Parking Lot Poets & Tongue-Fisting Guayaba Beauty Salons

tatiana de la tierra

We were in a parking lot in Eagle Rock in a buzzed state. We were in my car by then; we switched cars after I accidentally spilled the container of pho on the floor. I stumbled out of the car and giggled while she cursed me and plucked the floor mat out onto the pavement, noodles and broth and all. As she walked away looking for a trashcan to throw the wet styrofoam mess in, I quickly assessed my intense desire to pee, pulled down my pants and squatted. My piss hit the edge of my red Mexican shawl, rolled over bean sprouts and Vietnamese noodles, and pooled at edge of a tire.

“Let’s roll,” I said casually. We got in my car and I drove across the lot, into another metered parking space. From here, we had a view of a dumpster and, just ahead, Colorado Boulevard. Willy Chirino’s “Mister Don’t Touch the Banana” blasted us. “... La banana es de Shangó, kabiosile Shangó ooooooohhh....” I get pumped up like that, salsa with words that set my imagination loose.

“Why don’t we write,” she yelled over the music.

“OK. Here’s the prompt: ‘It starts in a parking lot’.” We wrote. Turned the music down. She offered the next prompt: “sea foam green”. We wrote again, then shared our parking lot words and mused about our creative writing being-ness.

I think she said it first, who knows. But we came to the sober conclusion that we needed to be in a writing group. Again. We had drifted in and out of groups for years, and it was time. We pitched ideas about what we wanted--it should be small, focused, a space for workshopping and brewing metaphors. We came up with the names of a few writers we wanted to invite into our little group. Right then, I made a few phone calls, sent a few texts. Before the night was done, we had done it, created our new writing group, The Parking Lot Poets.

As I wait for our group’s first meeting, exactly a week from now, I’m thinking about groups I’ve been a part of in the past. While writing is a solitary act, I covet time spent with other writers, digging into our work, dishing on ourselves, doubting the process and embracing it all at once. I love to share with other writers. I am in awe of writing itself, of words pulsating in nerve endings, making their way through my body. As a reader, I linger on lines and scrutinize structure. As a writer, I marvel at the mystery of words that emerge from my fingertips. Sharing this magic with other writers--that’s ultra special.

My first writing group happened right after I got my MFA at University of Texas at El Paso. I graduated and headed east, to Buffalo, New York, where I would quickly become a librarian. There, I hooked up with a group of Latino graduate students; several of us, all writers, ended up at a bar one night, brainstorming ideas for some sort of group. The result was El Salón de Belleza, The Beauty Salon.

It was wicked fun. We met weekly in each other’s homes and offered our words as libations to each other. We did creative writing exercises or assigned ourselves poetic homework due the following week. (Haiku recipe: find bellybutton/ pour rum, bite lime, rub ice cube/ lick drink suck repeat.) Our salon got big, perhaps too big, and eventually petered out.

I moved to Long Beach in 2007 and clicked with a special group of women. We wanted to share writing and we became The Tongue Fisters. Us fisters, we had full course meals along with our poems. We took turns facilitating, cooking, critiquing, and coming up with writing exercises. Our friendships deepened in the process; they also got a little complicated. Food took over our group; I remember the day I spent hours cooking fresh spinach, stir frying onions and buttering phyllo dough for the spanakopita I baked for us. It was delicious, yet I was exhausted. At some point, we morphed into a dinner group. At another point, we ceased to exist.

Later on, a writer I respect conspired with me to form a workshop group. We carefully selected the writers we’d invite, generated a zillion emails back and forth between everyone, and scheduled our first meeting. She was adamant that we should share meals, and I, along with a few others, resisted that notion. Soon after we formed, and before we ever got going, she pulled out of the group, and the rest of us disintegrated as well. Months later, I discovered that she had started another writing group, without inviting me. That group lasted for a bit and then dissolved.

An email arrived from outer space one day and hit my inbox with an invitation to join a new writing salon. I’d met the writer just once before and decided that whatever she had in mind, I’d be there. Our first meeting took place right after I’d had major surgery, and I was in a fog of body and mind. Yet I was so happy to be there, in her home with hardwood floors, zany objects, rabbits and a collection of plates decking out the walls. We were all Latinas, and we became Las Guayabas. Us fruits, we met monthly and shared writings and resources. We did a few readings together and became friends. Over time, our meetings became sporadic. We haven’t really ended, I suppose, but we’re not really being Guayabas either.

The Parking Lot Poets is a continuation of that drive to exist as writers within some sort of community. Will we eat together or drink iced coffees or beer? Or will we just get down and dirty into our pages of prose and poetry? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just can’t wait for us to get this group going. There’s a Guayaba and a Tongue Fister in the lot, along with a kick-ass poet I’ve never been in a group with. I know that groups come and go, like life, like a favorite fruit, like a song beating in my head. But it’s just so good for that moment.

it starts in a parking lot
you piss on concrete
your piss runs down asphalt
under the tire your piss
warm as you
jab your jeans back up.
who will know that piss but
you?