Category: Racial & Social justice
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Post-Thanksgiving meditation
indigenous bodies thrown in trenches left to rot pass the turkey, please captured people bought and sold and sold, again pass the mashed potatoes, please immigrants left homelands for false promises pass the cranberry sauce, please so many dead and buried on the side of the road pass the oyster dressing, please no markers thank…
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Un-nameable
on a beautiful Autumn morning low on the horizon behind the tree line dragon fly machines shake the air and make practice runs two miles away at the fort no one strafed our home, dropped bombs or walked boldly down the street in camouflage loud, staccato, word bursts demanding we lie down in our yard…
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poem for Tavis
Because it is your birthday, I will become a Cowboy’s fan, laugh and be petty, if only for today. I will celebrate your gifts, your friendship and your life. I will wear my ‘Mind of Tavis’ tee-shirt with pride. I imagine Batman’s wings silhouetted on the clouds. Happy Birthday, Tavis! You are missed. 10-13-23
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Teasing a toddler with an empty spoon
If every time you went to feed your toddler the spoon was empty and you ignored their hunger and laughed in the next room with sadistic family members, CPS might suspend your parental rights and some politician up for re-election might make a speech on the floor of Congress. Seven months on our airline has…
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A conversation between mothers
(Sing)…..Ave Maria, gratia plena Dear Holy Mother of Jesus, I have four kids, work three jobs, none pay a living wage. I make ends that have no end – meet. (Sing)…..Maria, gratia plena, Maria, gratia plena Mary, help me find affordable housing and Wise Men bearing gifts; tell them to stop calling me lazy and…
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Emancipation PTSD
Squinting into the sun Fog blanket pulled over cool ground Driving east towards the sea Bayside walk sounded good Advertisements for historic carriage rides Sugar coated tour guide lectures Glory of Antebellum South Walk by slave auction museum Imagine slave cargoes arriving Fantasize renaming Calhoun Street Vesey or Turner Boulevard Flee the salt smell of…
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Kyiv couture
Dressing up in Kevlar and gas masks, combat boots and fatigues,window dressing of diplomatic posturing, advertisements for economic sanctions, rose red liquid bouquets arrive by air and land,candlelit dinner dates of canned rations, reading the news you realize the war never endedand World War II is World War I on a grander scale and World…
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for Nora Valdez
After waiting a million years to be undressed from stone she’s thankful it was a woman who held the chisel. She waits on Lady Street with swollen feet and a child on each hip for a bus, for food, a home, for politicians to stop playing politics …because it’s not a game. 4-23-22
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High cotton
I’m from ‘knee high by the fourth of July’ Detasseled corn in a hell hole of hot August sun Soon as I was able to gather money at another job I left and never looked back I live in the land of ‘standing in high cotton’ Old money there is not forgotten Two job slavery…
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coffee with cream
Reading the news you realize the war never ended like World War II is World War I on a grander scale and World War I was unfinished business of Napoleon and the Crimean War was just taking a half-time break while Russia aired ads about being cheated on the sale of Alaska and play will…
My husband's poetry 