Upstairs in the stone church at night, we gather once each month, and not to pray. At the center of the table, tiny cupcakes cluster like an offering: light pink icing, soft blue sugar, left untouched. Instead, a circle of stories unfolds, each of us reciting her chapter, so often unchanged month after month after month. We are a chorus of grief in metal folding chairs; we are a collective hush: here for the holiness of being heard, for the echoes bearing into the emptiness like a cathedral of children, singing.
Emily Patterson is the author of So Much Tending Remains (2022) and To Bend and Braid (2023). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Spiritual Literature and appears in Sweet Lit, Rust & Moth, The Shore, tiny wren, Mom Egg Review, and elsewhere. She received her B.A. in English from Ohio Wesleyan University and her M.A. in Education from Ohio State University. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio.
4/10 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Tyler Mills / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
4/10 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Tyler Mills + local writer Jennifer Litt / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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I love the feeling I get from this poem that there is a whole world just under the surface.
"here for the holiness of being heard" is perfection. The whole thing is, truly and actually. Thank you.