As the Black poet J. Saunders Redding said: The relationship between a people and their history is the same as the relationship between a child and its mother; history not only tells a people where they are and what they are—history also informs us what we still must...
Swatting mosquitoes in the rhubarb, I watch you pull husky potatoes from the earth. You roll them in your palms and scuff the dirt from their bulging eyes and moony grins. Here’s Mister Potato Head! You hold him high for me to admire. And here’s the Missuz!...
It will leave nothing. Nothing. The future comes, ripping the asphalt up—black, jagged slabs. It chews and spews and carts away the crud. We’re in its dust, coughing, detoured, irate, squeezing our wheels between blaze-orange drums, while on both sides the...
Her 80th birthday—“Surprise!” She smiles from the party photo, her last. As a kid, rushing home after basketball, barely beating curfew, I’d nuzzle her. I smell her now, rosebud salve and a perfume I can’t recall, but warm and home and Mom. D. Stephen Elliot...
Proud back with a chest high in the air Swaying with desire Never knowing when to bend Afraid to break Walking into the wind Bowing to the ravages of life A life of hurling lessons Mistakes that grow into other mistakes Proud back with a chest high in the air Swaying...
Fool that I was with my scissors I have nothing left to offer The warm spring breeze Marcy Steinberg’s classmate at a school reunion once exclaimed, “You’re the poet!” and recited “Haircut,” which she’d remembered since fourth grade—thirty-four years ago. Marcy...
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