You don’t know you ever met me
years ago at school in Buffalo.
I, an edge-clinger:
art events, photo labs,
sleeping at Essex Street.
You gradually
building your vision
out of thrift shops,
makeup counters,
dumpster diving perhaps.
Creating not snapshots
but whole lifetimes
caught.
Long-form documentaries
in a single frame—
All your characters more alive
than I know how to be.
Gammelor Goodenow
Today’s prompt is “Voyage”.
As stars become suns
then fade again to stars in passing,
I imagine a deep velvety blue
where eyes tell only dead black.
The nothingness we can see
belies the rich stew of motion
bubbling beyond our grasp:
particles, Higgs energy giving mass.
Our course is entered for exploration,
yet heavy the temptation to steer
into a black hole with hope
for stranger revelations.
Gammelor Goodenow
April is National Poetry Month, and I’m participating in a poem-a-day activity on Writer’s Digest’s poetry blog.
Today’s prompt is “Beginnings and/or Endings”.
You ended as you began.
Early spring
when flowers and chicks arrive
and you
on your aunt’s kitchen table
during Passover seder.
Part of the Promised Land
a new generation
without threat of pogroms.
Ninety-four years
of science and learning
research and teaching.
And gently pulling sand burrs
from tiny bare feet
splinters from fingers
comfort from fear.
Fading, fading into darkness.
Giving up on
food…
water…
breath.
Gammelor Goodenow
Still, the library looked like a refuge to her, a house of dreams, just as it always had.
~~~
I could not cry,
so you cried for me.
Each slow drop glistened
with forgotten memories
then fell on the withered clay
turning it into gold-veined porcelain
that glowed from within.
I turned and kissed
the crinkles
around your wet eyes.
Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work For Social Justice by Paul Kivel
(most of the text is free on google books, just google the title of the book and it should pop up)
The Heart of Whiteness by Robert Jensen
(listen to his NPR talk here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5539692)
Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s by Michael Omi & Howard Winant
How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev
(read an interview with Ignatiev here: http://racetraitor.org/zmagazineinterview.pdf)
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics by George Lipsitz
White Like Me by Tim Wise
(watch him speak via youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV-EDWzJuzk)
“Something about the subject makes it hard to name,” by Gloria Yamato
http://queertheories.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/yamato_somethingaboutthesubjectmakesithardtoname_.pdf
“Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh
http://www.isr.umich.edu/home/diversity/resources/white-privilege.pdf
A recent blog post challenging the class privilege in McIntosh’s piece, “Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person, ” by Gina Crosely-Corcoran http://thefeministbreeder.com/explaining-white-privilege-broke-white-person
“On Being White…and Other Lies” by James Baldwin
http://www.cwsworkshop.org/pdfs/CARC/Family_Herstories/2_On_Being_White.PDF
“Holding My Sister’s Hand” by bell hooks
(if you google it there should be pdf’s available for free download, the link wouldn’t paste here for some reason)
“From White Racist to White Anti-Racist: the life-long journey,” by Tema Okun, Change Work
http://www.cwsworkshop.org/pdfs/CARC/White_Identity/4_Life_Long_Journey.PDF
“Race, The Power Of An Illusion” http://www.pbs.org/race
Lanes closed.
Stuck in traffic
going nowhere but crazy,
the bridge is a gap
between jammed up
and arrived.
Have you arrived?
Vengeance. Sweet
like antifreeze
spilled in the gutter.
Your wild hair
flies behind you
long and straight
as you pump
quick-quick
down our street
never minding
the gravel and breaks,
daring your friends
to catch up.
Taunting the rules
but not the laws
acting cool
when questioned by cops;
aflutter inside.
Born too soon
or perhaps just right;
foster care
when your father died,
overdose.
Mom got clean
took you back
here
to our street.
Now she’s dead.
And you
on the cusp
of womanhood…
Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien
Dit que le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.
Voltaire
(In his writings, a wise Italian
says that the best is the enemy of the good)
Despite the more concrete difficulties I often struggle with, the biggest obstacle to progress in my writing is my insistent fear that nothing I am about to write could ever be good enough. The fear can paralyze me. Once I have something on the page, it may need polishing, revision, rearranging and so on, but it’s always better than I thought it was going to be. Based on existing evidence, I’m a decent writer, often quite a good writer. But it always feels like the next few lines of my fiction will be the worst words ever written. Too often I sit there struggling and do not write them. *sigh*
Haiku feels like a natural form to me. I want to encapsulate the world in seventeen syllables, distilling infinite existence into a dram. Which makes it difficult to be a novelist. Why not just tell my entire story in one haiku? (Or my two stories in two haiku.)
too many victims
predator’s wet dumping ground–
finally gets caught
girl loses it all
must solve problems of others–
the lost don’t return
There! All done.