Notes From the Margins

Pizza & Trauma Spring 2025

This is work done by the Pizza and Trauma Writing Group, Spring 2025  - A writing group within the Margaret H. Ordoubadian University Writing Center of Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU)

We met every Friday during the Spring semester 2025 to eat Pizza together and write, both separately and together, culminating in an extemporaneous group poem. Although the membership varied every week, the group began to write as a group whose voice became one as the semester progressed.

The following ten poems are the poems of this group. Thank you, Pizza and Trauma Writing Group for showing up for the group and for yourself.

Poem 2

We often talk about rewriting our story. Sometimes it’s a fantasy life, something that you might not ever have, but sometimes it’s a pattern, held deep down inside, that changes as you rewrite your story, what your happiness is, what your goals are, what you can feel for another person, what you can feel (and do) for your country, how you can behave differently in any given situation: a relationship, as a student, as a friend, as a parent, as a child to your parents. These ideas are important, as they shape our future. We can, and do rewrite our own stories every day. This poem explores what is possible.

I’ve changed my mind. Here’s something totally different.

Different how? From we, from you, for me, for you?

For us? Could we change what’s happened?

Can we make the future brighter than the past?

It’s hard to tell because who knows how much longer it will last.

Keep pressing forward and leave the past in the past.

We are rewriting our story. Now.