Under the Fainting Couch
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The body is like a computer unless you’re a doctor or computer scientist you have no idea how it works you turn it on, wake up in the morning (if you’re lucky, supposedly) and in the middle of doing something writing a story, planning a trip, adding to your calendar, making breakfast, reading, dressing to go for a walk on this sunny, sometimes cloudy day there’s a break in flow a freeze a sharp…
You who I wish I loved, the neighbor with such a huge American flag outside your home I hope you trip on it as you go back and forth to your gas guzzling car, outgassing clothing detergent and dryer sheets as your kind of American is more scared of smells than guns You who I wish I loved, a family who when we moved in were so nice and helped us unpack the furniture and brought over a bottle of…
For Renee Good, Rubén Ray Martinez, Alex Pretti, Keith Porter, Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Francisco Gaspar-Andres, their familles, friends and neighbors, protestors, and everyone brutalized by ICE.
Stopped at a red light on Randall and San Bruno more of a boulevard than avenue smashing my fists into the steering wheel sobbing like a banshee I would be a she no longer not without my breast now scattered with cancer There was no way I could traverse the gorge the never going to be the same I was losing my womanhood that I didn’t before know was about my breast and mother and nourishment Eyes…
This morning I woke and said I can’t believe the monster is dead I hadn’t remembered the anniversary of my father’s death two days and twenty one years ago Passing is a better word as in passing the baton like all men with batons whose guns and fists form imprints on the cells of those in their path on their road to glory Their imprint forever shaping lives residing in blood the eyes and ears and…
During the pandemic, at the urging of my former therapist who thought I was funny, I started a line of t-shirts and other products.
Some years ago, my partner took a group of eight year old kids to an outing at the planetarium.
When I was teaching in Italy one summer, I took a week off to visit Perugia.
I often wondered what I would have done when Hitler came to power Jews rounded up, along with “loose women” gays, people with disabilities, people with color, dissidents and Roma Just like Latinos, Arabs, Africans, Asians and even some original inhabitants today in this One Nation Under God When I didn’t yet know I was the granddaughter of Eastern European Jews fleeing from pogroms I thought I…
Come, blow away my worry like ivy strangling a redwood tree choking the nourishment rising from its roots When will the terrorist attacks come exploding from the cells of a diseased country not our own, on this diseased country of ours men fighting wars, where are the women in all this? Come and drown the rage of those with guns in their groins shooting at whatever makes them feel disempowered…
