Script for My Fathers Love Letters by Yusef Komunyakaa

My Father's Love Letters

By Yusef Komunyakaa On Fridays hed open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou Williams Polka Dots & Moonbeams Never made the swelling go down. His carpenters apron always bulged With old nails, a claw hammer Looped at his side & extension cords Coiled around his feet. Words rolled from under the pressure Of my ballpoint: Love, Baby, Honey, Please. We sat in the quiet brutality Of voltage meters & pipe threaders, Lost between sentences . . . The gleam of a five-pound wedge On the concrete floor Pulled a sunset Through the doorway of his toolshed. I wondered if she laughed & held them over a gas burner. My father could only sign His name, but hed look at blueprints & say how many bricks Formed each wall. This man, Who stole roses & hyacinth For his yard, would stand there With eyes closed & fists balled, Laboring over a simple word, almost Redeemed by what he tried to say.

Script 1. Read the poem around, each person taking a line. (5 minutes) 2. Repeat, while students underline lines or phrases that strike them as interesting (5 minutes). 3. Choose any one line in the poem and write a FFW of 1-2 sentences in response to that line (2 minutes). Choose one other line in the poem and do the same (2 minutes). 4. Ask one of the students to explain text explosion. As a group, clarify to make sure everyone understands (5 minutes). 5. Ask each student to choose their favorite of their FFWs and read it when the reader gets to their line, first repeating the words from the poem that were their prompt. Perform Text explosion. Repeat if the first time is halting (10 minutes). 6. Process writing: How did this feel? How did it affect your thinking about the poem? (5 minutes). 7. Share a few of these (5-10 minutes). 8. Think about something you have done that you need to ask forgiveness for. Write at least three lines of a letter asking for forgiveness it does not need to be the beginning of the letter (5 minutes). Share some of these (5 minutes). 9. Process writing: How did this feel? What insights did you gain into the Komunyakaa poem by doing this writing and sharing with others? Was it easy or difficult to talk about forgiveness in front of other people? How do you think it affects the father in the poem to have to speak his letters out loud to his son? Does it change what he has to say, or the way that he might say it? (10 minutes) 10. Thought chain: ask a student to explain, clarify to make sure everyone understands. Then have them share their processes, using thought chain (10 minutes). 11. FFWs (2 minutes each): a.) What does the poem say about power? b.) Who has power in the poem? c.) Who do you most sympathize with when you read this poem? d.) Who is the author of the letters? Share: each student can share a response from one of the FFWs no one is allowed to pass for this exercise (5 minutes). 12. Read the last 6 lines of the poem aloud, starting with this man Does Komunyakaas father deserve forgiveness? FFW (5 minutes). Then before sharing, students should organize themselves in a social barometer exercise (bring their writing with them). They organize themselves from left to right those on the far left feel most strongly that the father is NOT deserving of forgiveness, and those on the far right feel most strongly that he DOES deserve forgiveness (5 minutes). Starting on the left, each student should share their FFW. Then students can reorganize themselves if they would like after hearing everyones responses. Anyone who moved should say whose argument inspired them to make a change (5 minutes). 13. Homework think and write about the relationship between education and power. Some of these responses will be shared the following day.

Workshop strategies used: Focused Free Write, Reading aloud in a shared way, Text Explosion, Process Writing, Sharing around, and sharing from a few volunteers, Thought Chain.