Notes From the Margins

Pizza & Trauma Spring 2025 Poem 6

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.

We take a look at both fear and bravery, two sides to the same coin. When we confront what we’re afraid of, we are more than brave, we are triumphant.

Situations on a daily basis may create both fear and bravery. We have a continual array of these situations, both large and small.  It may be as small as having overslept and being late to class. Or it may be larger, like failing a test. We need always to be brave, despite our fears. We need to find the strength to keep on believing in ourselves, no matter what.

Poem 6

The trees shake like I do with fear.

Do I have the courage to cross the bridge?

Be brave, be brave, you can do it.

Make that bridge your bitch!

And once you make that bridge your bitch, you can cross it!

After crossing this bridge, will you look back or forward?

Either way, you have 2 live w/ the choice.

Make it count.