acceptance settles
as we see the bright blue sky
(first time in two weeks)
An expensive hike
yet easy, green, glacial blue
make it worth millions
where can you see ice
floating from nearby glacier
as You eat your lunch?
Alaska wins us
though it can’t fully win her
(my pup will save me)
she’s bought the ticket
leaving me brokenhearted
as more rain plagues us
no blue sky peak views
in this cold and dreary state
matching my sad mood
a bit of comfort
At Homer vacation home
(luxury send-off?)
i can’t change her mind
Yet can face the great alone
(i know how to drive)
still fighting back tears
we honor native cultures
for July Fourth truth
how hard their lives were
yet their innovations rocked
our lame modern needs
from homes under sod
to sunglasses for seal hunts
they made a life here
their tenacious art
built in the midst of winter
reminds me of hope
so i paint a grin
and take them our one last time
crab legs included
A national emergency is a series of hurricanes on one coast and as many fires on the other coast, the direct results of climate change that our country chooses to ignore. A national emergency is the healthcare crisis, where we can’t get prosthetics if we’re missing a limb or pay for cancer treatment even if we’re dying. A national emergency is CEO pay which has multiplied exponentially for five decades and left the common worker with a salary too low to buy a house, buy eggs, or pay rent.
There is no national emergency at our border. There are millions of people, despite all of our national emergencies, who have faced far worse: farms that can no longer grow coffee due to climate change, dictatorships that have taken away all rights, medical care that includes fewer options for cerebral palsy or cancer than we have here.
Their emergencies trail behind them, left in their home countries weeks, months, or years ago, and like that train that they cling to carrying them across Mexico, they hope never to see again.
They are here now, families in tow, babies in tow, ready to work, ready to enroll their children in school and provide jobs for teachers like me, ready to take into their hands the American Dream that you have declared doesn’t exist for them.
They are not criminals.
They are not illegal.
They are not a national emergency, an executive order you’ve used to circumvent Congress on your first day in office.
They pick your food and clear your sidewalks after snow and build your roofs and work in your restaurants and run your factories and teach your children and make you rich. They are professors and lawyers and engineers and mechanics and everything in between.
They are human.
And after more than four hundred years of forced colonization and enslaved labor indoctrinated in our blood by imperialists like you, the only national emergency is how far back we’ve moved the dial of progress, and for how long we will make Suffering the motto of YOUR AMERICA.
I’m already starting to count semesters left, though I have nearly a decade to win my pension. I have seventeen left. Seventeen semesters to deal with the pain, the argument, the love/hate relationship I have with this career, and today it hurts me more than it helps me.
Why is he in the hallway now, laughing his ass off and GOOFING OFF WITH HIS FRIENDS? Why do I hear his voice, after he cheated on her, after he convinced her back, after she came in distraught with handmarks on her arm, her breakfast tossed to the floor, his controlling words still ringing in her ears? Why did I call the dean, the assistant principal, who came jogging to my classroom to extricate her, to hear her story, ONLY TO HEAR HIS VOICE IN THE HALLWAY three hours later? Why wasn’t he sent home, after the long list of inappropriate behavior, everything from intentionally using racial slurs to skipping class to cussing out the admin to refusing to do work to taking advantage of a girl in the bathroom and allowing his friend to film it and post it online…
Seventeen semesters left of arguing with kids about their phones, convincing them that English is important, and telling those in charge to do something about kids who should be nowhere near this school.
And sometimes it feels like seventeen lifetimes.
What can I buy with $1000?
A color printer for my classroom so I can make posters pop for my Newcomer students. Eighteen credits at ISU so I can try to earn a livable wage with a salary lane change. A week in a hotel for one of my students and his family who were out on the streets.
What can you buy with $1000?
The last shred of dignity that DPS promised on our September paychecks. You said you kept your promise with extra pay for hard-to-serve positions and bonuses, a 2.06% raise, and $1000.
But guess what? We didn’t receive the $1000 that you are holding because our union wants arbitration against your broken promise. We only got the watered-down raise.
Where is it? Where is the 5.2% COLA raise that you agreed to?
When my student’s family was living in a tent, I asked my English colleagues at South for as much money as they could spare. Within a day, I had collected more than $1000 to keep this family off the street for a week. Why did I ask when we’re all strapped for cash, when gas and food prices and mortgage interest rates keep so many of us from paying our bills?
Because that is what I do. I teach Newcomers who came here for a better life. I work with generous colleagues who would reach into their nearly-empty pockets to come up with $1000 because it matters to a student. A family. A life.
How else can I earn $1000, or a real raise? From my second job as an adjunct professor, where, if the classes don’t get canceled before they begin, I might earn $1000 extra a month to make up for the gaps in my DPS paycheck? From teaching summer school, doing ISA paperwork, coaching, directing, or after-school supervision?
Why isn’t what I do in a day, in a school year, enough to earn $1000 of your respect? To earn 5.2% of your respect?
I plan lessons and grade papers for four preps. I have a classroom of students who just arrived from all over the world and speak seven different languages. I engage them in English, help them cope with trauma, show them where our food bank is, take them on excursions across the city, teach them about cultural norms, and communicate with their families about their never-ending physical and emotional needs. I have kids who have never held a pencil and don’t know their letters in their home language and kids who could write a novel in Spanish, and I work my ass off to meet all of their needs, even if it means giving them $1000.
What I don’t have is a salary proving that DPS believes that what I do is respectable and professional. What I don’t have is my promised COLA.
DPS, you agreed to support your teachers with a real raise, and you couldn’t even give us $1000. If a picture is worth 1000 words, I hope my words are worth at least $1000.
Just like us, twenty-one years back, they were walking their two dogs. The sun was ready to set, and their dogs would plop down on their laps later, ready for a rest. They were grinning in the golden light of the first day of fall, so young and beautiful.
She wore a black t-shirt that accentuated her bulging belly, he a ball cap and a matching shirt. No worries on a Saturday night. Just get the dogs home, put the baby-in-the-belly to bed, watch a flick, go to sleep.
But they had to gawk at me. Crane their necks for the scene I was making.
“Just ONE PIC!!”
I was begging; pleading.
No, it didn’t matter that they’d rushed through the fancy meal I’d spent hours preparing. That their friend was late and didn’t even have a bite. That the remnants of the Minnesota Wild Rice stew were spilled across the kitchen. That their friends were already in the park taking sunset pics.
That this is the last Homecoming.
And goddamn it, I needed JUST ONE PIC.
My baby girl, her friend since sixth grade, her friend since ninth grade, her other friends waiting at the park.
Just. One.
Because this is my last Homecoming.
I looked over at the expecting couple, turning the corner but still craning their necks as I squatted down, iPhone on pulse mode, trying to capture the snark, the impatience, the beauty.
“Oh… you’ll be me before you can blink,” I shouted, and they laughed and laughed and laughed as they walked down the block, not knowing how hard those coming months, years, moments would be. How they’d be begging for one picture, one moment with their baby, their child, their… young adult.
How quickly these sunset moments flash before our eyes.
Before you can blink, they are gone.
we’re the post office:
through wind, rain, sleet, clouds… weather
we weather the storm
just another day
in the life we’ve created
in sickness and health
this Funchal art walk
makes me miss my young artists
at home without us
yet we must adjust
with the empty nest so close
i can feel its grip
this trip is a test
to see what “just us” feels like—
we’re on sold ground
Step Write Up 