Poetry Thursday

Citizenship
~Javier Zamora

it was clear they were hungry
with their carts empty the clothes inside their empty hands

they were hungry because their hands
were empty their hands in trashcans

the trashcans on the street
the asphalt street on the red dirt the dirt taxpayers pay for

up to that invisible line visible thick white paint
visible booths visible with the fence starting from the booths

booth road booth road booth road office building then the fence
fence fence fence

it started from a corner with an iron pole
always an iron pole at the beginning

those men those women could walk between booths
say hi to white or brown officers no problem

the problem I think were carts belts jackets
we didn’t have any

or maybe not the problem
our skin sunburned all of us spoke Spanish

we didn’t know how they had ended up that way
on that side

we didn’t know how we had ended up here
we didn’t know but we understood why they walk

the opposite direction to buy food on this side
this side we all know is hunger

rainy days and Mondays

There are days when everything makes me want to cry.

I wonder if it is left over grief that got pushed down over the past five years. When it finds a fissure, it just pops out before I can even contemplate its origin. Like a puff of gas from a geyser, not a big eruption, just a sigh, it releases with just the tickle of a tear.

I have learned to stop and allow. I sometimes vaguely wonder where the deep emotions were hidden. But then I remind myself that it is perfectly acceptable to feel whatever I am feeling. I try not to resist even if tears need to flow.

Sadness is far better than searing red hot anger in the long run.

snippets

Scene 1:

Three cop cars, one is a K9 unit, on a lovely summer afternoon in downtown Princeton. I was thankful when I looked over and it was four young white women talking with police. None of them were smiling, the police were doing most of the talking.

I interviewed several people who were watching the scene. No one had noticed how or when the encounter began. We all watched as more and more police seemed to arrive. Turns out there were already four cars there when I noticed the situation. One was all black with the writing in black as though it were incognito.

From another angle, you could see a white car with Pennsylvania plates left in a space that wasn't a parking space. I think the car had been there all along, since I had arrived for happy hour. I wondered at it when we walked by because it wasn't a parking space, the car was pulled in diagonally and it was blocking egress from the parking lot. Entitled people, I thought, even though there were plenty of spaces available, someone had left this car essentially in the middle of the parking lot. I imagined there was someone inside of the car the whole time.

I watched for a while, went in to the library, came back out and the cops were still talking to the women (girls? hard to tell).

I don't know what was more interesting, watching the scene unfold or interviewing the spectators to try to figure out what had happened.

Scene 2:

Training. I lost a week and a half of training first because of the humidity (and my fear of the humidity) and then because I was so swamped at work and exhausted. 

The first day back running I felt like the wild horse who has been penned up for the first time. My body was so happy to be running.

Day three back to training, not so much. I have decided to run a bit each day for the next few days to see if I can regain the stamina I had been building. Ugh.

Poetry Thursday

Facing US
 ~Amanda Johnston
            after Yusef Komunyakaa

My black face fades,
hiding inside black smoke.
I knew they'd use it,
dammit: tear gas.
I'm grown. I'm fresh.
Their clouded assumption eyes me
like a runaway, guilty as night,
chasing morning. I run
this way—the street lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the back of a police van
again, depending on my attitude
to be the difference.
I run down the signs
half-expecting to find
my name protesting in ink.
I touch the name Freddie Gray;
I see the beat cop's worn eyes.
Names stretch across the people’s banner
but when they walk away
the names fall from our lips.
Paparazzi flash. Call it riot.
The ground. A body on the ground.
A white cop’s image hovers
over us, then his blank gaze
looks through mine. I’m a broken window.
He’s raised his right arm
a gun in his hand. In the black smoke
a drone tracking targets:
No, a crow gasping for air.

views from the run

As I did a turn around the field next to the lake, I spooked a great blue heron. I hadn't noticed the bird in the brush near the lake. But it noticed me and flew off across the lake. I watched the huge bird and its long wings glide along the surface of the lake, choosing its next landing spot.

It was a welcome pause to my long run on a humid but overcast morning.

The spot it chose, finally, was directly across from where it had been, in a little area that appeared to be an inlet to a creek or just an area protected by some logs and trees. As it landed, another great blue heron swooped over. It had been hidden alongside that lake shore. Obviously, this spot was already taken.

The second heron vocalized, rushed the first one, furiously flapping its wings while in mid air. I have never seen more than one great blue heron in the same spot, perhaps this is the reason.

The interloper did not really fight back, it just picked up and swooped away gracefully.

Afterwards, the one that had claimed the spot, swam around its area proudly.

And I had to get back to my run.

Not Really Poetry Thursday, I may have repaid my debt...

[A Crumb in the Cobblestone—Tell Me This Landscape Darkened Without You]
 ~Jerika Marchan
Say despite all the churches with their unlocked doors
and outstretched strangers’ palmskin, I hungered still

—squandered when, fell through like a crumb, I sat waiting
for discovery or disintegration—something marvelous
teething at the surface—a crumb, devotional, religious ecstatic
closer to being worthy

Desire me ruthless and naked but still in my Sunday dress
you opened the window—we humid and slept open
into dreaming, yes, conduit. Conduit or nothing. Conduit
or bust. Nothing or busted. Hug the breakwater’s edge

more the grit, my fingers—whorl, the inches of all
concrete make miles of this low, walled city. 

Pretend expansive with me like ocean.

River.   Lake.   Bodies. 

60

Yesterday was my parents' 60th wedding anniversary.

If you know my parents, or their story, this should not surprise you. My parents have been in each other's lives at least since they were 7 and 8 years old. It shouldn't surprise me.

It doesn't. But it startled me.

When I started to try to wrap my head around 60 as I scrambled to find them a gift I could put into an envelope, I realized I had never stopped to think about it.

My parents renewed their vows in the church for their 25th wedding anniversary... and my sister got married that year as well. That was the first recognition I ever made of their anniversary.

I never thought about how young my mom was when she got married. Or, maybe I didn't think it was young at the time... I was 14, and if at 22, my sister seemed old, my mother at 49 was ancient.  It didn't occur to me to do the math until yesterday.

My parents were 24 and 25 when they got hitched. My aunt was 15. And probably every one I knew growing up had gotten married *young* or at an age that seemed appropriate to them. And longevity in marriage was also not an issue. I only knew one person who had gotten divorced when I was growing up.

I should have put it together then ... I was 25 when I got married, just one year older than my mother was at her wedding. And three years older than my sister was at her wedding.

It never mattered to me at all except when I got divorced because I knew instinctively that one outcome of the divorce was that I would never be married to someone as long as my parents would be married (at the time, I think they were well over the 40 year mark).

It is a remarkable accomplishment to have weathered 60 years of storms. My parents bicker and that is super irritating. I keep wanting to scream at them to stop because they have no idea the blessing that is their marriage.

Happy 60th to my mom and pops... however irritating they can be, they are an inspiration and a blessing.

Poetry Thursday

Field Notes on Beginning
~Tyree Daye
1.
I wear my grandmother’s bones like a housedress through the city.
Some nights the block tells me all its problems.
I’ll meet you at the top of the biggest rock in Rolesville
or on train headed to a reading in Queens, just tell me where. I promise
to gather your bones only for good.
I was not swallowed by the darkness between two buildings.
I don’t want to die in the south like so many of mine. I want to be
      carried back.

2.
I dreamed we were digging in a field in Rolesville
looking for an earth we knew the name of.
You stepped into the hole, looked behind you and gestured me in.
I saw every lover who held you while your children slept
in rooms of small heaters, you wrap the blankets so tight,
afraid of any cold that might get in.

3.
I said my goodbyes, my dead will not come. I will not see a cardinal in
      the city
so I drew one on my chest. A coop inside a coop inside of me.
Leaving is necessary some say. There is a whole ocean between you and
      a home
you can’t fix your tongue to speak. Others do not want me
no further than a length of a small yard, they ask where are you going
      Tyree?
Your mama here, you’ve got stars in your eyes. A ship in your
      movement. 

Ants

Have I already told you this?

I whisper at ants. Okay, I whisper at all beings, sometimes I don't even bother to whisper, just talk like no one is around but me and the ant or the bird or the squirrel or the bright neon green bug that just landed on my arm.

Ants.

I don't want to hate them. I love them in an ant farm.

So much to love about ants. They are industrious and determined and strong-willed, but quiet and seemingly unimposing. Except when they keep trudging up your arm, tickling you when you are trying to get your work done.

I tell them, in a whisper, go back to your home and tell them all that the giant will smash them mercilessly.

It's true. I will.

Don't piss off the giant, she will crush you.

The ants persist, however. Smashed ant smell might be more compelling even than sweet sugar smell.

So, I build them a corner where they are allowed to be. I give them cookies and salty things, too... and I whisper... over here, you can be here, I will share.

But not on my desk.

Not on my desk.

Not Really Poetry Thursday, but I owe you two or three

It Was Summer Now and the Colored People Came Out Into the Sunshine
 ~Morgan Parker

They descend from the boat two by two. The gap in Angela Davis’s teeth speaks to the gap in James Baldwin’s teeth. The gap in James Baldwin’s teeth speaks to the gap in Malcolm X’s Teeth. The gap in Malcolm X’s teeth speaks to the gap in Malcolm X’s teeth. The gap in Condoleezza Rice’s teeth doesn’t speak. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard kisses the Band Aid on Nelly’s cheek. Frederick Douglass’s side part kisses Nikki Giovanni’s Thug Life tattoo. The choir is led by Whoopi Goldberg’s eyebrows. The choir is led by Will Smith’s flat top. The choir loses its way. The choir never returns home. The choir sings funeral instead of wedding, sings funeral instead of allegedly, sings funeral instead of help, sings Black instead of grace, sings Black as knucklebone, mercy, junebug, sea air. It is time for war.

Recommendations

I have been thinking about writing a recommendation for a book I just loved ... and now I have another two things to recommend.

It's been a long time since I felt the strength to do a NRU... honestly, I am still not there. But I read this piece and fell in love. *wink*

We all need a little more inspiration to 1) be ourselves and 2) open to possibilities despite setbacks.

***please note it has been so long since I started this post that I honestly cannot remember the other thing besides the book I was going to recommend.***

The book ... a while back, because I have been moving the publish date on this post for MONTHS, I listened to Hunger by Roxane Gay. I have been listening to books more than reading, but I still call it reading. I hope that is okay.

So, Roxane Gay and her memoir Hunger - wow, WOW, I listened to the author read her memoir. I heard the life in the words. It was amazing.

My takeaway was that every WOMAN should listen to this book. Not read. Listen. There are dark spots, a lot of them, that you need to push through to get to the honey. Because it is sweet when you get past the darkness, when you are deep inside the heart of Roxane Gay, it is all sweetness and reality. And those two things do not always go together as perfectly as they did in this book.

You should listen to it.

You will learn to love your body and hear the story it is telling you every day, at least a little bit you will learn this, by listening to this book. You will, at least, learn that loving your body and listening to its stories is life changing.

Or maybe you won't ... as some reviewers have noted, and Gay herself has as well, this is not a book about transformation. It is not a victory lap. It is not this is how you do it.

But, for me, it was a how to and why to love your body, just as it is, and to listen to your body because it is engaging you in the dialogue every day, even when our too busy minds and emotions are yelling loudly over our bodies attempts at conversation.

You should listen to it.

Read/listen to this book, if you are a woman, or a man, or whatever, and you have not yet committed to loving your body and listening to its stories.

------
This is not the other thing that I was meaning to recommend when I started this post, but I have come upon this realization in the past two weeks: I am not only more productive when I listen to books while I work, I am more peaceful. My emotions to do not get the better of me when I am listening to a book and someone asks me for the work item I delivered three weeks ago, or tries to dump their work in my lap because I am a good worker, or tries to organize my work life to make their lives easier. I just smile and listen to my book and do my work.

My blood pressure appreciates listening to a good book. Maybe your blood pressure loves listening to a book, too.

hmmm

For a while, I have been saying, quietly to myself, that I will start writing again.

Every day ...

Every day in July, I will write.

I will work on my book.

Scratch that, I am not ready ... there are preparations to be made in order to write every day.

Bull shit, but, okay, not ready.

I will write on the blog.

Every day.

I will write on the blog every day in July.

It is July 6th and I have barely gotten it together to post a poem for Thursday... it has been a few Thursdays, right? No poems even they overflow in the poem-a-day folder.

What am I busy doing?

Living.

It takes an effort.

I promise, I will promise.

I promise to be better about writing. Every day. Every. Day. Write.

Poetry Thursday, trying to get back on track...

How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This
~Hanif Abdurraqib

dear reader, with our heels digging into the good
mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something
about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself
but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown
& lord knows I have been called by what I look like
more than I have been called by what I actually am &
I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this
exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning
something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything
worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics
arrive to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out
     grandfather
clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent
heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning,
you could scatter his whole mind across a field.

Poetry Thursday ... it's still Thursday...

Friendship 
is always 
a sweet responsibility, 
never an opportunity. 
― Kahlil Gibran

It might be a repeat ... but hopefully it is worth it.

Quote Thursday, Helen Keller - a day late...

Avoiding danger 
is no safer 
in the long run 
than outright exposure. 
The fearful 
are caught 
as often 
as the bold.
~Helen Keller

I was looking for a birthday card quote the other day, and I decided for something from Helen Keller (making mental note to actually read a book she wrote so I can find my quotes the old fashioned way). I stumbled on a bunch of quotes. This one grabbed my heart. I wanted to send it to my niece, but decided it was not the right moment. But it is my wish for the young women (and men) I meet.  Fear is not a blanket we should wrap ourselves in. It is not armor; it will not protect us.

But today, after two prominent suicides, and the millions not reported in the news, I thought it was especially important to note - one of the fears we battle every day is the fear of reaching out - either for help or with help.

I challenge all to win that battle a little bit every day - maybe you can only smile and say hello; maybe you can engage a stranger in a meaningful exchange of how are yous. Maybe you will make someone's day brighter just with your openness. Maybe you will give a ray of hope to that person thinking life is too hard. Or maybe you will just lighten the load long enough for that person to see that nothing lasts forever.

Spread some empathy, sympathy and compassion. Please.

Poetry Thursday

By the Stream
 ~Paul Laurence Dunbar

By the stream I dream in calm delight, and watch as in a glass,
How the clouds like crowds of snowy-hued and white-robed maidens
      pass,
And the water into ripples breaks and sparkles as it spreads,
Like a host of armored knights with silver helmets on their heads.
And I deem the stream an emblem fit of human life may go,
For I find a mind may sparkle much and yet but shallows show,
And a soul may glow with myriad lights and wondrous mysteries,
When it only lies a dormant thing and mirrors what it sees.

Poetry Thursday, actually Quote Thursday - still working on this virtue

Difficult times have helped me 
to understand better than before, 
how infinitely rich and beautiful 
life is in every way, and 
that so many things that 
one goes worrying about 
are of no importance whatsoever.

~Isak Dinesen


I get to spend time with my nephew this weekend. It is bittersweet. I cannot be with him and not think of his mother. This trip we will be celebrating the milestone of finishing middle school. These milestone events are the hardest. Though we do our best to be substitute moms while still being aunts, as sisters our hearts break into a million pieces that she is not here to witness her baby's accomplishments.

Last year we watched her daughter graduate from college. I had my mom bring the small heart filled with my sister's ashes to the ceremony. We each took turns holding on to it during the ceremony. I cannot put into words the pain associated with just acknowledging that she is not here, that there are so many important events in the lives of her babies (and ours) that she did not get to witness.

So, this quote is especially timely today. There is no amount of worry that will bring her back or change the fact that she did not get to be here for this. It is beyond important to understand the richness and beauty of life. And the difficult time and the pain just has to be borne.

Poetry Thursday ... actually quote Thursday

Where you are understood, 
     you are at home. 
Understanding 
         nourishes belonging. 
When you really 
         feel understood, 
you feel free to
     release yourself into 
     the trust and shelter of
     the other person's soul. 

― John O'Donohue
    Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Black and orange like me, part 1 (brainstorming)

The other day I was walking to an event on Princeton campus.

It was an event I had been looking forward to attending. Still, that familiar dread was spreading across my body, radiating out from my heart.

Still, I put one foot in front of the other along my way.

In my mind's eye, I began to see a scene from Out of Africa. It is near the end of the movie. Karen is sitting in her living room on a suitcase. Around her all the possessions she has not sold are in various states of packing. It is a huge room, and she seems small in it. She has the phonograph that Denys gave her, and it is playing something. She is eating dinner or drinking tea. Denys enters the room, and we swoon, hoping he will save her even though he isn't that kind of guy. Instead, she saves herself (again). She asks him if he wants to help her play a game. When she thinks she can't go on, she does one more thing (to make it worse we almost hear her say). And so she asks Denys to dance. She puts on a record, and they dance, first in the room and then outside onto the lawn with whatever was not sold.

I am not getting the words right.

But it is that sentiment ... I can't go through one more trauma/emotion/setback, and then I take a breath, and I do.

So, here I was breathing and getting ready to plunge into a room full of rah rah alumni. Black and orange would be sported by all in some fashion (except me... only black and white and a rust jacket I never put on, that was as close to orange and black I could go).

Being on campus is like walking through a graveyard for me.  Unlike my love for visiting cemeteries, walking a graveyard is not a pleasurable sensation. I think of it more like a place where the bones are exposed, not of neat rows of ornate or simple or tender remembrances of beloved people.

The graveyard is like a junkyard of discarded wrecks, you never know what horrifying sight will be around the corner, jolting you back to some memory of trauma. Even if they are not your memories, they sting. The crumpled car, like the one the mothers put out before prom, meant to remind teens that some decisions have irreversible consequence. Worst of all, the trauma may be contained within sweet memories that turned out to be rotten at their core.

Even though I am the only one who appears to catch glimpses of these wrecks or exposed skeletons, my sense is that they demand to be seen.

I hear whispers from every corner, reminding me of my time there, but I suspect that there are other whispers, too, that clamor for attention. "If she can hear the whispers of her own trauma, perhaps she can hear mine, too," they seem to wonder. The pain is palpable, and it can be overwhelming.

Some days I have the strength to listen to the whispers, to let them transport me back to that day or days, to envelope me in the memory whether sweet or sour. Other days, I skirt the university, purposely walk through a newer area (less chance for there to be a memory lingering there) or go out of my way not to touch campus at all, even if it means an extra mile.

Some days, even though I know I will tempt the ghosts, I walk on to campus to something that has been given a chance at new life, like West College now called Morrison Hall. I touch the plaque, take photos of it, try to fit a new memory into that space. Try to give myself some safe spaces to mark my way across campus in future.

Poetry Thursday - double

I had the privilege of hearing these two poets read last week... I think it was last week, the days run together ... in any case, great stuff.

ENJOY!

Forgiveness
~Christopher Soto
                  for Dad

I’m writing you
            10 years later
     & 2,000 miles
                     Away from
     Our silence
My mouth a cave
                That had collapsed
         I’m writing
 While you
You wear the
                  Hospital gown &
          count failures
Such as the body’s
Inability to rise
           I see your fingers
Fumbling in the
       Pillbox     as if
           Earthquakes are in
Your hands
             I think it’s time
For us to  abandon
Our cruelties
          For us to speak
So     s    o    f    t
We’re barely
                  Human.


Skin-Light
 ~Natalie Diaz
My whole life I have obeyed it—
            its every hunting. I move beneath it
            as a jaguar moves, in the dark-
                          liquid blading of shoulder.
The opened-gold field and glide of the hand,
            light-fruited, and scythe-lit.
I have come to this god-made place—
           Teotlachco, the ball court—
           because the light called: lightwards!
                        and dwells here, Lamp-land.   
           We touch the ball of light
           to one another—split bodies stroked bright—
                        desire-knocked.
                                    Light reshapes my lover’s elbow,
           a brass whistle.
I put my mouth there—mercy-luxed, and come, we both,
           to light. It streams me.
           A rush of scorpions—
                        fast-light. A lash of breath—
                                    god-maker.
           Light horizons her hip—springs an ocelot
           cut of chalcedony and magnetite.
                       Hip, limestone and cliffed,
slopes like light into her thigh—light-box, skin-bound.
           Wind shakes the calabash,
           disrupts the light to ripple—light-struck,
                       then scatter.
This is the war I was born toward, her skin,
           its lake-glint. I desire—I thirst—
           to be filled—light-well.
The light throbs everything, and songs
           against her body, girdling the knee bone.
           Our bodies—light-harnessed, light-thrashed.
                       The bruising: bilirubin bloom,
                                    violet.
A work of all good yokes—blood-light—
           to make us think the pain is ours
           to keep, light-trapped, lanterned.
                       I asked for it. I own it—
                                    lightmonger.
I am light now, or on the side of light—
           light-head, light-trophied.
           Light-wracked and light-gone.

           Still, the sweet maize—an eruption
           of light, or its feast,
                       from the stalk
                                    of my lover’s throat.
And I, light-eater, light-loving.