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 3

9/26/25

When we write within a group, we not only express our own thoughts and feelings, but we share each other’s thoughts and feelings. It’s in the air that we breathe together, it’s in the sharing of food, it’s in the proximity to another while we write. And when we put ourselves in that moment, some kind of magic happens, within the writing, within the community we have built between ourselves.

Once upon a taco on Friday,

Five people gather with pens and paper,

Poured their hearts out on the whiteness,

Were kind to each other due to politeness

And if we could truly love then it would be miraculous.