AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Poetry Off the Shelf: How To Be A Family of One

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: This is Poetry Off the Shelf, I’m Helena de Groot. Today, we talk about suicidal ideation, nothing graphic, but if you want to skip this one, please do that and take good care of yourself.

Okay, now here’s today’s episode, How To Be A Family of One.

Steven Espada Dawson grew up in East LA, doing all the things kids do: listening to music, getting donuts and slushies. But when he was a teenager, his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Then his brother, Brian, who’d been struggling with a heroin addiction for years, disappeared. So now it’s just him and his mom.

When we talked, Steven Espada Dawson had just gotten a piece of really good news: he was selected as one of five young poets for this year’s Lilly-Rosenberg Fellowship. But it’ll come as no surprise that it’s his mom who’s on his mind. Her cancer has returned, and this time it’s terminal.

I spoke to Steven the day after he got back from a weeklong visit with her.

Steven Espada Dawson: It was a week that felt like about four months long. So we were basically like in and out of the hospital the whole time.

Helena de Groot: I’m so sorry.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, it wasn’t great. But you know what? I learned a lot about her, and I learned a lot about myself, and us. So it was valuable, and I think that she appreciated it. I know that she did, because she said that. So, yeah, I’m really glad—I mean, I would have had hated for her to go through all of that alone.

Helena de Groot: Oh, god, yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And you said that your mom said how grateful she was for you to be there. Is she generally kind of expressive about that or is that something that has come later?

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, she is a very independent person. Because she’s had to be out of necessity, you know. I think she has trouble asking for help. But you know, you need to step in, and even if she doesn’t ask for help, you need to give help. So I do think that with these situations comes a kind of, like a necessity for a kind of intimacy.

Helena de Groot: Mm-Hmm.

Steven Espada Dawson: So we’re learning how to do that. Actually, you know, she was really sick and like vomiting in the back of a Lyft on the way to a hospital when I was there, and we were like, holding hands, which is like super intimate for us. You know, we never do that. So, you know, we’re learning how to be people.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And is there like an aide or someone who can help you—I don’t know what kind of help she needs right now, but like, does she need help being washed or something like that, you know? And how does that all work?

Steven Espada Dawson: Well, at her worst—so, about six weeks ago, she had a stroke, which really complicated everything and her mobility and stuff like that. For the last few years, she’s had to walk with a walker and things like that, but she’s been pretty independent. So much so that like, she kept a night job for a really long time working from her house.

Helena de Groot: What did she do?

Steven Espada Dawson: So she just like sold things. And they’re like, expensive things. She told me she swore—and this is actually in a poem of mine. She swore that she sold camping gear to Matthew McConaughey.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: She’s positive. You know, she is so sure that happened.

Helena de Groot: Like she recognized his voice is what she’s saying?

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh yeah, absolutely. And for sure, there is somewhere in her small little apartment that has Matthew McConaughey’s credit card number on it, I guarantee it. Somewhere in that space.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) So you’re going to find that basically—

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh yeah.

Helena de Groot: —and have to check in with your moral compass?

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh yeah, I’m not even going to grieve first, you know, first the credit card number of Matthew McConaughey, and then I’ll grieve later.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) Yeah, yeah. And so, when you say, like, you know, it was a week, but it felt like four months, why do you think that is? Like, is it the intensity, the boredom, like, what do you think makes time go so funny?

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, that’s a good question. I know that we couldn’t do much, you know? So there was a lot of just like sitting, watching, you know, whatever’s on the hospital TV, and talking about anything else to avoid like, accepting what is going on. And she’s like apologizing that we couldn’t go to, like, the places that we might normally go to and stuff like that. But, yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah. So when you’re in Austin, are you texting her a lot? Like what is the, you know, the kind of balance there?

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah. Well, these days, so post-stroke, I call her every day, twice a day, both like, just to make sure she’s doing well, you know, advocating for her if I need to advocate for something to change with her care or whatever, but also, she needs practice speaking, you know. It’s something that we have to do.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. You know, I feel like often, for a lot of people that I know, when they go home to their parents, even when you’re an adult, you go home and you regress into some kind of, you know, maybe teenage version of yourself, you know, maybe not as bad, but like, there is some—

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh, totally.

Helena de Groot: Right? But of course, with you, there is this extra complication that you now sort of have a role of responsibility over your mom.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And so I’m wondering, like, do you still regress? And then how does that bump up against you being a responsible adult there?

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh, man, it is so confusing. Yeah. So, to put this in perspective, I think like, I don’t know, a couple of weeks before my mom had a stroke, she sent me a care package. And at this time, you know, she’s working a night job, she’s employed, and she can do this kind of thing. And I was so excited because she said, “You know, I sent you a little care package.” So it gets here, you know, I’m thinking it’s like, I don’t know, really personal gifts from home, you know, maybe some old photos, you know, maybe snacks that I used to like when I was younger or something like that. And it’s just a bunch of toothbrushes and toothpaste.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: And she’s like, “I know you don’t brush your teeth enough.” You know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: After not having lived with me for 12 years, you know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: But she’s sure of it. You know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: So I do think there is still like that position where I’m just like, I’m a lot younger. And that sort of like flipped itself on its head when she could barely speak. You know? And I’m suddenly in a position where I’m responsible. I’m responsible for her next moves. In some ways I’m like, financially responsible, too.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And I had to become someone older. And I was very frustrated, because I was like, really trying so hard to advocate for this person that I don’t think taught me how to be this person yet.

Helena de Groot: That’s interesting. Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know? And you know, I’m 30, and maybe, I think usually in this position. you know, maybe you’re in your 40s, maybe in your 50s. The lucky few people are in their 60s before that kind of thing happens. And so, it felt like … it felt like these two worlds really competing with each other, where I am sort of like, immediately infantilized. But also, I have to, I have to be the one.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, I have to jump into the future in order to make sure she’s taken care of, so.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. And then, when you’re there, or when you’re trying to kind of manage your mother’s care and her health from a distance, how does writing poems fit into that? Like, when do you write?

Steven Espada Dawson: Sure. So do you know that animal dichotomy of ox and cat writers? Are you familiar with that?

Helena de Groot: No!

Steven Espada Dawson: Okay, so there’s that whole thing about ox writers. Ox writers are those writers that can set a schedule for themselves and actually write during that time. And I used to think that was a myth. And now I have a few ox writing friends who literally will give themselves three hours in a day to write, and they will write for those three hours. And it blows my mind. It’s like magic to watch that happen, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Cat writers are far more sporadic. I’m like the cat that is like, hidden underneath the couch,—

Helena de Groot: Oh!

Steven Espada Dawson: —inside the wall, you know? (LAUGHS LIGHTLY)

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: So, I mean, I take it when I can get it. You know, one of the poems that’s really important to me and to the project I’m working on, I wrote in the bathroom of an Ethiopian restaurant, you know? And I think my friends are just sort of used to me vanishing a little bit.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, and I won’t say, “Hey, I’m about to go write a poem in the bathroom stall.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: So I just say, “Okay, I need to go the bathroom, be right back.” And then 30 minutes later, I emerge with a draft. I would say a good 10 percent of my book is written in places that you shouldn’t be writing poems in, you know—

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: —the dressing room of a Target. Yeah. I get the words down and then, you know, I look at line breaks and things like that later. I also think like pre-writing is really important to me. So just like, leaning into that, more so than the actual like fingers on the keyboard kind of thing.

Helena de Groot: Pre-writing you mean in your head?

Steven Espada Dawson: Pre-writing, what I mean I guess, is just like listening to the world. The poet Ed Hirsch, in some old anthology, defines a poem as like, an event of language, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And that is the kind of like, vague definition that I can really get behind.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, because it knows its limitations, but also its limitations are its strengths, I think. So I try to really just open myself up to events of language that happen around me and just sort of be a note taker, you know?

Helena de Groot: Mm.

Steven Espada Dawson: That’s it. And if I can apply those events of language to things that have happened in my life, things that are happening in my life, then I do that and that’s how the poem is born.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Steven Espada Dawson: Or I catch myself, you know, just being a little bit … magnetized to like, certain images out in the world. So for example, in my last year of grad school, there was this banana that somebody—banana peel that somebody just like, left in the parking lot. And it was so rude to just like, leave this banana peel in the parking lot. But also, I’m like, on my way to the bus, so I’m not going to pick up that banana peel, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: So this banana peel just lives there, and it starts like, baking into the sun, and it starts shriveling and turning black. And then I go to my apartment and I don’t leave all weekend, and I come outside on Monday, and I get startled by it, because I think it’s a dead bat.

Helena de Groot: Huh.

Steven Espada Dawson: And I learned about myself that I was just seeing death kind of everywhere, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And I wrote that, you know, that image, in fact, with the banana is in a poem in the book, right? So.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah. That actually is in the poem that I was hoping you could read now, so—(LAUGHS LIGHTLY)

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh, whoa.

Helena de Groot: Do you want to read that poem? It’s the one, “What I Hate Most About Mom.”

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah. Okay, let me find that. (TYPING) Okay.

(READS POEM)

What I Hate Most About Mom

is her dying. How these days

I’m busy reckoning

how to make a family

from just one man.

I see death everywhere.

A banana peel left

to the sun is a bat’s

cadaver. The accent mark

in every beautiful Spanish

word—la poesía—is a switch

-blade at the belly.

I can look at the knot

in a piece of wood

until it frightens me.

It’s November now,

all the leaves are curled

with drought. I lied

before. What I hate

most about my dying

mother is that she

won’t eat garlic.

In these final weeks

I try to impress her

with my cooking. She turns

each meal she won’t eat

into a rhymed couplet—

When I meet death,

I won’t have bad breath.

I’m still learning from her

how to laugh at this poem.

How to turn each bridge

into a balcony. To applaud

everything that floats

down river. Depending

which way you turn,

the water is coming

or it has already left.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. Yeah, those lines about your mother’s sense of humor. “She turns // each meal she won’t eat / into a rhymed couplet— // When I meet death, / I won’t have bad breath. // I’m still learning from her / how to laugh at this poem.” The way she brings in this humor at this really painful time, do you think she’s teaching you something there or trying to?

Steven Espada Dawson: I think that … I mean, I think that literally humor can be a way to avoid things, but … and so, I think that would be the easy answer, and I think that sometimes that’s the truth.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Steven Espada Dawson: But I also think that there is a kind of like wholeness, when you bring in the comedy into a poem that is not funny. And make it funny. Right?

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Steven Espada Dawson: And I just, I think that beauty and humor and joy often makes the speaker whole and makes me feel whole and capable of all emotions, right?

Helena de Groot: That is such a good way of putting it. Yeah, it does bring in some oxygen or so, you know, that you really need to deal with all the rest.

Steven Espada Dawson: Totally. Yeah. Can I tell you a story about humor?

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Please!

Steven Espada Dawson: Okay, so. Okay, so this starts heavy.

Helena de Groot: Okay.

Steven Espada Dawson: And I want to give like a content warning for suicidal ideation here for anyone that’s listening and that helps.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: So, I think it was sometime in the in the last few months, I was like in a really bad spot, and so I called the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, right, which is something I’ve done before. And I was put on hold, which happens a lot there. So I brought up their little app. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of their app, but they have an app called the Virtual Hope Box.

Helena de Groot: Okay.

Steven Espada Dawson: Right? Is that something you’re familiar with?

Helena de Groot: I’m not, no, I’m intrigued.

Steven Espada Dawson: Okay. So the Virtual Hope Box is an app. It’s kind of like, a childish app, to be honest. But, you know, I think for some people, it probably works, where, you upload a bunch of images into this Hope Box. And you know, they could be images that just make you happy, like superficially, like puppies or something like that, right. Or you with your family or some kind of images that give you hope. And so you sit there and you sort of put the image together, so they like, break apart the image and you have to like, drag the images into the right position—

Helena de Groot: Right.

Steven Espada Dawson: —and stuff like that to make it whole.

Helena de Groot: So they make a puzzle, kind of.

Steven Espada Dawson: Kind of, yeah, they like gameify suicide. It’s like a really interesting thing. So, I’m on hold with the prevention hotline and it’s been 45 minutes. And then this app is not downloading on my phone, because I haven’t, I haven’t used it in a while. And I started crying with laughter at that situation. Because I was trying so hard to stay alive and I was doing all the right things and this was happening.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, totally.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, and it didn’t feel like the universe was like, looking down on me or something. Or I had this like, rain cloud over me. It felt like everything was laughing with me. At just like, the sort of absurdity of that, right.

Helena de Groot: Right. Like, you were having a real dramatic moment and the universe was just—

Steven Espada Dawson: It was a real dramatic moment!

Helena de Groot: —yeah, like giving you the most banal stuff that it could muster, like tech issues and wait lines.

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh, absolutely, being on hold, right?

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHING) Oh god. Was there hold music?

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh, man, I don’t remember if there’s hold music, actually. We can call and find out.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, but I do remember someone like, popping up and being like, “Your call is important to us” or something generic.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: And you know what? I am not the only one that has experienced this very same thing, right? I’m part of like this anonymous online community of people that are like, trying to stay. And I’ve heard like, very similar things.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Steven Espada Dawson: And it’s hilarious. I mean, it’s objectively hilarious. And that sort of like bounces you back into reality, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: That, you know, you’re capable of a full spectrum of emotions, even in moments like that, even in moments of intense grief where you want to press the escape button, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah. But do you feel like that space, right, that you then feel, like, oh, even within the moment of my abject sadness, I can find laughter, you know, like, do you feel like you could do that when you were younger and struggling with suicidal ideation also?

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh, absolutely not. I think that when I was younger, I was more committed to certainty than I am now, right? So when you’re … when you’re young and you don’t know how to process emotions, you are certain of how you feel.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: But certainty takes away possibility. And now I am completely uncertain. (LAUGHS) And that’s kind of amazing. I also, I preach to my students, every once in a while, that certainty is like the death of art. And your poems should not seek to, at least, you know, when you’re drafting them, should not seek to become answers. I want you to sort of like, reckon in this space, to be uncertain and to be comfortable with that feeling.

Helena de Groot: Right. So the ending should not be a finality, like the ending should be a door or so?

Steven Espada Dawson: Absolutely. Yeah. The ending should be a door. That’s great. I love that.

Helena de Groot: Well, I love your ending here, because I feel like it’s even more beautiful than a door. It’s a river. Can you read the end of the poem again? Like, you know, so it’s basically, syntactically, you’re still going with all the things that your mother has taught you, you know, “how to laugh at this poem. // How to turn each bridge / into a balcony,” and then that part that follows.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah. So, “How to turn each bridge / into a balcony. To applaud // everything that floats / down river. Depending // which way you turn, / the water is coming // or it has already left.” Now, there’s actually like a little nod there, of suicide when we have this bridge. We have this place where people jump from. And I actually, in graduate school, when I was sort of like at the peak of my stress and my grieving and processing, because you’re sort of like in this weird capitalist position to like, pump out work.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, and to reckon and faster. Okay, Steven, your poetry is a reckoning of a kind, but can you reckon faster? You know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And I used to, I used to walk across this bridge all the time on the way to class. And you know, it crossed my mind. But like, quite literally, this image is true, right, depending on which way you look on a bridge, the water is coming towards you or it is leaving you. And that is not certainty, right? But it does provide you with a kind of agency in some weird way, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, and I found it also like, almost like Taoistic or something, you know?

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh yeah.

Helena de Groot: Like, things are always moving. Like, you may be very, very sad now, but the water is keeping on moving, you know, like, things will change again.

Steven Espada Dawson: That’s funny you say that, because my therapist has read my poetry and said the same thing.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: But so, when you said, “Oh yeah, that’s interesting, that’s what my therapist said too,” I’m hearing in that that is not exactly maybe 100 percent what you were seeing or thinking or intending. Like, what does that ending mean to you?

Steven Espada Dawson: No, I, no, no, no, I think you’re right. It’s just that I, I’m sort of like realizing it after having written, right. And also like, writing is this weird—it feels like time traveling sometimes, because, you know, I’m a very lucky poet and I have had some really great things happen recently regarding poetry. But it’s like, all these celebrations for poems I wrote two or three years ago.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: You know? And all of this thinking that I did two or three years ago.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: So yeah, I think, you know, maybe I did think that, but it’s a sort of like, post realization, you know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: How old were you when your mom was first diagnosed with cancer?

Steven Espada Dawson: So I think I was about 15 or 16.

Helena de Groot: Oh, wow.

Steven Espada Dawson: I remember the date, but I don’t remember the year. It was October 26 that I found out.

Helena de Groot: Why do you remember?

Steven Espada Dawson: Because it was right before Halloween. And I remember, like, legitimately crying under my stupid mask or something, you know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Because I don’t, I don’t know if this was your experience, but there is a certain age where you stop doing Halloween and then you start up again, and you’re like, clearly too old to be doing it. So I remember like, coming back—this was like my second wave of Halloween—and then like, I got this news, and then it was like a very strange time, you know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: But it was, it was not good, because just a couple of years before that, my grandfather died of lung cancer. And it was very quick. They caught it very late. And it was like six months or something like that. So, when she told me the news, I remember thinking it was a death sentence, immediately.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, of course.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know? Because that was my only experience with that. And it wasn’t, because she is she is, I guess, lucky in some ways and also incredibly strong. And … yeah, but, you know, losing her hair, losing her job at the time, seeing her incredibly sick, you know, because cancer makes you less sick than the remedies for cancer.

Helena de Groot: Right, right.

Steven Espada Dawson: The remedies for cancer are really terrible. Yeah. Yeah, and it was weird, right? That was our first, our first … real intimacy. You know, I was always incredibly jealous of my brother, because when we were younger, he was always getting into a lot of trouble. And I remember feeling jealous of him because that trouble necessitated action by my mom. Like, she had to go to court. Or she had to go to jail. Or she had to call the police and like, speak with them, or whatever.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And so they had like a kind of closeness that I really always sort of admired, even though it was, you know, they were never good situations. But he was always getting in trouble and I was not. My mom was way stricter with me than with my brother.

Helena de Groot: How much older was your brother or is your brother?

Steven Espada Dawson: My brother is a lot older, so he’s nine years older.

Helena de Groot: That is a lot. Right, right, right.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And how old were you—because you said you were 15 or 16 when you got the diagnosis about your mom’s cancer. Was your brother’s still around then?

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, he was around ... I think he kind of avoided ... I think he kind of avoided talking about it and like, dealing with it. But also, he was like really deep into his addiction at that time. You know, so he had he had his stuff to worry about and, yeah.

Helena de Groot: And so when your brother was already pretty deep in his addiction and your mother was first diagnosed, did you feel like that … that made the two of you closer? Like, did she kind of confide in you, or did she want to be like, tough and independent and not bother you with it?

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh yeah, yeah, super tough. Really tried to make sure it didn’t interrupt my life. And you know what, you know, at that point I was taking cues from my brother. I was, in my own way, trying to avoid it. You know, I had jobs too when I was in high school, so I was I was busy. There was a point where I had to help, you know, pay rent and things like that. So I had to work. And, you know, my mom did a good job. She always does, of sort of like protecting us in a way that she thinks is super healthy. You know, and which I am realizing is maybe not, but.

Helena de Groot: Mm.

Steven Espada Dawson: And, you know, she was, yeah, she always did her best.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah. And were you resentful at all that you had to like, you know, deal with this when you were just trying to be a teenager or, you know, that you had to chip in with rent, or was that really not the feeling you had?

Steven Espada Dawson: Hm. (PAUSES) Was I resentful? Can I think about that?

Helena de Groot: Yeah, totally. I’ll tell you why I’m asking. You know, I’m asking you, because I feel like, or at least I was, as a teenager, so self-absorbed. Like, I cannot even—there was just no space for anyone else’s problems because my own feelings were so loud, you know? And so, I’m just, yeah, I’m just trying to imagine what it’s like to have this sprung on you.

Steven Espada Dawson: Sure. Yeah. No, I mean, that’s a good point. I think that it was complicated, because I was a teenager and I—there were a lot of changes going on and I’m trying to, like, date every personal at my school, and—

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: —like, you know, do you do that kind of thing, you know, while chemotherapy is happening, you know, like, it was complicated. I remember—you know, I don’t know if I remember resenting my mother, but I definitely resented my brother for not coming around more. And I still do, you know, like, she is, you know, I don’t know if my brother is alive.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, it’s been … it’s been, wow, it’s been three … wait, how, I’m so bad at math. It’s been, you know, 12 years since I’ve seen him. Or heard from him. And in fact, as far as like, the state is concerned, he’s dead, right. There’s a thing called death in absentia. If you don’t hear from someone or you can’t locate them for 10 years, then you can get a death certificate, right?

Helena de Groot: Oh, wow. And you did that? I mean, your family, you did get the death certificate or that’s just the state at some point?

Steven Espada Dawson: No, we haven’t done that. No, I’ve looked into that, and we haven’t done that. My mom, actually, she told me like two weeks ago, she’s like—and, you know, she can barely speak. Two weeks ago, she’s doing much better now as far as speaking.

Helena de Groot: Uh-huh.

Steven Espada Dawson: But two weeks ago, she could barely speak. And she’s like, “You know what? I’m going to hire a private investigator.” You know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: “What does it cost? $80?” (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Oh! (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: She’s like, “Here’s my budget. Will you please hire a private investigator?”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And I had to like, be very upfront with her and say, “You know what? I have done so much work to … not ‘get over’—I don’t even know what language I want to put there, sort of like process a brother that just disappears, and I don’t want to open that. I don’t want to open that box.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And she said, “Okay,” you know. And we’ve been through all of the, you know, like prison databases and we’ve done the whole, trying to find him on social media and stuff like that. But, yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. This is maybe a horrible question, but it sometimes feels like in modern life, you cannot really disappear, right? Like, you cannot just, say die in the street or something, without there being a record of that, right? Like, the police is going to make a report, they’re going to try and figure out who it is. How do people disappear?

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. If I find him one day, I will let you know.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: But, I don’t know, if he’s around then I don’t think he goes by his name anymore. And that would make sense. He’s always had a person for everything. You know, he—I struggle between “is” and “was” with him. You know, I don’t—

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: It really does change sort of like unconsciously every day. But he is a really charismatic person. (LAUGHS LIGHTLY) I remember once, I saw him deal drugs to his high school security guard.

Helena de Groot: Wow.

Steven Espada Dawson: And thinking, “Oh, wow, okay, like, this person is different. My brother is different.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah. So, you know, there’s the possibility he’s alive. And you know what? I think that that is, um, that’s the trickiest thing for me, is that, if there is a death, if there are bones, if there’s caution tape, you know, you get to start, you know, you get to start some kind of process of grieving. You get to do the thing. And it becomes a closed circuit, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah, right.

Steven Espada Dawson: But when there’s no body and there’s just absence, it becomes a loop of grief. And that is tough. You know, and that’s just my brother, you know, my only sibling. But for my mom, you know, that’s her son. You know, I imagine it’s even more difficult for her.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah, of course. And earlier, you know, you were talking about certainty and uncertainty, and you said, you know, uncertainty means possibility.

Steven Espada Dawson: Sure.

Helena de Groot: And you said it then in the context of like, that’s a good thing, you know? But I feel like here ... it seems like the uncertainty, the possibility, right, that he may still be alive and be somewhere. Or maybe, the, I don’t know which one is worse. You know, the possibility that ... because at least if he’s dead, then he’s not just ignoring you all. You know what I mean?

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, what you just said is kind of everything: “I don’t know which one is worse.” I think that that’s the title of my book now.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: No, (LAUGHS LIGHTLY) that’s kind of like the whole thing is that the waiting is the hardest part.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: So, speaking of waiting, my mom had this nickname growing up in Los Angeles for this park, and it was not the name of the park. I don’t remember what the park was called. But she had a nickname for it, which was Waiter Park, W-a-i-t-e-r, Waiter Park. And it was a small place where you went to buy drugs, right? And she called it Waiter Park because people were waiting for their lives to change, right.

Helena de Groot: Mm.

Steven Espada Dawson: And obviously, that is like, a little bit reductive when it comes to like, addiction and people that don’t have homes, and things like that, right?

Helena de Groot:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: But it was people waiting for their lives to change. And now I just like, I do feel like I’m in that space, like that weird, liminal waiting space. And it’s a weird place to be.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah, it’s almost like you have to make a decision, right? Like the facts don’t decide for you, like, okay, you can start grieving your brother. Like you have to decide, am I going to start this process and like, I don’t even know how you can do that.

Steven Espada Dawson: I know that, you know, through these years of therapy, that closure has to happen through me, you know? And it hasn’t yet. I think that … I think that honestly, in some ways, this is why it’s tough to put the final touches on this book. Because it is a kind of closure in my art, right? I’ve always been bad at endings. I’ve always bad at it. You know, as long as I can remember, even, I would stop reading books in the last chapter, you know, I hate it. I hate endings. So I know it has to come from within me, whatever it is, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And I think that in poetry, I can imagine different circumstances or I can imagine the things that have happened in a different way, or I can sort of lay them out like a stage and process them. Right? And, you know, I think there’s a kind of, even through the grief, there’s a kind of like, tenderness and intimacy when I write poems about my brother that maybe I haven’t received from him. You know? Sometimes even violence is a kind of intimacy. I wrote a poem that was about one time when he burned my hand with a cigarette. And that was the thing that actually happened, and I have a scar on my hand from it still. And in some ways, that burn is an intimacy. And that intimacy has outlived him. Literally. Maybe literally.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah, like proof that he was really there, basically.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, yeah.

Helena de Groot: And when you write, you said that you don’t like endings. But do you feel that, whatever the ending is that you write, does that help you then, inside you? You know what I mean? Like, does the form of the poem, the fact that it ends, help you reach some kind of closure within you that maybe parallels the one that you trace in the poem?

Steven Espada Dawson: I mean, that’s a really good question. I think I learned a lot about closure in poetry from the book Headwaters by Ellen Bryant Voigt. And that book has no punctuation, right.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And I think that, in some ways, punctuation can feel like a kind of like, completeness, right.

Helena de Groot: Totally.

Steven Espada Dawson: I remember writing a lot of poems, drafting a lot of the poems in the book with no punctuation. And trying my best to, I don’t know … I wanted my poems to live in as liminal space as I feel like I am sometimes.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Steven Espada Dawson: I think that’s also why I often will end poems on an image. I don’t think my speaker is … finished. But I think that they observe. Right? Their last act is not to speak to you. Their last act is to observe.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: So I want to change gears a little bit. Because I want to talk to you about the beauty of language. Because, you know, your poems, dark as they may be in subject matter, they are just a feast of sounds and images that are so layered and fun. And sometimes just made me laugh and then I felt horrendously guilty, you know, because it felt like the wrong thing to do. And so I’m just wondering, like, what do you think has sharpened your ear for language? Like, what has made you pay attention to words?

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh man. Well, first of all, thank you so much, that’s an incredible compliment. I don’t know if I agree with you, but I believe you believe. And that is really great to hear. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: Because I mean, it’s one of the first things that I think about when I think about poetry is the music. Jericho Brown says that they will remember you for your music more than the words, you know? So that’s something that I’m always sort of like thinking about. I think that early in my life, definitely music, and then later in my life, definitely reading. I was not a great student. In high school, I was not a reader at all. I was the person that would SparkNotes books.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHING) Oh my god, that’s so hard to believe now.

Steven Espada Dawson: And just kind of do fine.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know I wasn’t—I didn’t get As. And in some ways, I missed like, the canon completely, which is like, both good and bad, I think. I listened to mostly hip hop and rap growing up. And I think these are genres that are really attuned to sound and pacing. And I would say more so than other genres. I listened to a lot of Black Star and MF Doom and Biggie Smalls. And you know, I just actually realized I said a bunch of East Coast rappers.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: People in LA are going to be upset at me.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: But of course, Tupac, yeah, Tupac too.

Helena de Groot: For sure, yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: I actually, I teach Tupac and my intro to creative writing class.

Helena de Groot: Oh, that is so nice. Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Anyway, reading, definitely later in life.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: In college, though, I had a 90-minute commute. So I was traveling three hours a day, and I found that poetry was so much more digestible for me. Instead of like, finishing on page 44 of some novel, like a quarter of the way down the page, and I forgot what the chapter was about when I revisited it, I could be done. I could be done with a poem. You know, and in the three hours I could finish a whole book in a day.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That gives you a real sense of accomplishment, right? Look at me, burning through these books.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah. Oh, hell yeah. And then you have this sudden library of 200 books of poems under your belt, and it’s just like a little bit of space on a shelf, you know, because they’re so small. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: I love that. I mean, I love that that is, yeah, by being sort of a hmm-hmm student, you know, you actually kind of saved yourself for poetry, you know, if I can put it in such a Puritan way.

Steven Espada Dawson: I think that’s very generous, but I will—

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, I did—maybe dodged something, but it was an accident, you know?

Helena de Groot: That is really a good way of putting it. So I was wondering if you can read a poem where I think that simultaneous like, total darkness and then the absolute thrill of your language really came out. It’s the poem called, “A River Is a Body Running.”

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh, great. Yeah, I’ll read that.

(READS POEM)

A River Is a Body Running

The first time I found my brother

overdosed, he looked holy. A thing

not to be touched. Yellow halo of last

night’s dinner. His skin, blanched blue

fresco: Patron Saint of Smack. A cop,

flustered, tugged up his shorts, plunged

a needle into a pale thigh. He hissed

awake like a soda can. The paramedic

spoke slowly in his ear like a lover,

asked him what color yellow and red

make. What is the difference between

a lake and a river? In the corner I

whittle my brother’s used syringe

into an instrument only I can play.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Hm. Seriously, I did a double-take at those lines, “Yellow halo of last / night’s dinner,” because, you know, first of all, like a halo is such a beautiful thing, you know? And then the sounds of a yellow halo are, I thought, like, how has not everyone already done this?

Steven Espada Dawson: Thank you!

Helena de Groot: Yeah! But then of course, you know, like the “Yellow halo of last / night’s dinner,” I mean, the image that it actually—yeah, you use really beautiful language to describe something quite … quite ugly.

Steven Espada Dawson: Thank you.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, and I mean, there is such joy in like, just the sounds, you know, like this description of this “Patron Saint of Smack,” like it’s so confident and concise. And it just mashes these two worlds that never mash, you know? I thought it was really, really well done.

Steven Espada Dawson: Thank you.

Helena de Groot: Because again, yeah, it’s like, okay, can this situation be any darker? Hardly.

Steven Espada Dawson: Sure.

Helena de Groot: But then, look at me having fun with words, you know?

Steven Espada Dawson: (LAUGHS) That should be—can you blurb my book that?

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: Look at him, having fun with words.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: Thank you. Actually, you know what? My mother is in this poem. It’s a little sort of like hidden thing. So, a few months ago, definitely before her stroke, she fell down and she got a concussion. And the attending nurse in the E.R. that she went to, she asked her this question, “What is the difference between a lake and a river?”

Helena de Groot: Ohh.

Steven Espada Dawson: Right. So, that question is actually a question that was literally asked to my mother, and that’s what built this poem. I built the poem off of that one line.

Helena de Groot: I love that she’s in there, too. And I love also like the way you play with images. You know, you already said that you like to end on an image. So here, you talk about your brother’s used syringe that you whittle “into an instrument only I can play,” which I thought was such a nice way of like looking at a syringe, you know, like it does kind of become, what is this thing you—

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, it’s like a little flute or something.

Helena de Groot: Trombone!

Steven Espada Dawson: Oh like a trombone. That’s perfect. Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. So I thought that was great. And then the other image that was just spectacular was, so you have the cop, you know, “flustered … plunged / a needle into a pale thigh. He hissed / awake like a soda can.” Really? How did you come up with that?

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, that simile changed a few times. I don’t remember what the other ones were, but when I, when I got that one, I knew that that one was right.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, that one really worked for me.

Helena de Groot: And it’s so irreverent, right? And it’s interesting because you’re like playing with reverence, right? Like, there’s the “Patron Saint of Smack,” which is, of course, both reverent and irreverent, you know?

Steven Espada Dawson: Sure.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. I’m just wondering, when you use these images that are so joyful and imaginative, does it transform the way you look at this moment? Like, does it heal you? Does it make you feel less angry towards your brother or, you know?

Steven Espada Dawson: Well, you know what? I think that … I am grateful to my brother for giving me poetry. You know? Because his leaving sort of sparked this compulsory imagining. Within an absence, I have to figure out what fills that space. And in this case, I think my book or my poetry is the instrument that I can play, right? I cannot relate to my brother for having an overdose. You know, I can’t put myself in that body. I can’t empathize with that. I can’t relate to my mother for having a terminal illness. But I am the witness of those things, and they have brushed against me and they have changed me, and they have become the instrument that only I can play. So, yeah, you know, I think that the images, they do help me process grief, but also, they help me imagine other futures and other possibilities and other pasts, you know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah. Hm. Yeah. But do you … does the thought of being a family of one frighten you?

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, (PAUSES) sometimes I feel like my family was like an accident. My family was never meant to happen. (LAUGHS LIGHTLY) You know, in fact, so I was actually two months premature. And the reason I was premature was because my mom was actually in a coma.

Helena de Groot: Oh.

Steven Espada Dawson: I didn’t see her for four months after I was born. Right? In fact, my extended family, my aunts, were already planning to like, adopt me and live a whole other life. And my brother and I, we have different fathers and both of those fathers are out of the picture, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And so it does feel like this weird, this weird family, this is not the family model. This is not the nuclear family. So in some ways, it feels like it was destined to come apart. But I do, I can’t help to feel sort of like cosmically alone in that predicament. It does feel very strange. I am also someone who like, doesn’t plan to have children. And so I feel like, I feel like our family lineage sort of like does kind of end here, you know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: So, yeah, I feel like I’ve always been preparing for a life without these people in it in some ways. It’s very strange.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know? Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. You know, I feel like often, growing up, sort of in the sense of like, maturing is often seen as this way where you learn to be your own parent, even when your parents are still alive, you know? That that’s kind of the idea, that you, you know, you go to bed at an appropriate time, you know what I mean? That you don’t drink too much, you, you do whatever, say sorry when you did something stupid, you know?

Steven Espada Dawson: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: And yeah, I’m wondering if you are trying to do more of that right now that you know that your mom won’t be there for very much longer. You know, that you’re trying to nourish a kind of relationship with yourself so that you may be your own parent.

Steven Espada Dawson: Hm. (PAUSES) That’s a good question. You know, I think—(LAUGHS)—this is like the weirdest thing, but, you know, I recently was awarded a Ruth Lilly Fellowship.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: And it sort of like, changed things for me, especially financially. You know, they gave me a chunk of money, and it’s the most money I’ve ever seen. And I think when that happened, when it just sort of like, showed up in my bank account, I was like, “Whoa, if I play my cards right, I could ... I could like, be an adult.” (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, I mean, we grew up really poor. You know, we never had a mortgage. My mom will die without ever seeing, you know, a mortgage. And, you know, she has like four nice things. And most of them are like, this is a $30 vase, you know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: So I think, I think I’m sort of like trying to imagine a future and like, coming to terms with it being like possible, actually. Also, I like, literally picked the weirdest thing to get into, you know? A lot of a lot of people don’t know this, but I was actually pre-med. And I had like, two internships with hospitals and stuff like that. Like, I was doing it.

Helena de Groot: Wow.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, I was like, defying the odds. And then I was like, “Hmm, how about poetry!”

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) That’s quite courageous actually.

Steven Espada Dawson: I didn’t even, I didn’t even think, you know, maybe I could do like a memoir or like, write a novel or something that might give me even more of a chance.

Helena de Groot: Right. Right.

Steven Espada Dawson: But, yeah, I think that the poems were a kind of like emotional investment for me and my survival. And I got very lucky recently, and I learned that they might be more than that.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: You know, more than an emotional investment. And that maybe other people are vibing with them, too. And I can actually, I can actually sort of like, follow this path a little bit, so.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yes. Do you want to read one last poem?

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, I would be happy to.

Helena de Groot: It’s the one called, “Elegy for the Four Chambers of My Mother’s Heart.”

Steven Espada Dawson: Yeah, let me pull that up. I love that poem.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, me too.

Steven Espada Dawson: That poem always guts me.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Steven Espada Dawson: Okay. (LAUGHS) Wait, hold on, let me find it. Okay.

(READS POEM)

Elegy for the Four Chambers of My Mother’s Heart

You’re just barely making it now

to the microwave. Your knees,

they tremble, mom, like a fresh fawn.

The beginning of life is too much

like the end of it. You pinch the seam

of a bag of popcorn, swaddle it

like a steaming newborn within the basket

of your walker. Did you know, you ask,

that Orville Redenbacher died sleeping

in a jacuzzi? That’s how I want to go.

ii.

As a child you made me hold my breath

driving past cemeteries, under bridges,

through tunnels. We gasped for air

like superstitious carp, tiptoed

around grave plots to honor the dead,

leaped over sidewalk cracks to honor

the living: our mothers, you. You ratchet

the bare ball of your foot into each seam

as if it were the cherry end of a cigarette.

As if you could design a future for yourself,

trade chemotherapy for a chiropractor.

On that last flight to see you, the pilot said

if you insist on smoking, please do it outside.

At the Olive Garden off Sable Blvd,

you joke: when you’re here, your family

is dying. We push yardsticks of bread down

our trombone throats, wonder how

to prolong a meal that must end.

iii.

In Colorado, you work nights

at a call center from your

kitchen table. You swore once

you sold camping gear

to Matthew McConaughey,

kept his credit card number

for a rainy day. The graveyard

shift should be illegal, I joke.

You throw your head

back in laughter, like a villain

might in a Disney movie—

Ursulaesque. You say dying

doesn’t keep the lights on,

the water heater drooling

in its sarcophagus closet.

But you’re off tonight.

You get to sleep in the dark,

like regular people, you say.

iv.

This is an elegy, and believe me it will end

within the small walls of your townhome.

And because I am selfish it ends with your

words and a memory of just you and I

standing above your kitchen sink, pouring

water into an ice cube tray. You tell me

to watch as the water fills up one corner,

then overflows into every empty square.

This, you say, this is how I love you.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: Steven Espada Dawson is one of five poets who’s been selected this year by the Poetry Foundation as a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow. He is still working on his first book, but you can read his poetry in Adroit Journal, Best New Poets 2020, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review Online, Waxwing and Poetry.

Steven Espada Dawson teaches community-based poetry workshops for the Austin Library Foundation and mentors young poets at Ellipsis Writing. He lives in Austin, Texas with his partner, Taylor, and their dog and two cats.

To find out more, check out the Poetry Foundation website. The music in this episode is by Todd Sickafoose and Eric van der Westen. I’m Helena de Groot and this was Poetry Off the Shelf. Thank you for listening.

(MUSIC FADES OUT)

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