Writing and Photos
We were supposed to go in 2020, didn't even consider it in 2021, and finally just made it happen in 2022. Rome, Florence and Tellaro, Italy for two weeks in the high summer heat and high tourist season. Such is the way when your partner is on a school teacher schedule. A small price to... Continue Reading →
I wanted to come back from my meditation retreat and just write about what a meditation retreat is. "What's there to learn?" my father asked when I told him our practice sessions were interspersed with instruction and talks. "Aren't you just sitting there?" I wanted to describe just sitting there. Sitting and crying. Sitting and... Continue Reading →
Earlier this summer I told my husband that I'd registered for a five-month somatic meditation program. "It's mostly online, but it starts and ends with week-long retreats at their center in Colorado." "So you're joining a cult?" he said. "It's not a cult," I said. "It's a meditation retreat." "Yeah, that's what they call them."... Continue Reading →
The story these days is that writers have to be marketers if they want to sell books. As far as I can tell, this is true. It also seems true that you can market your soul away and still not sell much. I just finished reading this very sobering article in Longreads, about a variety... Continue Reading →
What do you do when the energy in your body is loose, barely letters let alone words? You take photos of giant spiders you've killed. Or photos of the underside of smoke trees. Or maybe you go on walks, talking into your phone so that autocorrect becomes your co-author. Or maybe you garden. Or maybe... Continue Reading →
This is happening. So so so so slowly, but definitely, positively surely. My hybrid book of memoir, poetry and image will be released in June! It's called I Want More. The exact date is not set, because nothing about this book has been exact and nothing about this book has been speedy. Just like me.... Continue Reading →
Confession: I had no interest in AWP, the country's biggest annual writing conference that happened to be in my city this year. I went to only one amazing off-site reading, nearly fainting from the crowd. I chatted with a few nice strangers there that I was literally rubbing elbows with. I’m sure there are lots... Continue Reading →
Read my piece "Lessons for Riding Before Dawn to Pilgrim's First Landing's Park, Provincetown, MA" over at PANK.
"Well, imagine how it all could be among us if we began to understand all the talk about dying and the news about dying and the visits to the hospital and the deathbed and the grave side and the memorial service, and all the sorrows and grief of life, as our initiation into personhood." - Stephen... Continue Reading →
On the evening news, everyone was giddy with snow panic. It would have been the same hyperbole if it had happened in December or January, but there was an added layer of surprise, offense and/or betrayal in the fact that the snow, when and if it arrived, would be falling on daphne and daffodils and... Continue Reading →
See the line as it is and draw it as a shape. Do not draw a chair, a suit, a hand. When I draw the shape and not the thing as a whole, everything but the shape disappears. The narrow PCC classroom disappears along with the gabby, white-haired retirees and the mumbly men. I don't... Continue Reading →
Paper/Rock Today, the back walls of my lungs went sticky with sadness. I cried/breathed through the dead hours of the morning then woke up to a sky that felt like the dullest sheet of paper smacked down over this big old rock of a planet. On rising, I offered puffy eyes and apologetic kisses. This... Continue Reading →
I choose Before the Rain. When I start to describe the movie as Macedonian and Albanian, my partner holds up a hand, "That's all you need to say." He is history-minded and his heritage is Albanian, so he knows what this means. But it isn't that conflict I remember from the film. It's the love stories in... Continue Reading →
This story was originally published in Vinyl, March 2016. http://vinylpoetryandprose.com/2016/03/t-a-burkholder/ Threat of Rain She couldn’t see or feel it yet, but it was there. All that wet wanting to exhale from the sky. I’m walking fast because it’s about to pour. She had the explanation, the dismissive yet biting tone all ready before she got... Continue Reading →
This essay originally appeared in The Cincinnati Review vol. 9.1 in the summer of 2012. It was selected as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2013. Proof “Touch is food. Vital food.” – Deane Juhan, Job’s Body Ginger-scented oil slicks my fingers. A new massage client lies beneath them, his... Continue Reading →
This essay was first published on this blog in April 2014. An Unknown Shape I wanted. Again and then again. I wanted my body to make the shape their bodies made: Adho Mukha Vrksasana. Downward Facing Tree. Handstand. I watched from the back of the yoga studio as they flung themselves upside down against the... Continue Reading →
This essay originally appeared in The Clackamas Literary Review 2012 vol. XVII Jumpers I’ve been obsessed with the jumpers for months. Every day, I sit in front of my computer and watch them leap. Nineteen miles above solid ground, John Kittinger prepares. Wearing the best partial pressure suit 1960 has to offer, he stands on... Continue Reading →
Read my essay "Restraint" over at Nailed Magazine.
Read my essay Paws over at The Feminist Wire.
Tracy Burkholder 