Month: August 2020

Hell and High Water: Last Sneak Peek

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Here is a final excerpt from Hell and High Water before it’s published on August 25th.

After my last couple of poems, some of you might have been thinking you should check on me. And that’s sweet. But my life isn’t fraught with violence anymore, even if it’s got PTSD filtering its moments. And the hellish panic attack days have their bright spots,  their hope stains.

Hope Stains

I once spilled the enzyme that causes firefly bioluminescence on a lab table.

You are like that,

golden light on my black.

 

I’ve always loved glimpsing streetlights from an airplane window.

You are like that,

hope shining at your edges.

 

And when you go, waves of ink lap at me, bidding me to wade in.

I choose the dark before it drags me under.

But I’ve still got these hope stains.

 

Poetry: Worth It

~ Jessi Kallison ~ 1 Comment

Sometimes I think about how all of the circumstances align for us to meet someone at the right time. I’m grateful for my current set of unlikely occurrences. I live with PTSD, so I’ve been deeply skeptical that happy endings are possible and yet stubborn enough to look for them anyway.

Worth It

Did I have to feel the chasm spreading in my bed?

Did I need to struggle raising three oh-so-close-together nerdlings alone?

Did I have to learn not to flinch when a fist went through the wall inches from my face?

Did I need to watch retreating backs

as I hyperventilated my way through panic attacks?

Did I have to go on so many blah, how-do-I-leave first dates?

Was that really the shortest path to you?

If so,

it was worth it.

Poetry: Challenge Accepted

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One of my friends recently quipped that I’d have to go back to some of my hellish previous circumstances to keep writing beautiful poetry. (Of course, I said, “Hell no. I’ll just keep writing novels.”) And then he suggested that I stop writing poetry if I started writing about lint. Well, you know, my brain wouldn’t let it go. And I was sure I could make even lint interesting. 😀 Here’s the product of that brief poetry exercise. And I don’t think it’s my best work, but I was constrained to the topic of lint.

Zoom In

Nothing is the same

now that you’re here.

Even my lint screen yields tiny clues.

Darker than before.

More sand. More dust.

And dog hair–Sighs–

Layers of dog hair.

And it’s cleaned more often,

you know, before it’s a fire hazard.

If you change something so small as a lint screen,

I wonder what the rest of the world sees.

Hell and High Water: Proofs Are In!

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It’s been quite a week here with two sets of proofs arriving within three days! I feel spoiled getting to hold the results of years of writing all at once. And this little book is a rollercoaster of love, failure, PTSD, violence, and the South surrounding me.

Hell and High Water will be available on August 25th. You can pre-order ebooks before then, but the print version goes live on publication day.

Continue reading →

Hell and High Water: Round Three

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I wrote the poems featured in this book over the course of years. The love, failed relationships, and Southern life parts of my book might feel comfortable, but the PTSD part won’t. “Honey Whiskey” is old, but the wounds are still fresh.

When you’re in an abusive relationship, the violence often escalates over time, and this poem is about one instance in a series of many before I was beaten badly enough to need doctors, police officers, surgeons, and contractors for my house. I know that so many people wonder why a person doesn’t walk away at the first sign of violence, at the first hint of insanity. And there are many reasons, unique to every trauma victim. And it’s usually not a lack of intellect.

There are a few reasons I am so open now about what I endured. One is that I still live with the PTSD symptoms and need my friends and community to be kind when I show up wearing my noise cancelling headphones and don’t remove them for anything. (Honestly, I did consider bedazzling a pair for a formal event last winter.) Our villages can’t help us if we decide to suffer in silence. So, I gave mine the chance to be amazing, and they didn’t disappoint.

Another reason that I didn’t let my outspoken posts about domestic violence and trauma dwindle is that every time I post something real, something raw on social media, a friend of mine will message me privately and confide all of the terrible things she’s living with. So. Many. Brutalized. Women. And we’re all just quietly holding each other up and showing up when we’re needed, the outraged sisterhood activated at every new assault. But I’ve been done with quiet, silent, and comfortable. I’m fine with being a voice that lets women around me know their situation isn’t unique, it’s not insurmountable, and no one has to hide–that we’re not alone in this aggrieved sisterhood. So, here’s a poem from a day that I should have run away and never looked back…and didn’t.

Honey Whiskey

I shiver—loneliness, fear, desire—all war within me.

You shiver, but on an angry frequency.

There’s not much time.

I fumble my shoe and freeze.

Were my ancestors rabbits?

You still see me.

I race to get away.

But you’re a one-man melee.

You snatch a honey whiskey bottle.

Like you, it held sweet fire.

Like me, it shatters.

A florence flask next.

Stout glass, weak throw, dumb luck?

It mars the floor, whole.

I’m gonna be glass like that—unbreakable.

The divots are in my soul.

 

Where Angels Can’t Follow: The Origin

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There’s a slightly creepy and definitely weird piece of art on my wall. The print caught my eye at a local festival a few years back, and I bought it because it intrigued me.

IMG_20200723_144419738
Angel photo by Kathy Hagood at Angel Finger Photography. It’s now displayed on Jessi Kallison’s Wall of Weird.

My kids hated it when I hung it on the wall, but my tastes haven’t gotten less eclectic since. (Sorry, not sorry, nerdlings.)

I obsessed over the details. I wondered why the angel woman was headless and whose much larger hand was on her stomach? Was he human? Another angel? Why was he touching her at all? Was the owner of that hand a good guy? Why would she be a statue? And why would she be a headless statue after that?

I don’t know the real story. But my brain wouldn’t let go of the image and decided to start making up its own story that began with an angel statue. And Where Angels Can’t Follow was born.

Poetry Process

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I really admire the poets who can sit down and type exactly what they feel into Word, do some editing there, and then hit publish. My process is not that. Usually, my poems hit me in the early morning or when I am grappling with an issue. I write them all in my journals in ink or pencil first (hell, color pencil or crayon if it’s all I’ve got). Something about actually writing words on a physical page inspires me to look for the exact word that fits how I feel. Of course, the space is also limited, and it’s a pain to change words in ink. So, it’s better to be close to right the first time.

Here’s an example from one I wrote this morning because I decided to spend less time delving into my personal social media. It’s amazing how quickly we can be drawn into tapping “unfriend” and “block” when people get unnecessarily unkind over issues, how quickly our connections to other people dissolve. I decided to spend less time connecting to people who would sever connections at the slightest affront and more time with people who would never let me go.

The one on the left is the first draft, just writing what’s in my head. The one on the right is the second round, being more selective with words and how they are arranged on the lines. I also came up with a working title. You can see that in the second draft, I combined the first lines, spaced things differently, and dealt with one of my persistent errors–tense shifts. Eventually, I’ll come back to this in a few months and see if I still like my word choices and still think it’s good.

First Draft
Second Draft

Here’s the print version below, just in case you find my handwriting a bit impossible. 😉

Love Cables

I’m shrinking my world down to these four walls.

I had tendrils trailing to the UK,

to Japan, to nearly every united state.

Misty connections that evaporate

if you show a light too brightly on them.

But in these walls…

I can’t chop the tethers.

I can’t burn them.

I can’t dissolve them in my bitterness.

So, I’ll pour myself into what I can’t lose.

This small slice of the world.

These walls. This bed.