When we tell a story,

We are living

Memory.

In ancient Greece, the Muses, the dainty-footed daughters
of Memory, were thought to inspire artists. It isn’t knowing,
but remembering, that makes us create. This would explain
why so much great art arises from trauma, nostalgia, or
testimony.

But why alliteration?
Why the pulsing percussion, the string of syllables?
It is the poet who pounds the past back into you.

The poet transcends “telling” or “performing” a story &
instead remembers it, touches, tastes, traps its vastness.

Only now can Memory, previously marooned, find safe
harbor within us.
Feel all the tales crushing our famished mouth.