Sestina: PDX–>ATX by Rachel Stuck (2019)

Please Note: I am not accepting constructive criticism at this time.

While I have trained myself to call myself a writer, I’m still struggling with the whole poet identity. BUT, this poem was written for the precise reason I have my red rose tattoo, so I obviously couldn’t find a more fitting piece. I’m not as gushy gaga over it as I am over my esteemed colleagues’ works in this series, but of course I like it! I made it!

The first note about this is that it is a sestina, which is a highly structured poetic form. Each line of a stanza ends with a specific word that is then repeated, in a pre-determined order, as the final word in the lines of the rest of the stanzas. (Does that sentence even make sense? I’m a writer!) Each line should also be written in iambic pentameter, but I played a little hard and fast with those rules. Plus, I found different rules for the final couplet all around, so just picked what worked for me.

Also, since one of my chosen words is the F Word, you’re going to see a lot of the F Word.

The second note is on what it’s about. I live with my two best friends (The Best Friend Squad), and 2019 was a whirlwind of change for all of us. I was going through a divorce, we lost our 17-year-old dachshund Olive, and squad-member Josh accepted a new position in Austin, Texas. I was faced with the decision of leaving friends, family, and a job I loved or having my other family leave me. As you can imagine, this was not an easy decision, although ultimately I really did make it immediately.

I found that sestinas are a perfect way for me to get a handle on my anxiety. They’re artistic expression, for sure, but the strict design format forces me to take a step back and let my logical brain rein in my emotions. I am still able to be inside my feelings, but doing it in the environment of rigid form gives me a sense of control. If you want to write a sestina, here is a link to the rules.

My tattoo is for the previous BFS Headquarters, the Rose City.

Short Stuff:

• I once knocked over my own cup of pee in a doctor’s office.
• I didn’t know what to write here about myself, and I panicked.

Topics

Change; friendship; the F word; home is where your friends’ beers are; Portland

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Sestina: PDX–>ATX

Portland, you irreverent party, you weird
row of unicycles, craft beer, and home.
Two decades ago, we exchanged our rings.
Tentative roots in a blue dot of world,
I crossed bridges from surfeit to crisis,
found power to now and then give a fuck.

Another landmark’s closing, what the fuck?
Gentrification is wasting the weird,
contortionist musicians in crisis
scrambling to hold a disappearing home.
While memories slept through an at-large world,
sweet cherry reduced cascara to its rings.

Still, my Modest Mouse ride on Burnside rings
revenant of my only art of fuck-
ing people over. This city, this world:
nothing human’s alien, yet all is weird.
All is weird, all is youth, and all is home
until the Big One hits and ends in crisis.

Together now, we three seize on crisis.
A sure thing on leave, men with wedding rings,
the sweetest of us is gone. But we’re home
if we’re together–masked, ready to fuck
up (with plastic weaponry) any weird
sister or brother who hexes our world.

Unable to move cities, we move our world
into the brightest side of this crisis.
Out and south to a new town to brew weird:
Austin, you unknown party without rings
promised, given, worn. I don’t give a fuck
about what’s under The Old Church, I’m home.

We pack to unpack all this that is home
and wonder about our new dot of world:
fireflies to find, decisions to fuck
up then fix, now no strangers to crisis.
Our lives move forward and backward in rings
that shine and rust and shine again in weird.

I have learned that home travels through the world
if you fuckin’ bind your squad with steel rings
to weather the weird.

We shall feast in crisis.

–Rachel Stuck