Alison McGhee’s blog | Alison McGhee

Poem of the Week, by Tom Sleigh

Posted on July 26, 2015 by alisonmcghee

This past week I was at a lake with parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts and children, the grownups piloting boats around for hours on end so the kids could fish or waterski or tube behind it. Endless making of lunches, endless baiting of hooks. Endless how to wakeboard, how to waterski, how to play poker. Endless patience. Thirty years from now, these same future grownups will be hauling a new batch of kids around behind a different boat. I thought about the adults in my own childhood who taught me how to cook, how to sew, how to stack wood, how to tell a story, how to grow a garden. One day your father’s hauling you up the sledding hill on the toboggan, the next your eyes are glazing over as you teach your kids how to play Candyland, the next you’re sitting in a bar with them drinking Guinness. This small-but-huge poem by Tom Sleigh chokes me up when I read it, for so many reasons.

Boomerang

The sidelong whiplash of his arm sent the boomerang
soaring, pushing the sky to the horizon
until the blade just hung there, a black slash on the sun

so far away it seemed not to move at all
before it came whirling back larger and larger:
would it hit him, would he die — and you ducked down,

terrified, clinging to his thigh, its deathspin
slowing as it coptered softly down and he snatched it
from the air. How you loved that rush of fear,

both wanting and not wanting him to feel how hard
you clung, just the same as when he’d float you
weightless across the pond while waves slapped

and shushed and bickered, his breath loud in your ear …
and after he dried you off, he’d lift you onto his shoulders
and help you shove your head through a hole in the sky.

For more information on Tom Sleigh, please click here.

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August 1 Creative Writing Kickstart class!

Posted on July 25, 2015 by alisonmcghee

Greetings, friends, Minnesotans and countrypeople,

There are still openings available in my one-day Creative Writing Kickstart workshop on Saturday morning, August 1 in Uptown Minneapolis. The focus of the Kickstart is writing from life: where you are now, where you were, and points in between. We’ll do several brief writings, discuss some short published works (provided) and talk about various aspects of craft and process –maybe dialogue, maybe tense and point of view, maybe some other things– in terms of what makes great writing great.

The class will be intensive but fun and low-key. It’s designed for writers of ALL abilities, experience levels and genres. If you’re a longtime writer in need of a boost or someone who’s always had an interest in writing but never known how to sit down and get started, join us!

Limited to fifteen. I’d love to see you there. If you’re interested, please email me at alison_mcghee@hotmail.com to reserve a spot.

Date: SATURDAY, AUGUST 1
Time: 9 am-1 pm
Place: 3554 BRYANT AVENUE SOUTH, MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55408. (The Community Gathering Room in Uptown Minneapolis, right on the corner of Bryant and 36th, between Bogart’s Donuts and Gigi’s Cafe.) Parking on-street. Community Room.
Cost: $75, including hand-outs, payable via check, Paypal, or cold hard cash.
Bring: yourself, a pen and a notebook or your quiet laptop. Lots of beverages and tasty treats and sandwiches and salads available at Bogart’s and Gigi’s.

400 Words

Posted on March 23, 2014 by alisonmcghee

At 20, I got on a plane and flew from Vermont to Taipei. I had the name of a cheap hotel and I took a cab there from the airport.

Neon lit the night city with its weird and garish light. Wooden shacks leaned against concrete buildings; people squatted on the narrow streets, eating spears of orange fruit and sipping cups of tea. Dark-haired toddlers were everywhere, wearing jackets so padded that their tiny arms stuck straight out.

When I got out of the cab, everyone stared. This was a long time ago; foreigners were few and far between in Taiwan. Toddlers looked up at me –way up– and screamed.

I felt like screaming, too. My Chinese was bad. I was filled with fear. What had I gotten myself into?

Once in my cinderblock room I realized that I was starving, with only fish-flavored crackers left over from the plane to eat. But I couldn’t force myself out of that room. There was a deep bathtub, like a shoebox turned on end, and I drew my knees up to my chest and stayed in it, more or less continually, for three whole days.

On the fourth day, I emerged. It wasn’t bravery that drew me forth, but starvation. At the front desk three Chinese men milled about, chattering softly in Mandarin. At the sight of me they too froze and stared. The giant white American girl.

“Nimen hao,” I said. “Wo feichang feichang e.”
Hi. I’m very, very hungry.

All three leapt into action. They conferred, then one guided me across the street to a small building. He nodded and smiled encouragingly and pointed to a rickety table, then to a menu handwritten on a piece of torn paper taped to the wall. I recognized the characters for potsticker, ordered three dozen and ate them all.

I was alone in what felt like another world. I had none of what I needed to survive: no friends, no family, no place to stay, no college-designed program abroad, not enough money. And I had a fierce and inborn belief that I had and would ever have only myself to rely on, there in Taiwan, or anywhere.

But I was wrong. All it took was one admission –I’m starving– from a scared and hungry girl, and strangers crowded around, wanting to help. The kindness in those men’s eyes has stayed with me always.