The Wisdom of Ancient Things
I return to that Place of Peace,
and the wisdom of ancient things,
the one that reintroduced itself
The Wisdom of Ancient Things Read More »
I return to that Place of Peace,
and the wisdom of ancient things,
the one that reintroduced itself
The Wisdom of Ancient Things Read More »
See, you were the only Black kid in the whole damn school,
and the teacher had to split us up because of how hard
we laughed together.
This (unedited) poem won first place in a contest on The Political Poet. And while I am grateful, that’s not necessarily the important part. The important part is the way this debate spun out of control. The way citizens were encouraged to gang up on other citizens as the county turned a blind eye to hate groups and racism.
You Made Me Feel Illegal Read More »
I am not sure what is more important: to tell you how I used
to narrate my life in my mind while I walked the neighborhood
as a child? How I never moved my lips, but somehow
made more exciting that single horse farm on the corner,
the one without the palomino I imagined should have been there?
You see, after a while, you get tired of telling
the same old story again, the sad one, where you
are the interstitial animal living between grains
of ancient sand, separated from both
land and sea, by some careless hand that said
you were made to be lonely. And while I know
being a writer is solitary (how else will we ever
get these so-many-words out of our salty-sweet
minds?) I do not think anyone was made to be alone.
It’s complicated, really, it began so long ago,
while bent over a bin of gourmet ice cream, scooping
it out for a customer: “Don’t you believe in company
loyalty?” And I had to tell him, no. “I am not loyal
to groups,” I said. “I am loyal to people.”
Why I Won’t Burn the Flag Read More »
I called it “The Dichotomy,”
not because I knew someone
had already used the title
(that was after I wrote what I wrote)
but because I loved the word—
the way it tore itself apart
Last night was another nightmare, except this time, they attacked my brother who somehow also worked there. And while I was sitting with my brother, right in front of our boss, my brother would not—could not—say a word, and neither could I because we were all sitting far too close, there, in person, face to
I kept listening to that old cassette
in the radio of my beat-up car,
the used one I had paid too much for
and financed with my soul—the voice
of a Texas woman, accent thick as my debt,
Angels in the Architecture – A Love Poem of Sorts Read More »
My dearest ones, I want to tell you
what I saw today just from looking outside at the sky: yes, it was grey, and a mist hovered about the window in shadows of condensation. And yes, a heavy fog had been gathering around my heart