there’s lots to work with here, and you might start with reevaluating the voice. I agree with Jerry that the piece is very minimalist, but I question if that’s the right vein for this poem to operate in. I think the most interesting part is the middle where the speaker asks, ‘What will see me?’ Maybe you could linger there, explore the feeling of being watched and potentially evaluated, instead of ending on this death of the self, which sounds slightly generic.”
If there are eighty words to lace together diplomatically to say “you suck,” Erica’s found them. My stomach fills with cement, and I drown under everyone’s pitying eye contact.
Will starts scribbling something small in the margins of my poem. When everyone passes the pages back to me, I read it:
This isn’t you, and you know it.
I look up and his skin is flushed, like writing that on my paper required more than he wanted to give. I’m silent for the rest of class, supplying the bare minimum of nods and eye contact so that Erica knows I’m still, at least, listening.
When workshop is over, Will leaves the room like he’s on a deadline. I weave in and out of undergrads in the packed hallway and catch him by the shoulder.
“I read your comment. Very constructive as usual. Truly, some of your best.”
He stiffens, pausing in the middle of the crowd. Then he ushers us into an unoccupied classroom, careful not to touch me, and closes the door behind him.
“It frustrates me to see you self-destruct like this,” he says coolly, leaning against a desk.
I laugh. “Are you serious? Jerry or you or August could have turned in that poem. I’m not going to be shamed for doing exactly what the rest of you have done since we got here.”
Will crosses his arms and swallows a scoff. “You’re wasting your gift and not listening to feedback. No one wants you to stop the pop-culture poems. People constantly comment on how great your language and images are. But you refuse to give us anything real. And do you want to know my theory?”
He takes a step toward me, his eyes flashing with irritation. I say nothing and he continues.
“You’re so scared of people rejecting you that you’re going to waste the entire MFA submitting surface-level stuff. Stuff that you can brush off if you get criticism because you don’t truly believe in it, either. That’s why you’re probably not going to be a poet after graduation. It’s not for lack of talent. You’re one of the most creative people in the program. But what you’re submitting? ‘Aubade for a Stranger’? Those are choices. You could do so much more, but you’re standing in your own way.”
Surface-level. Not going to be a poet after graduation. In this dumb classroom with its oak desks and marble floors, I’ve never felt more blond, more exposed. I stick out like a neon-pink thumb, like a ditzy girl .
I know, on a cellular level, that there’s nothing wrong with who I am, the things I like, or the way I dress. I’ve never subscribed to the not like other girls persona. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life railing against it, enjoying being the contrarian in a room full of English majors. The dumb sorority girl who’s as excited about The Bachelor as she is the structure of a sonnet.
But this program, which at the moment Will is unknowingly embodying, makes me feel small and stupid and judged. And the problem with me is that when I feel judgment, I attack. Like a scared cat at a vet’s office, claws out and ready for blood.
“Well, at least I only submit words that are my own.”
The sentence fireworks in the air. Will’s jaw is so, so tight, and the worst intrusive thought I have is how I want to run my fingers over his cheekbone, melt him into forgiving me. But we both know it’s too late.
“What are you talking about?” But of course he knows. He just wants to make me say it. To torture himself, to make me do the torturing.
“I know you plagiarized ‘Invisible Summer.’ I found the original poem online. So I’m sorry, I’m not going to take poetry advice from… you.”
Will’s face has drained of color, his expression eerily neutral, like he knows there’s nothing he can say to make his case. He takes a step back, like he no longer recognizes me. I immediately want to take it all back, to not be the kind of person who is so petty, so bitter, so unempathetic.
“How long have you been sitting on this?” His voice is low. I can barely hear it.
I shift my weight on my legs. “Two weeks.”
“So instead of asking me what was up with that poem—which by the way, sure, feel free to just go through everything on my desk, why not?—you keep it to yourself to wield when you receive some feedback you don’t like?”
I don’t know what to say. I’ve always identified more with my dad, but in this moment, I feel exactly like my mother. My eyes tighten, my mouth opens, but the overwhelming threat of tears spilling over renders me immobile. So I just stare at my shoes and shrug.
“Are you going to tell anyone?” His voice lifts, like he’s finally geared up to fight.
My body goes rigid. “Are you kidding? You think I want you to get kicked out of the program? What, I’m going to knock on Paul’s door and show him an old poem he’s never seen before? Pull up the Anathema archive and take him through it? For what? You think I’d spend—I don’t know, ten years?—embarrassing myself in front of you, so desperate for you to like me, for you to maybe love me, only to throw it all away when it finally feels like it’s mutual?”
Will closes his eyes, runs his hand through his hair. “I’m actually not sure anymore.”
The air in this classroom is too thick, and I can’t breathe. I’m infuriated by his short, plain responses. I’d rather he yell at me. The more he pulls back, the more it feels like he doesn’t see me—and it’s an invitation, one my brain eagerly takes, to push, push, push.
“You already dropped out of the fellowship, so it’s not like there’d be a consequence anyway,” I say, my eyes now dry and focused, my arms crossed.
His eyes widen and his mouth opens, but before he can speak, I spit out, “Jesus Christ, no. Okay? I haven’t told anyone, and I won’t. I’d hope you’d know that, but I guess not.”
He stares at my face like he has no idea what to do with me. His hazel eyes, once electrifying splinters of color and just-for-me warmth, go cold.
“This isn’t going to work, is it?” he says, and it’s quiet and final and I feel my heart split open. Even though I asked for this.
My head bobs in acceptance. “Yeah. Probably not.”
The pairing that shouldn’t have worked but did. Until it didn’t.
“Have a good spring break, I guess,” he says, and then he leaves the classroom, shutting the door behind him.
The urge to cry is still building behind my eyes, but I suppress it, strangle it, tuck it in deep somewhere in my chest, where no one, hopefully, can find it.