RachelVB.com

Category: Writing Life

  • Wood spine, I'm full of slivers

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    rachelvb
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    Virginia Woolf killed an ant last night. I’m blaming her. I feel slightly guilty. That fat grape ant. It was quick. On the dresser. Keep to the kitchen, lady. I have nothing to say. I keep twiddling something. I keep staring at myself as I go around. Then around. I want to pound it out…

  • Revision dreams

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    rachelvb
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    This morning I was on a space mission. My second one. The town consisted of market tents, street sellers. I went to look at a wig, but they were all black hair, black hats, dreadlocks and I knew they would clash on my white skin. But I tried one on, looked in the mirror and…

  • In and out

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    rachelvb
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    I started to write about a dream last night. Setting two tables. One table with the chairs all facing the wrong way. But I’ve suddenly lost the energy and deleted everything and mostly I wanted to write about/remember the part where we ate in a Mexican restaurant, supposedly a famous restaurant, authentic in a nameless…

  • Writing the body

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    rachelvb
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    I think what interests me about Hélène Cixous’ Laugh of the Medusa isn’t the heavily feminist viewpoint bashing the male oppressor, the “phallocentric” society, the “imbecilic capitalist machinery” that she is so passionate about breaking down – I’m interested in my own experiences in my own body. I’m interested in my guilt, my desires, my…

  • You still want to be a poet?

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    rachelvb
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    I’m learning as I go. When to push. When to pull back. When to run in scratching and clawing even though I’m terrified. This morning I opened up a sorely patched wound. I sat on the couch for a long time knowing what I had to do, trying to build up some nerve, some strength…

  • Coming down

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    rachelvb
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    This morning for two hours I was throwing my heart against a white wall. Over and over. I picked up the pulsing red ball hurl and hurled and as my time wound down, I turned on the cold water, washed the shards and slivers from a raw muscle, made oatmeal, sipped cold coffee and read…

  • Breathe, settle, resurface and then dive back in

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    rachelvb
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    I thought I was done. Now my blood feels heavy and tired. Two hours this morning, cutting and slicing and doing intricate surgery on 6 lines and then that rush after it’s all over, the conviction of something great being born. It had meat in my handwriting, meat on the lined page, weight in ink,…

  • one line one line one line one line

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    rachelvb
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    one line one line one line one line typing that quickly is like a lame horse. clompidy clomp. There’s a large ant on our coffee table. Feeling out the cracks with his long feely wires. I’ll leave him. His reflection on the polished wood is like dancing partners. He must have missed the giant open…

  • I refuse to clean my room

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    rachelvb
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    There’s a flower pot in my yard that keeps overflowing when it rains. It has no drainage holes and no seeds can grown. And yet despite it being unviable for seeds, green moss is floating and growing on the surface of the water like swampy clouds hovering. I’m full up this weekend. Every time I…

  • A new crayon for my coloring box

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    by

    rachelvb
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    Sylph – noun: 1. A slender, graceful woman or girl. 2. (in folklore) one of a race of supernatural beings supposed to inhabit the air.