A COLLECTION OF CLASS ESSAYS BY OLLI MEMBERS FROM: Micro-Memoir & Prose Poetry - OLLI at ASU CLASS, FALL 2026
TAUGHT BY: Dr. Rosemarie Dombrowski
This two session class explored the roots and techniques of two closely related, deeply expressive genres: micro-memoir (1) and prose poetry (2). In the first session, Dr. Dombrowski read and discussed representative works in each genre. In the second session, members shared their own original writing, in one or both genres.
Here we present the works of those participants who elected to have their writing published on the blog. We hope you enjoy the introduction to your fellow students and the journey through their lives.
Gate
Micro-Memoir
By: Laurie Haynes
The bolt began to jam after the rain, which warped the wood of the old gate. I spent time
figuring out whether to pull or push the lock so the bolt released. Confusing, but spatial
problems always confuse me. I needed a mnemonic. Push in, pull out. But do I push to go in, or
when I’m already in? Outside push, inside pull. Better, based on where I’m standing. I approach
the gate. I’m outside, so I push. Code, then push. I press 9, 1, 5, 4. Red light, angry beep. Huh. I
start again: 9… then? I know this! What’s wrong with me? I start again: 9145. Red light, beep. A
tiny kernel of bewilderment, panic, and fear rises from my belly. I lean against the wall. I can
figure this out, I think, as the kernel rises, as I consider being unable to open the gate, having to
climb over the wall or get help somehow, without my phone, in my wet swimsuit and towel. I
suppress the kernel. Okay. I based this code on my son’s birthday, May 26, so 0526, but I
changed it, dropped each number by one. So the code is…9…4…1…5? Right? I’m terrible with
numbers. This takes all my concentration. I press the buttons 9415. I remember to push the
lock. Green light. Bolt releases. Relief. I walk through the gate and remember to pull the lock so
the bolt doesn’t jam. But I am unsettled. What gate did I just pass through?
Two Sisters
Micro Memoir
Mike Temkin
The nursing home promised prolonged expectations. The hospital assured appropriate guidance along with calculated compassion. Anna, always enjoying being very dependent on others, even when escaping persecution from eastern Europe and later bringing up a family in a comfortable neighborhood of Chicago, finally at the age of 72 was waited-upon and attended-to day and night, as she had always anticipated upon the death of her husband, in the state-subsidized Bentley Home for the Elderly which she perceived with her compromised vision and cognitive illusions as a lap of luxury. Alice, her older sister, always thrived on being independent, not ever wanting to rely on others, except for the man she met on the boat crossing the Atlantic. She didn’t even want to inconvenience her own children during her years as a widow. An accident soon after her 84th birthday; she fell down a flight of stairs carrying her laundry to the basement from her one-bedroom apartment. Taken to the Lake Shore Hospital bruised and humiliated, she told everyone she did not want to live like this. Should we have been surprised? Yes, we were completely stunned when she passed away naturally under her own submission three days later. Anna never asked about Alice; for the rest of her years she graciously resided in her own submission of thoughtlessness and disregard for others. No tears of affection, only a veil of stubborn animosity and suppressed regrets.
Jingle Juice
Micro Memoir
By: Aimee Shramko
First holiday party as a widow. I don’t want to go. “Everyone wants to see you, we’ll plan around your availability”, so I go.
A deafening din, pumping music mixed with voices fighting to be heard. A blur of faces, a long table filled with questionable food in various states of consumption. I find a spot between the wilted salad and the half-eaten tamales to plant my homemade hummus and pita bread. The odor of chocolate brownie contrasts sharply with the parmesan topped lasagna and I turn away nauseated.
Next door neighbor, power player with the Porsche, tilts his chin in a “hey there”. His revving engine slices through my slumber most Sunday mornings. A tumble of nonsense streams out of the former cheerleader intent on describing her latest remodel in excruciating detail. Drunken husbands crowd around the punch bowl of “Jingle Juice”, its scarlet cranberries bobbing on the surface. No one will divulge what it really contains. The husbands hang all over me hugging me under the guise of comforting a widow. One presses a cup filled with the noxious stuff in my hand.
Someone brought a s’mores kit. Predictably, the marshmallows catch fire setting off the smoke alarm. Whoops and hollers as the music gets turned up a few notches. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” the Twisted Sister version.
Well acquainted by now with the sickening feeling of being completely alone in a crowd, my eyes dart around the room. Observing no eyes on me, I take the opportunity to flee, running home to seek comfort from the ghosts of Christmases past.
Smooth Shiny Things
Prose Poem
By: Laurie Haynes
The beads press my hand against the bed. I slept with them in my palm, between my fingers.
This is how I started, intending to wax poetic about beads. What they’re made of: glass, seeds,
bones, and stones, all the stones. Rose quartz, tiger eye, amethyst, lapis, fluorite, moss agate,
coral, jasper, opal, malachite, obsidian, carnelian, citrine. How much I love them: stringing
them, how they feel on my fingers when I dip my hand in a bowl full of them. Their weight,
temperature, texture, sound, color, opacity.
But the cat…she has come to insist on my attention. She climbs onto my lap, nevermind my
notebook and pen. She thrusts her moist nose to mine, her meat-breath stinking in my nostrils,
her beady eyes boring into mine, imploring me to attend only to her. I abandon my
meanderings of malas and marbles and bowls full of semiprecious stones.
The cat is elderly. She’s been with me since her kittenhood, but she began climbing into my lap
only last year. She never wanted affection before, but now she imperious old lady, demands it.
She loves me. I love her. I love her eyes penetrating my soul, commanding my full attention.
The beads of her eyes – moss agate, tiger eye, obsidian – shine with the combination of
dominance, dependence, and devotion only a cat can muster. This time is precious. Her fur is
fluffy and soft. I let my fingers massage her delicate bones.
Postcard Perfect
Prose Poem
By: Mike Temkin
A weekend get-away in Wisconsin. A small little town with less than 500 residents throughout the year, but during the summer - resorts, hotels, motels, motor courts, boarding houses - all filled with thousands of families looking for a respite from the constantly increasing claustrophobic sprawl of their large hometowns and suffocating daily routines. After a relatively short drive on the highway, a two-lane road would lead to large groves of pine trees, with their luxurious evergreen scent, along with sugar maples, aspens and even an occasional weeping willow gracefully providing a comforting landscape conducive for leaving behind the daily what’s-it-all-about and got-to-be-done. In the middle of the town, created by glaciers during the ice age was a stream-fed lake, wide enough to fill the entire horizon from the sandy shore, but narrow across from one beach to another to swim from shore to shore in about a half-an-hour; a race the stronger, more athletic visitors would always want to achieve to start their stay. Waterskiing, horseback riding, and even more than one challenging golf course could be found, and for the less agile, there were curving, hilly go-kart tracks, noisy and bright pinball arcades, and empty hotel ballrooms with bare banquet tables for card games. For everybody, every meal was a picnic with plenty of bratwurst sausages, sweetcorn soup, potato pancakes and old-country recipes for cherry chocolate cake, fresh dairy farm cheese cake, taffy apples and marble slab fudge. After thoroughly enjoying the sunny, comfortably warm midwestern day, at night a cool, moist breeze would not only be refreshing but surprisingly invigorating. Music could be heard throughout the town; one venue for country music and line dancing, another for boisterous rock anthems, and even one where crowds could sing-along with new broadway show tunes and old tin pan alley hits. The moon over the lake would spotlight the couples walking on the beach, the willows would caress the lovers resting on the lawns with a canopy of privacy, and the pine trees would sprinkle a sweet aroma into the misty air that to this day, years later, brings back indelible memories of tranquility, and what seemed at the time an incredible adventure, and now in retrospect is as postcard perfect as one could wish to always remember.
Plot Twist
Prose Poetry
By: Aimee Shramko
The golden honeyed tones of John Coltrane’s saxophone are an instant salve calming my frenzied thoughts. My late husband’s playlist simply named “Nighttime” soothes. I pull the covers up over my head and snuggle down until only the top of my head peaks out. The bed, “surrounded by an invisible moat of grief” (1), is giant-sized without him. “Tell me I’m going to be OK. Lie if you have to, just get me safely to shore by the morning.” I breathe deeply like I was taught, but on the third rib stretching intake, sobs escape cutting through the dark room, scaring the cat. I drift off only to wake at 3am drenched in sweat. The satin eye shade feels like a damp marshmallow.
616 days have passed since my late husband’s death. I sit cross-legged on the carpet in Denver. Recently divorced, he doesn’t own a couch. This man I’ve known since we were eight sits slightly hunched over on the piano bench. He has a mustache and beard now. Made grey by loneliness? Playing piano is his love language and his savior. The strong muscles in his right leg tense and release as he conducts the pedals. The notes glide into each other, stars meant to orbit for eternity. I see the boy riding his bike, sitting on a school yard bench, laughing with the nerds, devoid of self-consciousness. I see the events of his life, tragedy, missed opportunities, crushing blows. He has risen above, steadied himself after each blow. Standing each time, starting again, choosing to believe, as I have. We are one, he and I. Tears flow down my cheeks as he plays.
- Borrowed phrase from a beautiful piece written by another OLLI member in my Flash Memoir Writing Special Interest Group. Once I read her story, I couldn’t image using any other phrase
ABOUT THE WRITERS:
Laurie Haynes is a retired regulatory medical writer who lives in Scottsdale.
Mike Temkin: Upon retiring from a career in advertising/marketing in 2022, Mike Temkin has attended and thoroughly enjoyed a variety of courses at OLLI/ASU including a number of courses related to Poetry by Rosemarie Dombrowski. Mike also compiles a newsletter available on Linkedin, Facebook, Substack and Medium entitled "Thoughts And Observations" which each month provides an overview of topics examined by leaders from all walks, vocations, and disciplines of life. Recent subjects have included: Meditation/Mindfulness, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Mental Health, Homelessness, and Mentoring
Aimee Shramko is a former advertising and marketing Account Director who spent most of her career at advertising agencies in Los Angeles. She’s been an OLLI fan since 2020 and as a volunteer, manages the OLLI at ASU Community Blog and facilitates the Flash Memoir Writing Special Interest Group with member Jerry Grula.
REFERENCES:
- Micro-Memoir - A short (250 words or fewer) piece of nonfiction writing that captures a meaningful personal experience, memory, or moment from a writer’s life. It often focuses on a single event, relationship, realization, or turning point and conveys why that moment matters.
- Prose Poetry - A form of writing that combines the expressive, imaginative qualities of poetry with the structure of prose. Rather than being arranged in lines or stanzas, it is written in sentences and paragraphs, yet it uses poetic language, imagery, rhythm metaphor, and emotional intensity to create an evocative experience for the reader.
ABOUT OUR INSTRUCTOR:
Dr. Rosemarie Dombrowski (RD) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, AZ, the founding editor of rinky dink press, and the founding director of Revisionary Arts, a nonprofit that facilitates self-care and healing through poetry. She is the recipient of an Arts Hero Award, a Great 48 award, a Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, an Arizona Humanities Speaker of the Year award, and an Arizona Capital Times Leader of the Year award.
RD has published three collections of poetry: The Book of Emergencies (Five Oaks Press, 2014), The Philosophy of Unclean Things (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and The Cleavage Planes of Southwest Minerals [A Love Story], winner of the 2017 Split Rock Review chapbook competition. She was named a finalist for both the Whitman Bicentennial Award (2019) and the Joy Harjo Poetry Contest (2023), and her work has been featured on the TEDx stage, NPR, and in numerous publications.
RD is a Teaching Professor at Arizona State University specializing in medical poetry, the poetry of witness, and DIY print culture. She is the founding faculty editor of ISSUED: stories of service, the creator of Verses for Vets, and the faculty editor of Grey Matter, the medical poetry journal at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.
She lives in Phoenix with her son (B) and her three cats (PB&J).
WE WELCOME YOUR FEEDBACK!
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