I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

My friend Laurie is a fiction writer and she is very fun.

I said as much to her at a favorite pan-Asian restaurant among a group of coworkers.

I confess rather proudly, I am reading your corpus.

Not missing a beat, Lori said, you're reading my corpse?

A fitting pun. We typically talk about an author's collected words only after they die or no longer

continue to write. Corpus is Latin for body.

It is the root for many words including corporeal, corporation, esprit de corps, habeas corpus, etc.

The zingers kept coming like that all night.

The next morning, I contemplated how words convey an author's demeanor, the texture of their unique thoughts.

In this way, poems and stories, both fictional and personal, encased in books over time, emerged collectively as a portrait of the author.

This presence of a self on the page is as real as the person's presence on earth.

As writers, we invite scrutiny. We put ourselves in the position of being read by readers. And yet, as much as a poem

renders us hyper-visible, we also know language in prisons. We run the risk of being misread.

Today's poem explores the situation of writing ourselves out of fixed meanings that confine us to labels, to disempowering social and political realities.

To Be logging by Elizabeth Willis.

Secrecy creates members and outsiders.

Revelation turns belonging into law.

If you are a member, what do you belong to?

You belong to us, but you have to say so.

You have to turn your life into a book.

You have to make an effigy of your days.

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