Rooted

when autumn arrives

and leaves begin 

to fall i 

remember that i 

am the tree

not the golden 

leaf spinning gloriously 

to the ground

The crooks

Inspired by Resmaa Menakem's work and teachings ... and a recent podcast he was on

Your body was 

not your own

it served at 

the pleasure of 

the kings and elites

their feasts and 

festivities fueled by 

the blood and 

sweat and tears 

of laborers and peasants

whose skin was 

darkened by dirt 

sun-baked in fields 

you weren't allowed 

to ever eat from

servitude and subordination

a birthright passed 

down through your 

bloodied European bodies

and only deemed white

once you were 

able to turn

that generational rage 

outward, to reclaim 

a sovereignty of self

stolen from you

by stealing the 

land, languages, lives 

of pigmented people 

on a new land 

you would rape

and pillage the 

same way your 

predecessors were on

your own ancestral homelands

--

April PAD Day 7 prompt: villain

Read-lining

Our wires haven’t been crossed

the power lines  

are in completely different counties

—

April PAD Day 3 prompt: communication 

Waterboarding

Would you love me more 
if this body was thinner 
his thinning hair thicker
her thickness less sexy
their sexiness more tame
his tameness more fierce
my fierceness less fiery 
her fire more water
our watered down selves 
so dampened
that we drown ourselves 
without seeing you’re 
holding our heads underwater 

—

April PAD - Poetic Asides Day 2 prompt: what does the future hold 

What a pretty name

Hi, my name is
not nearly as important
what you call me 
behind closed doors, closed 
minds, or closed hearts 

where you fetishize an 
exoticness that once threatened
your grandparents so much 
that they sent mine
to Arkansan incarceration camps 

emerging years later with 
broken hearts and steeled
wills, a thirst to 
prove their Americanness/humanity,
become a model minority 

modeling resilience after abuse,
white-adjacent acceptability, and 
generational trauma embedded deep 
in the DNA that
became this face you 

now deem desirable

— 

April PAD 2021

Poetic Asides Prompt Day 1: introduction poem

Zookeepers

There is nothing exotic 
about caging tigers or people

poverty is a zoo 
and the keepers long ago

threw away the keys
allowed the wealthy to watch

the destruction of the 
poor, parentless, miners, minions, slaves

calling the infighting feral, 
innate in the incarcerated as 

a class (a species 
inhuman and different from themselves 

completely), and not due 
to their unnatural imprisonment 




--
April PAD - Poetic Asides Day 17: exotic

Bottled spirits

They say he
had his demons
I saw them
on his face

anguished, angry, ashamed
they feasted on
the memories he
could not share

there could be
no exorcism for
the pains he
would not speak

only the spirits
he drank released
them temporarily until
they became our demons too

--
April PAD - Poetic Asides Day 12: spirit

Bitter

Why does that which is
supposed to make
me strong taste so bitter?

Thunderstruck

He struck like lightening, 
brilliant and 

faster than the blink 

of an eye blackening 
silently 

before the thunderclap 

Outside my window

outside my window
the bamboo grows high and green
reaching for the bits
of sun between our buildings
snatching just enough to thrive

The crumbs

Brown and black bodies crawl
through our alleys
like ants at a picnic

sifting through the overflow of
our wastefulness for
the treasures we throw away

Exercising your rights

I used to think rights were like my skeleton
god-given, sturdy, and strong
the foundation of being a human

But now I think rights are more like a muscle
pliant, moveable and changing
needing to be flexed to remain strong

---
April PAD Day 25 - exercise

Dead end

It was no secret that
he beat her
we all saw the bruises
heard the excuses
knew she wasn't as clumsy
as she purported
to be

---

April PAD Day 30 - dead end

Take off

At the beginning
there's a rumbling

a flutter
of excitement

as we run
hand in hand

toward some
unknown destination

where we will
both soar together

or soon
crash land

---
April PAD Day 27 - take off

Diem Perdidi

Inspired by Julie Otosuka's short story, which I read for the first time today and was tremendously moved.


I was in fifth grade
when I learned what
it was to forget

that my grandmother would
sometimes misplace her keys
or lose herself completely
in the space between thoughts

She once drove a car
into the side of
their motorhome when the
space completely seized her

my grandfather screamed for
her to stop but
she wasn't present to

hear him yelling her
name at the top
of his lungs, "Whoa
Tei! Stop, Tei, stop!"

He raged at the
damage, the fear of
losing a woman he'd
loved for 40 years,

and at the space
that stole her a
little more every day

a forgetting that would
not stop or slow
but plowed into her
like she had that

Airstream and that seized
all of us when
she could no longer
remember any of our names

 ---
April PAD Day 21 - responding to another poem

Black holes

I saw this hauntingly beautiful piece at the Portland Art Museum today and was absolutely struck by it; the hair, the ears, the neck, the shoulders look just like my son ... and the anguish just moved me nearly to tears. It's like someone took a psychic x-ray or the human I love most in the world and this is what they saw. Heartbreaking.

So, of course, I wrote about it ...


sometimes
I see death
when I look
into my son's face

there's
an anguish that
could kill him
clawing just below the

surface
of his skin
a zombie eating
his brain from inside

sometimes
i see the
look of anguish
as he claws at

life
begging to be
freed from the
killer inside, the black

hole
in his throat
that's so big
it chokes out life

---
April PAD Day 6 - ekphrastic

Unsaid

his face droops on the right
though he doesn't know it
he hasn't looked in the mirror
for over a year

of course, when he cocks his head,
as he often does,
staring at the world from a
permanent 2 o'clock tilt

the waterfall of features
is less noticeable

the slope of his eyes and mouth,
melting like Dali's clocks
seem to disappear in some
off-center symmetry

as if this change of perspective
could erase the microscopic clot
that cut his hemispheres
right in two

and my father could no longer
right his crooked smile

---
April PAD Day 20 - what goes unsaid

Glass slipper

She hadn't realized when they
first met that
this glass slipper would shatter

---
April PAD Day 23 - footwear

Rose

Unrooted flowers
droop their sad heads when there is
no sun to smile toward

---
April PAD Day 17 - haiku

Between us ...

I used to burn hot
kick off the covers at night
as I lay next to you

we would kiss and I'd
nuzzle into that sweet space on
your shoulder, press my cheek to

your chest and feel your
cool breath stick to my skin,
stick to the heat between us.

I used to burn hot
but without you next to me
there's just the cold space of

miles and memories between us.
.

---
April PAD Day 19 - cool or uncool