Tag: fiction

A Born-Again Darling: “Fingertips to Her Shoulders Like Wings in Her Sleep”

Brook Bhagat

You can’t get far on the path to becoming a writer without being told to “kill your darlings.” There is value in the well-worn advice. It points to an author’s attachment to a character, sentence, or image, making it difficult to cut, even if it doesn’t serve the poem or story. Stephen King popularized the adage in his book On Writing: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

I don’t exactly disagree with this advice, but “kill” is the wrong word. The delete button is too blunt an instrument for something we wrote that we love for a reason: it’s catching, beautiful, ironic, or powerful. Something tells us we created something valuable, and that something is usually right. Then, we waste valuable time himming and hawing and glancing sideways at the delete button, because writers aren’t killers by nature, even when Stephen King tells them they are.

The right word is “relocate.” I tell my writing students to gently move their darlings to a comfortable, well-lit folder on their desks or computers. The benefit of this distinction is twofold: first, it becomes easier to remove the darling from the poem it doesn’t belong in, knowing we’re not losing it forever. Second, when the day comes that finds the writer at the table with nothing, as it always does sooner or later, we can suddenly remember our ace in the hole: the darlings folder. In there, the discarded gems shine even brighter, without context or competition. The image that didn’t fit in the story or poem it first appeared in could be the seed of a new thing all its own.

This is the origin story of my prose poem, “Fingertips to Her Shoulders Like Wings in Her Sleep,” which was recently published in A Story in 100 Words. The beauty of this darling haunted me, but there was nothing else I liked in the poem it was living in. Eventually, I gave up and relocated the image to the Darlings folder.

No less than two years later, when inspiration was thin one day, I pasted it into its own document. I looked deeply into it. Perhaps the woman is dreaming of what she might become, I thought. What might be holding her back? The image of wings stretched naturally into metaphors involving birds and flight, and I had a prose poem I was proud of in front of me in twenty minutes. Well, two years and twenty minutes, to be exact, but who’s counting?

Read my darling poem in A Story in 100 Words: “Fingertips to Her Shoulders Like Wings in Her Sleep”

Field Notes from the Sabbatical: September 2026

Brook Bhagat

I’m proud to share that Pikes Peak State College has awarded me a faculty sabbatical for fall 2026. Right now, and for a few more precious months, I am a full-time author working on two new books from Unsolicited Press: Exodus with Red Delicious, a collection of poetry and short fiction to be released in December 2026, and I Drink from an Ear: Real Ghazals, a collection forthcoming in December 2027.

Brook Bhagat stands in a lake with her arms open wide
Brook Bhagat, Assistant Professor of English at PPSC and author at Unsolicited Press

Exodus with Red Delicious explores death, grief, loss, and transformation from multiple angles, fictional, personal, and lyrical. While its creation was difficult emotionally, the work of writing it was an animal I was familiar with. The ghazal, however, is an entirely different beast.

The ghazal is an Eastern poetic form with roots in 7th-century Arabia. Its unusual formal constraints have made it notoriously difficult to write in English: my collection will join less than five verified single-author collections in existence.

There is an element to writing anything that is absolutely mysterious. The route to the most powerful poems is not recorded on any map. As poet-songwriter Leonard Cohen put it, “If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.” Sometimes the lightning of inspiration strikes in a minute, or an hour; every writer knows it can also take much longer.

With ghazals, it has been a different journey than writing fiction or even other poetry. Ghazals need more time, more silence: they can circle for weeks in the sky before uttering a word. Having the luxury of emptiness has helped me make a space for them to land. Not emptiness exactly–there are still bills to pay and weeds to pull and children to pick up from play rehearsal. But not having essays to grade and textbooks to wrangle for a few months has created a small emptiness, a clear space where I am able to stand with my eyes closed for a while, waiting for ghazals.

Before the sabbatical began, I believed deeply in both of these books, in the transformative power of writing creatively, in the heart magic of teaching, and in the significance of the tradition of sabbatical leave in academia. Sabbatical leave provides teaching writers the most valuable gift in the world: time to write, which can mean time to wait for the mystery. A month in, I don’t know how I would have done it without it. Thank you, PPSC!

Logo of Unsolicited Press featuring a stylized rock and the tagline 'no bull shit' along with 'just books.'
Unsolicited Press

My gratitude also goes out to Unsolicited Press, especially my editor, Summer Stewart, who’s investing in me, too: believing in me so much she thinks even my future books are going to be good. Trusting me to catch falling ghazals. Reading my drafts carefully enough to know when I should have said John Lennon instead of the Beatles, and when I’m playing fast and loose with em-dashes–which is more often than I’d like to admit.

Finally, it’s worth noting that, on my sabbatical application, I requested to not be relieved of one special duty: facilitating the Nearby Universe, the PPSC employee creative writers’ group I founded almost nine years ago. This group continues to be an integral part of my writing community, and their feedback and support have undoubtedly made both my forthcoming books better. Thank you, Nearby Universe!

Poetry and Advocacy: Know Your Rights Workshop, Student/Faculty Reading, and Poet Laureate Bobby LeFebre at PPSC

Brook Bhagat

Creation and empathy are intertwined, two branches on the same tree. Poets and artists have always been at the forefront of movements for justice and social change. Now more than ever, creatives are speaking up and speaking out. As the organizer and MC of the Pikes Peak State College Spring Student/Faculty/Nearby Universe Reading and Visiting Writers’ Series Event, I am honored to amplify their voices.

The Creative Writing Program and Latino Alliance are thrilled to welcome Colorado Poet Laureate Emeritus Bobby LeFebre on Thursday, March 20, at the Downtown Campus’s Studio West, 22 North Sierra Madre St. in Colorado Springs, for a multicultural night of poetry and prose.

The evening begins with a Know Your Rights and Advocacy Workshop and reception courtesy of Student Experience and Equity from 5-6 pm, followed by the Student/Faculty/Nearby Universe Reading and open mic from 6-7 pm. Finally, from 7-8 pm, Bobby LeFebre takes the stage!

LeFebre is an award-winning writer, performer, and cultural worker fusing a non-traditional multi-hyphenated professional identity to imagine new realities, empower communities, advance arts and culture, and serve as an agent of provocation, transformation, equity, and social change. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Guardian, American Theater Magazine, and NPR. He has performed at hundreds of cultural events, social actions, detention centers, conferences, and colleges and universities across the United States and abroad.LeFebre co-founded the award-winning nonprofit organization Café Cultura and was named Colorado’s 8th Poet Laureate, making him the youngest and first person of color to be appointed to the prestigious position in the program’s 100-year history.

Multilingual poets and writers welcome! Students and faculty can email Brook.Bhagat@PikesPeak.edu to get on the schedule to read their work (1-3 min. each). PPSC welcomes all members of the community–please contact the English Department for accommodations.

Reading and Q & A for Unsolicited Press’s Literary Nights Series with Raki Kopernik and Rosalia Scalia

Brook Bhagat

I was honored to read and talk with two fantastic authors last night on Literary Nights, a reading series from Unsolicited Press hosted by Rosalia Scalia, author of Under the Radar. Raki Kopernik read from No One’s Leaving, her piercingly tender and true new novel just released yesterday. I read “Once Upon a Time I Died” from Only Flying as well as previously unreleased work from both of my collections forthcoming from Unsolicited Press: Exodus with Red Delicious, due in 2026, and I Drink From an Ear: Real Ghazals, to be released in 2027. What an awesome night! Thank you, Rosalia, Raki, and Unsolicited Press!