The Word-a-day Writing Challenge

Day Two: Viscera

I've been thinking about Patrick Lane. An interview I heard once where he spoke of a boarding house in Toronto. The plight of the impoverished. The weight of incidentals. A pregnant woman and a coat hanger. Her tenderness and exposure pouring across the slanted, filthy floor towards him, washing clean if not her soul then at least her anguish and necessity. What spoke to me then was not the dying woman, nor the gore, but the viscera of his words. Inside the guts of all of us, inside all our stories, we share a pulse. It beats and breathes us full—of sorrow, of longing, of love, regardless of our circumstances. We are comprised of a vulnerable utility, and perhaps the best we can do is honour the truth of it. The pregnant woman. The coat hanger. The words of Patrick Lane. What do you do with that? he said in the interview. Well if you're me, you write a poem about it.