Notes From the Margins

This is work done by the Tacos and Trauma Writing Group, Fall 2025 - A writing group within the Margaret H. Ordoubadian University Writing Center of Middle Tennessee St

ate University (MTSU)

We met every Friday during the Fall semester 2025 to eat Tacos 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 eight poems are the poems of this group. Thank you, Tacos and Trauma Writing Group for showing up for the group and for yourself.

Poem 2

9/19/25

We seek the truth but sometimes resort to self-torture. In that we join the multitudes of those who seek more than the material world, the world of inner growth and introspection. We may start at any time, but whenever that occurs, we can begin then, which is now. The now is where we grow, where we can launch the rewriting of our story.

To be free from the guilt, the noise, the dilemma,

That would be more liberating than any jailbreak,

Or more freeing than any hope-filled escape.

In the end it is hope that drives freedom, the only escape left.

And if my words fail me, put them together anyway—there is no wrong.

Because freedom comes with the ability to express openly.