Pulse/Second Birth: A Double Bind in Autoethnographic Poetic Response to Tragedy

Abstract

Pulse/Second Birth is a poetic response to the Pulse gay club shooting of June, 2016. Following the work modeled by Sandra Faulkner in Poetry as Method (2009), this poem leans into the ways that we may use autoethnographic writing as therapy or sense-making during times of community trauma. Attending to relevant conversations in autoethnography around therapy and aesthetic writing through praxis, the poem reaches towards the hope of queer survival on the horizon.