the raw emotion
that floods my writing fingers
has been gone this year
(i await new juice
to pump up my active voice
like a sober drunk)
writing
Lost and Found
you couldn’t steal this:
ancient homes, history learned,
survivors by cliff
or these sweet faces
of my three girls, unafraid
to face your world
no, you can’t take that;
my identity’s in words
found here. not with you.
Day Fifteen, Road Trip 2016
everyone wins today
with sleeping in and reading books
and me fitting in a bike ride
on the way to the movies
(coastal views, zero elevation,
heat seeping through my new
jersey in a rushed attempt to
meet the time schedule)
and yet it hovers.
my vacation.
my vacation with friendly family,
getting-along-quite-well girls,
ocean views and coral reefs
and the best lake swimming there is
and …
no happy hour.
pedaling across those bridges,
sweating steps in Savannah,
making it through another day,
a blessed, lucky day on this earth…
and no drink to top it off,
to melt the anxiety that comes
with upcoming controversial family,
the stress that will be DC in July,
seeing my father-in-law slowly lose his mind;
no drink to bring brighter to life
the constancy of waves,
to further open my mouth for all
the thoughts i’m dying to share,
(to pour onto the page);
no drink to further relax my toes
into this cushion of sand,
my sore muscles into the clutch of alcohol,
my mind from the weight of the world.
and i say it again and again:
There’s always a reason…
and even on the perfect day,
the life’s a beach dream vacation day,
it. is. still. hard.
it is why i pedal.
why i write.
why i drive 6000 miles.
why i watch waves.
because the need to escape is real.
in all of us, no matter how picture-perfect our lives appear,
it is as real as this view, this beach, these toes.
but i made it.
i made it through another day.
and this poem is my happy hour.
Because I Am a Woman
I am so angry today because I am a woman and a mother of three daughters. I am so angry today because my mother, one of seven, six of them girls, was the only one in her family to finish college and then earn a master’s degree, and she did so by defying her mother who wrote an anti-education letter to the university to deter her from making that choice (for which my mother won a feminism scholarship). In 1972.
I am so angry today because I work so hard to be tolerant. The world is filled with every walk of humanity, and they all have rights to carry out their beliefs, whether they be nationalistic, religious, or cultural. But. When those beliefs expect and demand oppression, I am no longer a bleeding heart feminist liberal.
I am just angry.
More than thirty years ago, Audre Lorde wrote the most perfect essay I’ve ever read, “There Is No Hierarchy of Oppression”, in which she eloquently describes my angst: “…among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression. I believe that sexism … and heterosexism … both arise from the same source as racism–a belief in the inherent superiority of one ______ over all others and thereby its right to dominance” (1).
I am angry because the police were called. Because Child Protective Services were called. Because they spent less than one afternoon questioning her and her family and brought her back home. She spent today not at school but cooking the meal for her engagement party, henna ceremony, and impending wedding. At age fourteen.
I am angry because it is 2016. Because she lost her mother two months ago. Because her family came here for a future that her father is now denying her. Because we have come too far in this trek for feminism to be taking giant leaps back and putting our girls in a situation of entrapment.
I am angry because my government does nothing to protect children. To protect women. Because an online threat of suicide isn’t enough to PULL. THE. CHILD. AWAY. FROM. HOME.
I am angry because she is me. She is you. She is all of us. She is the caged bird Maya Angelou describes, stalking back and forth in rage. She is the religious martyr who couldn’t stay in Burma because she wasn’t Buddhist. She is the daughter and sister and friend and STUDENT who you wish you had in your life.
I am angry because I am a woman. Because I am a human. Because I am free, and she is not. She is oppressed by sexism, religious zeal, and cultural tradition. And whether you believe in God or support your culture or want to fight for traditional gender roles, none of these things give you the right to oppress another human being.
I am angry because there is no hierarchy of oppression. And when one of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed.
I am so angry today. And I will still be angry tomorrow. And the next day. And every day forever after, as long as I am a witness to oppression.
Because I am a woman. Because I am a human. Because this needs to stop.
Help me. Help me make it stop.
Sweet Haiku Dreams
i need a haiku break
but all i do is count syllables
to make up a life
for so long now i’ve trapped myself in 5-7-5
that i can’t write a poem
without holding up my fingers
ready to count
but what’s life without
a simple, perfect haiku
to go to bed with?
Always a Top Ten
reasons why i stopped:
one–brutal voice in writing,
uncensored anger
two–not much laughter,
too much crying to count
(my tear stained regrets)
three–exhausted sleep
from too many restless nights
swimming in nightmares
four–so much good lost
on the desire to numb,
to not fully live
five–waste of money
in times when we had little,
in times when we’re rich
six–lust and lack of
mediocre love-making
blurred by consumption
seven–fat belly
of someone too far along
to give up this quick
eight–every bad choice
i have made as an adult
came from that bottle
nine–joy i once felt
disappeared on icy rocks
of my lost chances
ten–my daughters’ eyes
watching every move i make
(and i’m making… them)
A Simple Relinquishment
i took back her phone
she cried for thirty minutes
then emerged from room
a week has now passed
i’ve seen her face more this week
than in the past year
she’s on page fifty
of a novel she started…
to write, not to read!
she plays piano
taught herself Star Wars theme songs
Darth Vader and all
she talks to us now
and plays games with her sisters
just like a child
she is my child
and i’ve ended the battle
that would lead to war
In the Middle
They come into two classes to tell them the (what I think will be simple) news: they will have a new English teacher next semester, and it won’t be me. The AP describes it in her usual convoluted fashion: “We are growing as a school, and we need your teacher’s skills to teach another class, and you’re going to have a different teacher.”
Z shouts out (as always–no one scares him)–“Wait. So we have the teacher with the best skills and you’re going to give us the teacher with the least?”
She begrudgingly looks at me: “Is that what I just said?”
But I know what he means. I speak his outspoken language.
Another student: “But I like this small class. It’s safe.”
Another: Tears. No words.
Another (different class): “I ain’t doin’ it. I’m still coming here fourth period. Try and stop me.”
AP (to me): “Isn’t it great to be loved?”
And I think, these are the same kids I threw under the bus the other day for not showing up on the “NOT” snow day. These are the kids I was jumping up and down about saying goodbye to because I want to teach immigrants, kids who really care, who are fully invested in wanting to be in my classroom every day. On time. Ready to learn.
And I feel a mix of joy and hatred all in the same moment.
And I think about these things, these fourteen-year-old faces running across my mind as I begin my Thanksgiving break. As I drive the carpool kids home and drop my girls off at piano and put frozen pizza (my Friday cop-out meal) in the oven and cross stitch and listen to my Spanish book and wait until the optimal moment before venturing out into the snow back into my old neighborhood.
I am saying goodbye to these green walls and these three girls and all the kids who have come in and out of my classroom for fifteen years to drive into richville and pretend like I’m someone else.
It is just what I thought and nothing like I thought. One block away from where I grew up, a 1940s war home that (amazingly) hasn’t been torn down… just doubled in size on the backside, granite counters and a peak-through kitchen from the living to dining to family room to breakfast nook. The hostess is a jubilant extroverted redhead with children who are driving up with their father to ski training for a week. She proudly shows us the brownies and fudge they made, the doggie bandanna (“bark scarves”) business her children have developed (web site and all), describes the destruction and reconstruction of her “starter-turned-family” home.
And I make the mistake of telling all the blond and blue-eyed businesswomen-doctor-lawyer-private-school-till-now moms that I teach. At the local high school.
And they want the good. The bad. The ugly.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on it for years.”
“I even hosted a German exchange student a couple years ago to see how it was (and I wasn’t impressed).”
“I heard the principal is leaving.”
“I heard that there’s no accountability.”
“I heard they have a great football team.”
And there I stand. In the middle. I’m not going to lie. And I’m not really going to satisfy their curiosity either. And I’m not going to go home to a mansion. And send my kids to a ski team training. Or use Uber because “it’s better than driving.” I’m not going to be a “CEO recruiter” and tear down half a house because the one I bought wasn’t good enough. I’m not going to find some German kid to “test out the local high school” for me.
And I’m not going to lie.
“It’s apathetic.”
“The administration is mediocre at best.”
“The kids don’t do their homework.”
Everything they want to know. And don’t want to know.
Because I’m in the middle. I am a teacher and a mother. And I constantly ask myself: What is best for my kids? (MY kids.) And: What is best for my kids (THEIR kids). And the answers almost never match up.
Because that kid who cried in my class today told me his story about his mom beating the shit out of him. About social services ripping him away from her broken-bottle alcoholic rants. About the safe haven with grandparents in New Mexico. About how fucking scared he is every time he steps out of his Denver home because his mom lives SOMEWHERE IN THIS STATE.
And he doesn’t want to tell it again.
Because that kid who said he likes the small class can’t quite do work when “he’s going through some emotional tough shit, Miss,” and I let him have extra time.
Because that kid who said, “I ain’t gonna do it” has lingered into lunch on five occasions, emptying my wallet for a few bucks to have a meal.
Because I can’t lie. And I can’t tell the truth. And I can’t be a CEO recruiter who could never understand why a day filled with luncheons and a flexible schedule will never be my day. I can’t fit in with the blond-and-blue-eyed bitches just as well as I can’t fit my kids in with kids who won’t do their fucking homework (and yet I love them anyway).
There is no middle ground. There is no balance to what I face every day (tears and joy, tears and joy) and what I want my kids to see (apathy mixed with perseverance???).
And there is no way in hell a single one of these women would understand where I’m coming from anyway.
So why am I here? Why am I asking these questions?
I put my coat on and the hostess begins a story about running out of gas at the top of a pass on the way to a camping trip and coasting down the mountain into the only gas station in town.
I tell my story of driving 5000 miles in a Prius and running out gas in a no-cell-phone range and putting on my bike helmet and riding my bike down I-70 for six miles at 21:30 and my husband guarding the three kids in the back seat.
“I like your story better,” she admits as she walks me to the door. “I think I might steal it and call it my own.”
She’d be just like those other teachers who Z thinks “don’t have the skills” to teach him. Just like my kids who I can’t quite fit in to this frenzied life of private schools and ski team training.
Just like me. Stuck in the middle, good story in hand, just not quite the right place to publish it.
A Poem in the Making
My small poet is lost in the world of text citations, a phrase I never heard until I was a junior in high school… Not as a fourth grader. And while my fifth grader keeps the world laughing with her dry humor and is at or above par in every subject, I can only imagine how Rio feels when she hears from the fourth teacher in her life, “She is so shy.”
It is the label of introversion. The stamp on her personality. And as she sits there in the hard plastic chair, her whole body shrinks underneath the shawl Heather made all those years back. She presses her knees tight against her chest and her eyes redden in her quiet attempt to hold back tears.
How did they end up with the same teachers, and why did we have to bring the kids with us? These are things that go through my mind as I see the 1’s and 0’s on her paper. As the English teacher lowers her voice to just above a whisper, almost mocking the small voice of my youngest; as the math teacher blatantly tells her she needs to speak up in science since there aren’t tests and that’s the way she can prove what she knows.
“It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be,” he assures me when we arrive home.
Not two minutes later, Rio asks me to cuddle with her in bed. I read her part of her book, then close it and wait. She has that pouty I-want-to-tell-you-something look. “Is it the conferences? Is it someone at school? Is it something you don’t understand? Is it your daddy?” (Because dark thoughts enter when I am so, so scared for her.) She negates all questions, and finally, in a barely-audible whisper, tells me, “I’m scared to go to sleep. I have scary dreams.”
It took her twenty minutes to divulge this to me, so I don’t press her for more. I talk about the weekend, about carving pumpkins, about me taking her trick-or-treating all by herself, just with me, as her older sisters have outgrown going with Mama and Daddy and have friend plans. Her red eyes soften when I ask her to think about these things, to dream about them.
But I will never know what’s really going on inside her mind. She will never tell me. It could be the disgruntled drive over to conferences when I discussed with her daddy an allowance-and-all-other-activity cutoff after so much backtalk about chores this evening. It could be the teacher’s tiny voice mocking her small soul. It could be Isabella’s snide remark when she asked her if she wanted to listen to her read her poems aloud last night, and the teary rush into the other room when it looked like she’d offered a voice to someone who didn’t want to hear it. (Isabella made up for it later when Mythili asked for a full reading and Izzy complimented–and was quite impressed by–every last one of her poems). And it could be… that she’s just having scary dreams.
But I will never know. Just like her teachers will only know her as the “shy girl.” Her sisters will always think of her as the “easygoing one.” And her mother? Everything about her–her dark hazel eyes, her small smile, her desperate need to wrap her entire body around mine when she wakes in the morning–will always be an endless mystery to me. One with clues I will pick up as she grows–from those sweet lines of poetry to late-night whispers of fear–as I try to find the meaning behind the poetry that is my small, shy, loving angel.
Works Cited
a grumpy Monday
drained by rudeness, overtime
but brightened by girls
science fair success
anthology finally done
we can breathe… for now
go to sleep with grins
knowing we tried our best try
to get through this day
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