Last March, I sat at a table facing the large window at El Beit, a small cafe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I hadn't written in days, and everything I typed felt like a stale pile of alphabets.
I remember praying. (Praying to what in that state of mind, I can't be sure). Even Mary Karr admits, "I really pray about this shit." Then on a whim, I googled "suicide." Found out, to my horror, that Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse had pointed a gun to his heart that day.
Then the poem came. I pushed his song, "Hundreds of Sparrows," through my earphones. And with that song repeating, I churned out one of the most difficult poems I have ever read aloud—"Every Hair on Your Head"—in which "the speaker" admits to having contemplated suicide and having swallowed pills at age thirteen.
Claudia Emerson and the staff of Meridian graciously chose to include that poem in the upcoming anthology, Best New Poets 2010, available in stores this October.
[Trivia: Todd Dillard, a friend, a vicious poet, and one of the 50 chosen for this anthology, passed on his bedroom to me when I first trekked to New York from California in 2008!]
When I heard about my inclusion in Best New Poets 2010, I immediately contacted my beloved angel/mentor, Laure-Anne Bosselaar-Brown. A few months ago, when we sat inside Starbucks and discussed the poems in my MFA thesis, Laure-Anne paused after she read "Every Hair on Your Head."
She peered sharply into my eyes and said, "Before we talk about this poem as a poem, I want you to know—I understand."
As a poet, and as a young woman, that's really all I ever need to hear.
So much of what I know now, I learned from that gorgeous woman first. She was the one who gave me permission to tell the truth.
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