Headstone

Real to me, Jane.

amazing.

this is beautiful and sad, jane. the form works very well, it reminded me of looking down at the ground and then up at the sky trying to find the milky way, losing it again, finding it, looking down again. you convey a great range of feelings so well here.

Jane,

I think you are right to tell this simply and directly. Very moving. Very sad.

Consider starting from

"Yikáísdáhí.
Milky Way

Night lit with music and stars."

Reads even more powerfully to me that way.

*

You capture place and time so well here, Jane with such tangible striking detail, then enter the escaped prisoners and the whole thing turns. Read your author's note and held my breath. There's a feeling of falling, sinking, from the last stanza. Damn, this is powerful writing. *

Some stories cannot be told in the stunning blush of the heartstop. It fades over time, but when will time allow dispassionate art to surrender the meaning of that story? A hundred years? Two hundred? We can't really live that long.

I know what you mean.

This is as close as any of us can get. Beautifully expressed.

This is powerful Jane, headlines ripped straight from the heart, so direct and immediate, at the end I felt the loss as if personal.

Well, this one works well. Lordy! This is flat out stunning. Do a couple more of these and you get my vote for Poet of the Year.

I like the way you begin this, everything after Yikáísdáhí is all the more powerful because of it. Your writing created the scene so completely, I was there, hearing the music, laughing at Steve Martin. Desperado, Lord in the Sky, bring back fond memories. And your writing style throughout is very effective, only it wasn't as much fun to be there. You have strong motivation with this one and it comes through to the reader.

One gets the feel of the desert so well here, the wide open spaces between the pain...And you aptly start the piece with music then bring in the again just at the right moment–her obliviousness about the news. Love that coyote paragraph, very nice.

Thank you everyone for your responses to this. After I wrote it last night, I got up and was over the block I've been struggling with in my novel, which is related to this incident, though indirectly and not autobiographically. Have been writing all day. Fictionaut is good medicine.

Jane, thank you for writing this. I love the way you combined story/journalism/poetry.

Jane, thank you for writing this. I love the way you combined story/journalism/poetry.

"you are just a caption
appearing only in your absence
a blank space I will fill in
when I get the news"

Love this piece. *

This sings of and springs from the land, time & place which you come from.

The snapshot format is absolutely the best way to go for, I think, with this and this is a splendid array of shot after shot of emotion and description. It would be hard for someone not familiar with the area to write this, and just as difficult for someone who has to do it this well.

Just beautiful, Jane - and I think you capture love and sorrow with such grace.*

Oh my God, so piercing it sounds like a true story.

The sparseness sharpens the contrast between the beginning and the end and makes both the pain and the beauty in this piece all the more apparent. Powerful stuff, Jane.

So sorry about your loss - and at such a young age ...

Wow.*

This is fantastic. The sense of place and the shift in mood from the beginning to the end are both masterful. The choice of genre works really well here. Really tight writing, and very evocative.

Beautiful memorial and meditation. The structure -- so full, taking up the page, then winnowed down to a trail of words. The essence. Powerful, moving, this left me prayerful. And sorry for your loss. Peace *

Wow, this is amazing. I really love the form, how evocative it is in its sadness. So powerful. *

Powerful and moving work, Jane. Love the setting (and the way you capture this time!) and the flash-cut style that takes us from pleasure so deeply into this harsh this.

Glad to hear you're making progress on your current project.

Jane, you got it here: the time, the place, the young man. Lyrical, immensely sad and well written
I know Roswell, know that stretch of space during that time.
*

Linda said what I was thinking, but she said it better -- "winnowed down to a trail of words."

This is beautiful, Jane.

Great work, Jane. Big big fave.

A moving piece, Jane. The form is outstanding. Strong writing.

yes this is incredible -- and the form, so effective.

This is an incredible heartbreaker, not knowing, filling the sunrise with music, and the ending makes me shiver. This is powerful.
And I am so sorry for the hole in your life, no matter how long ago it was put there.

Loving the end ...

Sad and powerful and I'm right there with you.

very skilled storytelling.

Jane, this is very moving and very musical, moving along like a current to horrid events without ever losing sight of the beauty of the place.

*

This moved me, Jane. Such a haunting memory piece. Thank you for sharing it.

I loved your use of music throughout, particularly in the coda.

*

There is such a powerful ache yet strength and forward look in this piece. Your construction is superb. The time capsule you create at the beginning does not so much s-date the piece as give it its proper context and feel of initial carefree attitude. Really quite a fine telling.

I think you are doing well here at trying to find the right words when perhaps there aren't any to mean that vast emptiness inside. But you put the pain right on the map.

Thanks everyone, for your comments on Headstone.

This is amazing, Jane. Clean from the heart, sad, and beautiful. Everything about it is perfect. One feature of elegy that it manages brilliantly is that it puts loss on the page and also indicates the ways in which the page cannot contain it, it's too big and too senseless to make sense of so one has to get at it in different ways. The shape of this and its shifting scenes, even the way it closes in and backs away at times and the way music is playing in it and even the radio all give this a multivalent way of getting at this loss, it seems to me. It's grounded and flying away at once--in the sky.

Very touching and immediate.
I hope you will be able to find the right way to express the loss of what happened back then.

Loved this ending:
"creosote
blood
earth
Yikáísdáhí
Milky Way
in the sky
lord
in the sky"