for election week
we read I Am Malala
hope covers dark thoughts
We Name Ourselves Hope
for election week
we read I Am Malala
hope covers dark thoughts
poetry
Make My Marade
annual Marade
frosted with ice (years without)
but now winter’s here–
in Trump’s dark shadow
we march for all we have lost,
all there is to lose.
we resist snowflakes
that try and fail to stop us
from the truth we seek
we fight the good fight
in songs, in signs, in speeches
(and one day we’ll win)
Return of the Jedi
Star Wars costume show
followed by our nation’s truth:
the stench of failure
it seeps through the stacks
into our souls’ library:
let’s check ourselves out
depression so rank
we can’t even choose a book
from our city’s shelves
soon we will rise up
upon realization
of Trumpocracy
but it will take faith
beyond what fits in a poem
to fight the Dark Side
Running Rabid
since the election,
somehow my days have become
a cataclysmic mix of mundane chores
and tearing my hair out over
what we’ve done to our democracy
it’s the gut wrenching choice
Travis must make as Riona and I
grapple with Old Yeller-–
do I shoot my best friend
or suffer the same fate?
only—
our fate is sealed, well after
the roan bull has staggered onto our property… and Yeller?
his last howl hovers over
a hydrophobic nation
God save us all.
Kiko’s Interpretation of Chores
folding laundry blues:
time to rest on pink towel
till this is over
Rays of Snowflake
sometimes the day’s best
shines through in a reflection
of reality
For My Students…
new semester looms
with a worrying future
that we can’t define
To Laugh Until I Cry. To Live Until I Die.
In the crook of early January, three weeks since seeing my students, on a cold wintry Saturday morning I shlep across town to make lesson plans with three other colleagues.
Later I will heat water for hot tea and curl in my recliner with a book, wishing I could write a novel as lyrically beautiful as Caramelo as my children wander in and out of rooms, in and out of our house and the neighbor’s, in and out of wanting to be near their dear old mom.
This after two attempts to jumpstart the old Hyundai whose lights I left on in our trek to the grandparents’ house last night.
This after listening to dating tales and math updates and wondering what it would really be like to be a single woman in modern America.
This after coloring intricate books with the girls in the brief time between our latest tech argument and the neighbor’s reemergence.
So is our Saturday, chicken defrosting in the sink, chores done and Echo playing my Pandora playlist to suit the color of my mood.
No dog to walk, no true purpose to the day other than making plans for a class no one really wants to teach.
What sits in the back of my mind is how easily I want to be able to relax. To have a deep and thought-provoking conversation that is justifiably, blood-burningly exciting. To laugh until I cry. To live until I die.
To take these lonely household moments and flip them over or back or somewhere else, when my children were small and my Chihuahua never left the warmth of my leg, when my marriage was young and everything we thought and did was about each other, not some game or book or phone or faraway friend.
In the crook of early January, holidays left out on the curb waiting for a second chance at life (mulch me till I can be reborn!), the cold of winter settles into my bones. The winter of this year, of my children’s childhood, of my marriage, nineteen years in the making.
Even with the beauty of the flakes that fall, their demise lies in slushy streets and icy black pavement, ready to trick any masterful driver, so used to winter but not its ugly, dry-grassed truth that lies beneath the surface.
In the crook of early January, I wait for the sun to rise high in the sky. For the snow to melt. For the tree to be taken. For the hollowness that hides inside this nook to break open in me a new way of looking at the world. For the bend of this season to straighten out into a road I can see, wide and clear and as questionless as a summer’s day.
But in the crook of January, there are no summer days. There are only questions.
Counting On It
once i wrote poems
without counting syllables–
rather, counting moments
that trickled through my mind
throughout the weariness of days,
with little money and lots of hope,
and now it’s little hope and lots of money,
and the twists and turns of reality click in
until i feel i can only control counting syllables,
and one haiku at a time record my days,
the in-between lines lost years later.
once i wrote poems
to put inside stories
that would spill from my pen with
lyrical language and little plot,
so similar to the mundane of everyday life,
when snow spins our tires and meetings suck our days and relationships wither with wear,
and i wasn’t afraid of the words
i so diligently drafted.
but i learned to count.
to be more cautious with words.
seventeen. now. then.
Lighting the Fire
ready to make change
with posters, books, and writing
with hope in our schools
