LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: summer

  • Calendaring, with palpitations

    Calendaring, with palpitations

    My body never tells me “it’s a full moon,” but I have a strong sense for the wheel of the year. Something shifts in me, an internal reorientation, and I think oh, August 1st, Lughnasadh, Lammas, midpoint between summer solstice and fall equinox. First fruits of the harvest, here we are! Of course, the US…

  • Commencements

    “I, too, am not unhopeful,” Saidiya Hartman said to Wesleyan University’s Class of 2019 during a long, hot ceremony on a bowl-shaped lawn. Soon-to-be-alumni/ae in the audience, including my daughter, wore robes of Handmaid’s Tale scarlet. I was turning scarlet in the sun, wondering what we were all on the threshold of. I loved Hartman’s…

  • Amazing Poet-Thing #1 (2018, first series)

    Thing-Poet admits to moments of feeling like a geographically-isolated pariah wearing outdated costumes ill-fitted to her post-change, orange, lumpy physique. The cool poet-parties occur at League Headquarters far away, and she is not invited. So it was fun, this week, to give a talk and a reading at the first residency for the brand-new Randolph…

  • Coniferous forests of hard thinking

    When your child takes a summer internship in Siberia, you think, hmm, THAT’s a long way for a teenager to go to escape parental interference. Maybe you made the normal adolescent struggle for independence a little difficult? Parents can follow their kids now through multiple technologies and social media platforms, and I do. With trust,…