by Mary Lou Buschi
Students will be able to experience synesthesia by tasting a bird call, touching the color blue with their index fingers, while witnessing language as shape form from the mouths of their classmates. They will accomplish this by memorializing the dead in groups of four. Group A will carve a Chinese jade grave suit with only 1 verbal prompt. Group B will cut a diamond out of the dead—keeping in mind the importance of facets and how light will enter. Group C will construct a rise of hummingbird wings by following written directions independently. Data will be collected on sheets of origami that will later be shaped into Bluejays. Finally, students will showcase their projects during a gallery walk where they will practice social skills that are considered "normal." Students will be able to define normal—be it behavior, conformance or expected patterns of probability distribution, by solving for "x" within the context of a problem; be it 33, banana, heart, or gun.
Mary Lou Buschi's chapbook, The Spell of Coming (or Going,) was selected as the winner of the Patasola Press chapbook contest. Her chapbook was also chosen for The NYC Siren Series and will be published in the summer of 2012. Her poems have appeared or are appearing in Willow Springs, CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art and Action, A Cappella Zoo, The Laurel Review, Indiana Review, The Collagist, Pank, Swink, and Cream City Review. Her poems are forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, Gargoyle, and RHINO. Mary Lou teaches adolescents with autism in the Bronx.