The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is proud to announce that CWW Intern Alex Carrigan has managed to get some of his poetry published recently.  His work is featured in Strike!, a zine of radical flash fiction and poetry created by Amendment Literary Journal at Virginia Commonwealth University. Alex had three short poems published in the zine, covering the assigned topics of cat calling, “my privilege,” and reproductive rights. All the pieces were written under a time limit at a flash fiction event hosted last spring at VCU.  Alex’s poem  “When I First Saw Her,” is also featured in Quail Bell Magazine. The poem is based off a workshop from our Pre-Thanksgiving Yoga and Writing Retreat. Following a prompt from Jessica Reidy’s “The Art of Withholding in Creative Writing,” Alex wrote a poem based on how to tell someone about the first time you met your spouse, albeit with most of the details removed. Based on that prompt, he played around and created the following poem:

When I First Saw Her
by Alex Carrigan

When I first saw her,
it wasn’t anything like in the movies.
Time didn’t slow down to a crawl,
the music didn’t go silent,
and there wasn’t a change in lighting.

My heart didn’t freeze,
nor did it pick up in rhythm.
I could breathe easily looking at her,
my throat clear and open.

I know that tales of meeting your wife
are supposed to be more exciting.
But I didn’t feel that shock when I met mine.
It was a simple meeting, free of spectacle.

However,
my eyebrows did raise in surprise,
so I took that as a good sign.