The Assemblage Newsletter #63
Welcome to this week’s newsletter from Assemblage. These newsletters go out every Friday to highlight some of the top works from the past week. We hope these links (all friend links, so anyone can view them) find you under a blanket, on a couch, with tea or coffee, and a book (or our words) by your side. You can also view all of our previous letters via the Letters tab on our homepage.
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
Let this be the year that you read more, write more, and reflect more. Every year should be more than the last.
Featured Writer
Each week we feature one of our fantastic writers and up to six of their essays or poems on the homepage underneath the Featured Essays and Featured Poems section. This week we posted our 30th Featured Writer: Juliette Roanoke. Juliette is a mother, who works in neuroscience, critical care, and as a home infusion registered nurse. She is also a mental health combatant and social justice seeker, as well as a truth teller. Juliette published 5 poems in Assemblage in 2020.
Collection
Collections are groupings of stories or poems with an overall theme. You can find Collections on the home page underneath the Featured Stories, Featured Poetry, and Featured Writer sections.
On Self-Awareness features 8 different essays or poems from 8 different writers from our collective. This section is a great way to get acquainted with multiple works around one theme, as well as to find writers you haven’t read before or ones you shouldn’t miss. Take a look at our Collection this week and see what you’ve missed this year.
On Self-Awareness features one work each from Carrie Wynn, Jonathan Greene, Pamela J. Nikodem, M.S.Ed, Simran Kankas, Vanessa Torre, Iva Ursano, Lance Baker, and Aspen Blue.
Essays and Poems From Last Week
Meditations On Relationships, Breakups, And Love, As It Happens, And Doesn’t by Melissa Kerman — her debut in Assemblage
“See, I think I have high self-esteem. But sometimes I gaslight myself. I ponder if my confidence is a delusion and I’m lightyears away from the person I imagine myself to be. I fall for someone who manifests my ideal reality because that’s the quandary: I fear I’m a figment of my own imagination. How meta.”
“I can function, I can move, I can love
but also, some air can get through my hollow
and in turn, I can realize the truth
I am whole, but also in pieces”
“Can you give without expectation? Don’t wait for a thank you or recognition. Give from your heart because you can. Don’t expect people to praise you for your good deeds.”
Celebrate Your Employees by Sending Them Home by Benjamin Davis
“If you’re worried that your employees don’t care enough about work, or don’t like the workplace enough to want to join in, maybe that should tell you something about where you should focus your attention.”
“winds down
through breakable ornaments
and bad memories, tangling
impressions of family gatherings,
tightening the roar in my ears”
Bleeding Nails by Simran Kankas
“I am writing our tale
With the bleeding nails
Rubbing the floor with love
Washing it with my tears”
My Relationship Doesn’t Necessarily Have The Moments That Make “Good” Stories by Carrie Wynn
“Then there are the thousands of little moments, that aren’t quite enough to make a story but are in the smiles, laughs, touches, and inside jokes that we share every single day.”
Our Words Matter by Megan Minutillo
“When you do this, you light the
flame of destruction on parched
ground.”
Beauty is Woven by Paul Mulliner
“we might consider
finding the gentle silence
inside us
that connects us to the stars
and the fragile beauty
of the Universe.”
Weekly Note
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” — Henry David Thoreau
What are you willing to exchange for your life this year?
