The cycle, the wheel, must not be broken. I sing, a singer of new songs every time you are born, to rejoice in your works, to be present in your flesh, your body of water. Your feet, are my feet. Your walk, my foundation.
Le’Var Howard, I Carry Your Heart with Me
Rereading [i carry your heart with me … by EE Cummings this week, I was stopped by this unfolding sequence:
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
Imagine excavating to the very root of the root. This deepest place is not for rumination, not to remain hidden. This is the grounding for each of us that pulls us skyward. It connects us beyond ourselves (mind and soul). Our writers run the danger of becoming root-bound — so deeply lost in the holding place of a cell that they become hopeless, that they lose sight of their life force extending up and beyond the walls. We all do. And so, we write.
And what is released? There is the fear of never forgiving or never being forgiven. There is the love lost and the love to recover. There is the deep (often) unrealized passion. There is the release of our most vulnerable selves. As always, we look around the writer’s room (this week in Pendleton and Ontario), we ask each person in the room to draw from a deep well. And each time we do this, we are rewarded by the offerings.
Dustin Smith, You and I (The Fib)
I
Catch a
Glimpse of you
Across the dance floor,
Haloed by the light beaming down
Like sunshine through stained glass in an ancient Cathedral.
Jai, Only Son:
I remember
Oblivion
There was no communication back then
Did they even consider?
I would not be missed
How could I explain it?
Luis Rodriguez, Tell me do you think of me?
Give life to my hopes and dreams
Tell me It’s not just my dream
Say we want the same thing
Rex Riddle, Victor’s Song
You are that broken sentence
The places where we insist we know our secluded regard
The affected guile and the guise of white teeth
MDKS, A Love Begotten
Every once in a while, I feel the ghost of your lips on my skin. Chills run up my spine as I think what could have been. I still feel a love for you that fills my heart. A love so strong that when lost my world truly fell apart.
And so, we draw our Family Issue to a close. We keep thing loose here at the Pony. The themes are an organizing principal to get the writers started which in turn helps us move through stacks of submissions. As we enter the final quarter of 2025, we are preparing writing that falls under the category of “Gratitude ?” The space and the question mark operate as an opportunity to be stealth, moving around the topic while giving us room to publish work that defy the category. Roots keep growing. | TDS