There is the mythology of birthmarks that they
Represent your past lives’ ends, how you met
Your maker at the edge of the field.
What do mine say about me? My stomach
Dyed brown from a stab wound in feudal Spain,
A domestic dispute over the manzanilla olive.
Or what of the matching café au lait splotches
On both my upper knees? Groveling on scorched
Stone steps before any Athenian god who listened.
How about the mark on my neck, just above
The clavicle? Some warrior in southern Asia’s
Attempt to open my airways one last time.…
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My mother was a child of the Iron Curtain who became a woman of the Cold War. It wasn’t Ellis Island that greeted her into the land of the free but Lady Liberty herself, and every new immigrant on her flight waved back.
She, like many Russian immigrants, embraced her new country and its culture as she navigated the difficulties of learning a new language, managing tyranny of the low-paying jobs, and the strange reactions of people to her behaviors that once felt natural. But no amount of hardship and everyday challenge could tame her zest for life, curiosity about her new homeland, and a developed affection for all things Disney. And over the years, a visit to Walt Disney World became an experience she yearned for.…
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weapons aren’t just blades, knives and swords
they’re eyes that throw glances
sharp enough to cut through your ego
make you think of the ruins you’ve created
weapons are words we don’t swallow
that we allow to come up
through the broken and cracked pipes
that might burst with emotion
weapons are moving towards
uninhabitable lands filled with toxins
designed to kill the human spirit…
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my fire is not for symbolism
for your joint or cigarette
it is to make me a martyr for the war
the fight forced on those on the bottom
of the color wheel
my fire is not for symbolism
for white women to try and put out
with their tears made of punishment
and pride
it is for brown and black girls
who have never seen a way out
who have never had guidance…
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“Take me fishing,” Sherri said. “I’ll fish you under the table.” She scrunched up her face and nodded, agreeing with herself. “Let’s hit Skokie.”
“Here I was hoping you could drag me out to brunch followed by hours of thrifting.”
She lit up. “Brunch!”
“No.”
“Thrifting?”
Nolan wondered why he still used words. “Where to?” he asked. “Skokie or Lake Michigan, at Belmont? Or your dad’s?”
“Skokie. Or brunch.”
“Nobody said brunch,” he said.
Sherri arched an eyebrow. “You keep pronouncing the word wrong. It’s ‘jasslight.’ Skokie.” She won.
North of Chicago, pretty far north of Skokie, even, was a designed chain of lakes called Skokie Lagoons. Longtime Potawatomi marshland prone to flooding, the lakes were carved out in the largest Civilian Conservation Corps project ever undertaken, from 1933 to 1941.…
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Tom Jefferson’s mind careened from liberty to human events and every which way, so he took a break from his declaration drafting to go shopping.
Tom loved clothes, as all the finest men do, and he especially loved books, but when he got to the marketplace he wanted a little more of the bustle of common humanity. That was the whole point, after all, and a little elbow rubbing would clear his mind all the better.
He headed to the noise of the auction block. It was a slow day, but there were enough lookers and buyers assembled to occupy him. He shook some hands and said hellos and chatted a bit.
Then his attention turned to the block. A beautiful specimen had been led up, looking strong, healthy and young.…
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You were a person, you lived, and
you tried to avoid pain. But pain is entangled in life, and
can’t be extracted. Still–
like every human being, you tried.
You were a woman, deified and dismissed, both angel
and monster, always through a lens, always
compelled to be beautiful.
Beautiful to whom?
You were a mother. Your heart was split open
like a pomegranate– sacrificed,
though it never felt like a sacrifice.
You were a writer (possibly)
every tender meat hook of an image on the page,
reality poured through the sieve,
and so little made it through in the end.
You are tired.
No longer care to continue unpacking
mysteries, rising and falling with the karmic wheel—
up and down, the lesson never learned.
This page, too, will be turned.…
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