I am a host To billions of tiny creatures Microorganisms living On and in my body features I am their home The landscape on which they persist My body is their mother Earth Do they even know I exist? Am I their God? Do they pray to me to live through antibiotic rounds I take … Continue reading
Reading my receipts reveals
A woman who works, who
Goes to gas stations and grocery stores getting
Tacos, tea, and tic tacs
The tanks will run down the 171, And folks on the roadside will cheer. They’ll come up from the base down near Killeen. Past others who look on with fear. The men will cry “Make America Great!” As they toss neighbors to the ground. Police in riot gear will pace the streets To make … Continue reading
So I read this article from 2013 What’s Killing Poor White Women? For most Americans, life expectancy continues to rise—but not for uneducated white women. They have lost five years, and no one knows why. By Monica Potts http://prospect.org/article/whats-killing-poor-white-women and I really liked the way that it was written. The author took a demographic trend … Continue reading
My father was a voracious consumer of news. When I was a child, I woke to news on the radio every morning. We also watched news on the television every evening before I went to bed. I remember watching the Iran hostage crisis, countless in-depth war zone reports, and Watergate. I hated Watergate. It was … Continue reading
A ray of sun. Light strikes the wall. Flowers bloom and glow. Worms wriggle in the rain. Boughs bend nesting an egg. Plants crisscrossed in an array beneath the sunlight where a former wallflower blooms beneath the glowworms smiling at rainbows as she chops eggplants to feed her young son. To feed her son … Continue reading
Just before the election, I was chatting with one of my students ( a white woman) about her life. She said that although she already has a bachelors degree in Biology and a two year nursing degree, the hospital where she works has now made a rule that all nurses must have a four year … Continue reading
Mad is the poet in the wilderness, Crying at the moon for its brightness. Full of the pink of the cherry blossoms, falling like snow. Lost is the sculptor in creation, Tearing at the clay like a fireman. Digging to release the young maiden, hidden below. Quiet, the songwriter listens, Dumbstruck by the … Continue reading
When my mother died, it was like a sudden internet outage. Like being caught in a tunnel. Suddenly there were no updates on the saga of my first cousin’s new job, no updates on my brother’s travel itinerary. It was as if the service was gone and the towers had been knocked down. Continue reading
Writing Poetry, Is distilling language down, to the very core.
