Rosebud Ben-Oni on The Social Distance Reading Series

How do you begin a new piece of writing? What conditions help your writing process?

It’s changed throughout the years. Often, an idea for a single poem just catches in my head, wiggles its way in and won’t stop clanging pots, off-key kazoo, pushing a joey out of its pouch. I’m the joey. I keep some of the wrong (not wrong, but off-color, a bit brittle sharp) notes. With the series I’m working on now, The Atomic Sonnets, that came out of a deep love for chemistry that began in my youth, when I’d write down the names, atomic number and properties of each element on flashcards, only then to add stories about them in the blank space left. Those stories never left me, so with the series, I just give them more wings and harpoon, more flounce, more glister. (I’ve said this in other interviews, but Krypton is my favorite element. It’s just so wild.)

What was an early experience that taught you language has power?

Well, as a Jew, poetry itself has been my home. I loved Torah and studying at my father’s makeshift lectern at home. The rocking back and forth, and getting lost in the words, their numerical values which revealed more secrets and even more questions. But as a child I also had a lot of questions about Torah, and rarely were they answered in a way that satisfied me. So I began to rewrite those stories. For instance, I had a lot of empathy for Cain that made me, um, very unpopular in Hebrew school. I still have that empathy. There’s a poem in turn around, BRXGHT XYXS that reimagines myself as Cain, and ties in the stories of the U.S.-Mexican border where my mother’s family hails from, where I spent my childhood. It’s one way for me to see that place as home, through poetry, through someone like Cain. 

What poets or writers do you continually go back to?

How much time do you have? I mean… here’s an abridged version: it’s been Lorna Dee Cervantes, Pat Mora, Norma Cantu, Yaakov Shabtai, Sholem Aleichem, Issac Bashevis Singer, Edmond Jabes, Paul Celan, Guillaume Apollinaire, Haruki Murakami. Contemporary poets whose work really gets me in the heart are Dorothy K Chan, Jasminne Mendez, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Carolina Ebeid, Lupe Mendez, Jihyun Yun, Ruben Quesada, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Roberto Carlos Garcia, Lynn Melnick, Bakar Wilson, Chelsea Dingman, Jason Koo— Jason is hilarious and his loves poems are wonderful. I know I’m running out of space here, but one more: writer Gabby Bellot. Read Gabby Bellot. 

What is your favorite childhood or adolescent book?

That’s a hard one. I really loved the stories of Issac Bashevis Singer, which I read with my Aba. And the Hebrew poet Rahel.

What are your thoughts/experiences on social distancing?

It’s very hard. I have an autoimmune condition that makes it best for me to stay put as much as possible, but I also have a very understanding person in my life, my B, who goes out and takes pictures of the all flowering trees blooming so I can see Spring here in Queens. Yesterday, after two week of my not leaving the apartment at all, we went outside together; I wrote about that experience here. I was very defiant and took off my protective glove by the end of the walk. I wanted to feel his hand in mine, as it’s early Spring. I needed to feel his skin on mind in early Spring. (And yes, we washed our hands thoroughly when we came in.) 

Where can we find you? Link to your blog or website:

I’m at 7trainlove.org – named after the 7 Train, because I love the 7 Train, and might be the only New Yorker to consistently love the train even when the local suddenly turns express, without announcement, and passes all stops, until you’re at Last Stop, Flushing. So if you take my train, give yourself time to get to where you are going, but enjoy the views from the elevated, outside tracks where you can see quite a bit of Queens and Manhattan too. I hope to ride the subway again very soon, and groan along with everyone else when it, once again, stops between stations, without, again announcement or any seemingly real reason other than— well, it’s the 7.