I’ve been reading this collection of Adrienne Rich’s essays on motherhood for months now. I pick it up, read a few pages, my worldview shifts, I put it down and look at everything through a different lens. It’s a battered, flagged, highlighted, marked up book; I have pages of notes inside it. And this, from…
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to speak to the spark in the people who made today beautiful, to thank you for your laughter, your honesty, for the things you do for me and the things you do for each other that free my hands to do for the new people who arrive or the ones who are struggling a little…
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This morning, Shark said, if Monday were a person, he’d be the most annoying person. It seemed like the start of a poem, so we pressed on–if Monday were a person, what would he be like? Shark’s poem: He’d smell like rotten eggs and wear formal clothes (but not a tuxedo) and he’d listen to…
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I’m not doing the best job of blogging. But then blogging isn’t my job. There is something strange happening that I want to report: I think I’m getting old. In a really good way. Cliches that seemed to be no more than mouthfuls of words are resonating with me. The world is starting to make…
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I am drinking a glass bottle of coke before brushing my teeth, still in bed under the white covers while my father, who had already gone out into the cold morning and seen something that I absolutely had to see sits on the other bed, dressed. I whine that waking me so early is child…
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He is shopping in a bazaar bright and spacious bubbles blow from hookahs He picks up a conch, examines an oyster with the embedded start of a pearl. He has already brought me seashells so he puts them back. Has already brought me an embroidered cloth cap that I will never wear a sequined fanny…
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My father brought me books Monet in the 90s, Mastering the Art of Drawing, The Garden of Eden And Bollywood magazines She, Femina, Stardust Heart-shaped earrings, a necklace of beads made of lacquered paper and seashells and bags with elephants embroidered on them Brightly colored scarves ridiculous t shirts grocery store flowers, arabic store bread…
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My mother tells me, as we’re laying in bed, arms folded over our eyes to block the light In her dim apartment because she never opens the blinds because natural light irritates her–she turns on lamps to read and then shields her eyes to nap. I don’t say this as an assault against my mother–it…
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Just not getting around to posting them.
You taught me to ride a bike. The metaphors here arrive fully assembled, no poet required: A father letting go, a daughter learning balance. So predictable, I wonder if the memory: sunlight, sidewalk, scabbed knees is even my own. Except that I remember the line of fear running from throat to stomach the urgency to…
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