I remember the first time I read cummings- or perhaps not the first time, but the first time I remember, it was music class. We girls, a chorus of misfit divas and shy women about to become great. We were not a whole, not a community, but all of us crowded around in the two minutes before class to bend our heads and read the papers stashed, secreted away under our plastic chairs we sang the choir songs, of Iesu, the songs of Cabaret, but in my head I only sang in broken phrases waiting under plastic chairs a chair that wasn't mine, I'd only had a glimpse of words, haphazardly printed all on two sides of one somewhat crumpled page, no seeming structure, beautiful thought as thoughts come poetry. That's how I fell in love.