Feature: Writing Your Way into the Story

By Nina Romano

Your first line must be a still life,
a table of ripe fruit awaiting an artist’s brush
or the part in the movie where a character
moves towards the Lexus,
and you want to interject,
“Don’t turn on the ignition!”
but of course you know he will
because the hero rigged a bomb
about to go off.

You could also begin with an image of a man
coming home in the middle of the day,
approaching the house,
seeing fire trucks in his driveway,
hearing blaring sirens and the screams
of the neighbors he usually ignores.

You might bandy about words
like halcyon or peripatetic,
speak of Chinese brush paintings
where gold glints to gilt the frame,
that house silk or rice paper art—
mountains crested in snow,
mica, dust and diamonds in the sparkle.

A deaf and mute scrawls words like music:
queedle or crenulated wing
to help slip backwards while the feet
try to gain purchase in the scree of a slope
in the foothills.

Being neither deaf or mute,
you are crippled and so you run
toward the car parked in the high grass
at the edge of the forest,
dragging one leg, the assailant’s soft verse
or Latinate words segue,
but need a perfect fracture
to end the phrase or line,
to slice the imperceptible silences
between stars and sky
that deafen a scream of terror
at the dropped keys,
the growing shadows
in between trees
the snap of broken twigs,
the crush of leaves
of quickened,
following steps.