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Race
The Wedding Gift
From the moment Ashlee asked me to be a bridesmaid, / I understood what my wedding gift needed / to be. It wasn’t the set of tumblers / I shipped her from 14th Street, daffodils and dandelions / climbing the sides. It wasn’t helping her angel of a mother / practice her speech, making pencil marks for pauses / and every deep breath. No, my gift / to Ashlee started when she told me Cate from college / would be a bridesmaid, too.
November 2021Life, Without Imitation
Some nights, when medication and meditation have failed to put me to sleep, I think of the relatives who abandoned my family to become white people.
October 2021On White Violence, Black Survival, And Learning To Shoot
But some things are clear: Power begets violence. Violence reinforces power. White Americans damn well know this much.
September 2021The Longest Road
Margareta Matache On The Persecution And Perseverance Of The Roma
I think it is fascinating how the Roma, a people who have continuously moved or been expelled from one country or another, and who have been often denied the use of their language, have managed to hang on to a sense of Roma-ness, if you will.
August 2021The Interpreter
The first time I saw Bak Hoo, she was peeing into a big Del Monte pineapple can in the basement. I froze on the cellar steps at the sight. Bak Hoo was my great-grandma.
August 2021Refugees, Late Summer Night
Out there, in the dark, they could have been / anyone: refugees from Rwanda, slaves pushing north. / Palestinians, Romani, Armenians, Jews. . . . / The lights of Tijuana, that yellow haze to the west, /could have been Melos, Cracow, Quang Ngai. . . .
August 2021Sunbeams
August 2021The problem with labels is that they lead to stereotypes and stereotypes lead to generalizations and generalizations lead to assumptions and assumptions lead back to stereotypes. It’s a vicious cycle, and after you go around and around a bunch of times you end up believing that all vegans only eat cabbage and all gay people love musicals.
Trap
TRAP noun. \’trap\ 1. a device or enclosure designed to catch and retain or to kill animals, typically by allowing entry but not exit or by catching hold of a part of the body; see also “CAGE”; see also “SHACKLE” / As in: If an animal is caught in a trap, it will probably die there.
October 2020Love Poem
Brooklyn April 2020 | even now the old men sit / at their corner on the stoop / the three of them on the stairs / one on top of the other / recycled masks hanging / from their faces to appease / whoever loved them / and begged them not to go out / into the street
September 2020