He won’t describe the warmth of the tongue, or the smell of metal mixed with pepperoni. What he doesn’t speak of is the time Shorty’s dog attacked him when he tried to snatch a pizza crust out from the dog’s mouth. I ask my father what he’s scared of, and he says he doesn’t like dogs. When we speak of story, we are prone to speaking of the grand and the general far more than of the particular or the specific. Where were you when you first saw your mother cry? Tell me about a moment of being confused by something in a new place. What body did you first fantasize about occupying? How old were you? Tell me a memory you’re afraid of forgetting. And even to learn what of those stories can be found preserved in me.

A way to ask one to say their name with the truth it demands - the stories it contains. To hear her name at all, I soon found more was required of me.

This piece was integral to, but ultimately not part of, the introduction to This Here Flesh.Īlice Walker told me, “How simple a thing it seems that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers’ names.” So imagine my disappointment to find my gramma tells me, stiff and plainly, “Phyllis.” This is our first installment in The Cutting Room, a series sharing the creative work that helped shape a book but didn’t make it in the final draft. In this piece, Riley reflects on the questions she crafted to welcome those deep stories into a world where story itself has become a mere tool. The life of this book begins long before these words, in Riley’s commitment to (re)learning how to listen - to the trees, to the voices around us, to the stories her family carries. This is Cole Arthur Riley’s favorite sound, and the opening of her first book, This Here Flesh. The branches stretch out their tongues and whisper shhhhh.” “Have you ever stood in the presence of a tree and listened to the wind pass through its leaves? The roots and body stand defiant and unmoved.

This here flesh cole arthur riley