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December 1, 2021 Nonfiction

Because Mid-Meal, My Mother Says “Now Don’t Write About This”; Or, The Tyranny of We

Sandra Beasley

Because Mid-Meal, My Mother Says “Now Don’t Write About This”; Or, The Tyranny of We photo

The memoirist can say, We walked along the beach.

Or perhaps, We ran.

We moved to Chicago.

We were late to the concert.

We had two peaches left in the basket.

But to write We thought is a fiction.

We always felt that…the moment you write this phrase, you have lied.

A thought cannot be unanimous across multiple bodies.

We all love it when—Nope.

There are inflections, differences, doubts.  

 

 

Sandra Beasley is the author of Made to Explode; Count the Waves; I Was the Jukebox, winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; Theories of Falling, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize; and Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir. She also edited Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. She lives in Washington, D.C.

 

image: Tim States


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