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 Four

What do our bodies tell us about our emotional life? When your stomach hurts is it just because you ate too much pizza, or is it something else, something deeper? We make choices every day. We choose who we hang out with, we choose what we eat, we choose to make a decision or not make a decision. Sometimes it seems like life choices are overwhelming. But when we write about it, we can get another perspective. And in this poem, it all comes back to love..

My stomach hurts but I might get another piece of pizza.

Immediately/long term reward – which is better? Which suits my needs more?

Why do I have to decide now? Can I put it off? I have something to do or nothing to do now!

This immediacy is crushing – following me across the room.

This is dark for me.

My trauma is yours and I love you.