How to Sit Zoom Zazen

Pull yourself from the bed where you lie tangled in sheets.

Pull yourself from the dream where you make sculptures in cardboard and highlight them gloss white till they look like plastic.

Pull yourself from the dream where the female bus driver's stopped by the side of the road.

It's dark and you pull yourself hand over hand to the toilet at the back of the bus, past these giant sleeping women, slumping, snoring and farting.

Pull yourself from the dream of two child rascals who almost set your house on fire.

It's 7:22 in the morning. Tap on your Chromebook and search Village Zendo/onlinezendo.

Pull your bra up under your shirt. Tuck your hair up with a bobby pin that's still there, same place, same bobby pin you used yesterday. And tie on your gold bandana so you don't have to worry what your hair looks like under it.

Tap "Enter the Online Zendo Now."

And see the grid of so many faces, some you know, some you don't, little bingo squares, facing in profile.

Maybe, if you have time, quickly scroll through and see who's there.

Now you too turn your chair in profile. And sit.

Your hands in your lap, thumbs touching.

Ding! There's the bell.

And you, along with the rest, sit there and here which is
Zoom and your seat.

And breathe.

How to Burn Incense During a Plague

In the first days of "sheltering in place,"
pull a whole stick of Everlasting Treasure
out of its narrow box.
Balance it upright in the burner,
a shallow brass cylinder
filled with tiny spikes,
then strike the green tipped match.
Touch the flame to the tip
of the incense stick.
When it lights, blow the flame out.
And do what you do,
laundry in the sink,
as the scent fills your few small rooms.

In the next weeks, break
each incense stick in two. Who
knows how long
this will go on?

This week, shake
the burner
for nubs left over
for what
didn't burn yet, try
to make them stand up,
perch them
on the spikes of the burner,
light them
as they tumble.
Only a few sticks left.

Finally, break one
of the few left whole,
into three pieces this time.
Place one in the burner.
Light it. Watch
the smoke, the fiery
red narrow rim
descending, the column
of white ash rising.

Two Feathers

“If a bird didn’t need them,
you don’t either,”
said my mother

trying to discourage
incipient collector,
me.

She failed
miserably.

Now on my altar
next to round smooth
sea glass

(from her
dresser after
she died)

next to her bookworm
bookmark,
smiling Jiminy Cricket,

Alex's words
about his aunt,
I cut up by mistake,
clipped back together,

Kady’s unfired
abstractions
poinsettias
jellyfish

one tiny limb
broken off.

Black rocks
of crystallized honey
that came with the house,

three ceramic eggs
touched with glitter,

among all these
two gray feathers.

They have lost
their sheen
and sleekness,

they seem
to be tattered,
unraveling

messages, maybe

of shredding,
shedding,

of flight--
that arc of wild air.

I sit zazen (Zen meditation) online most mornings with the Village Zendo in NYC. I love this sangha and one hidden blessing of the pandemic is that I get to sit with them, all of us tiny profile faces on the zoom grid. I appreciate the gongs, the prayers, the connection with caring, inquiring people, and the chance to sit and breathe temporarily free of the obligation to do anything but that.

Monica Raymond's play THE OWL GIRL received recognition from the Jewish Play Festival, the Peacewriting Award, Castillo Theater award for political playwriting, Clauder Competition Gold Medal, and was nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award (best play in English by a woman). A TO Z received the Ruby Lloyd Apsey Award for “best play about race/ethnicity.” Her short opera, PAPER OR PLASTIC premiered at the American Repertory Theater’s Outside the Box Festival. Her plays have been produced/developed by the Huntington Theater (MA), Portland Stage (ME), Virago Theater (Oakland), Cleveland Public Theater, University of Utah, Kennedy Center (DC), Great Plains Theater Conference (Omaha), Golden Thread (San Francisco), The Internationalists (NYC), and published by Dramatic Publishing, Applause and Smith and Kraus. She has published poems in the Iowa Review, Village Voice, Colorado Review, Drunken Boat, Sinister Wisdom, Heresies, qarrtsiluni and many other places. A Swan Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center (for writers who are also visual artists); a MacDowell Colony Fellow; a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Dramatic Writing; and Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow, Raymond has taught writing and interdisciplinary arts at Harvard, CUNY, and the Boston Museum School.

More on Monica Raymond’s work can be found on our Links page.