for Kay McKay I wondered today how long it takes for someone to become an angel. Is it instantaneous? Now you're dead, now you're an angel? Is there a waiting period? A series of hoops and steps and paperwork to get desensitized from life and ready for death. Like an immigration process? A job interview? Is... Continue Reading →
Gray Choices I come from the dry cleaners chemical steam staining my shallow breath like my brother’s ashes that cannot stay on the mantle watching us wondering where to put them I come from the tulip garden tall stems like picket fences that need painting petals drop and rest in dirty sunshine sullen remnants of the bloom... Continue Reading →
Roots, Worms, and Blossoms How will the promise of age rest upon my skin? As it does the forgotten apple? The sad Macintosh left under a tree withered and no good for a pie? Will time brand me with pinches smudge my shiny skin and deplete my rightful size? Or will I be the old... Continue Reading →
This is one of my favorite performance pieces, and while I haven't performed it in a while, my daughter Riana and I were in Walgreen's recently, and it came to mind, so I pulled it out, and thought I'd share. Imagine me on a stage, wearing a pink pussy hat, of course. There would be... Continue Reading →
I am equally embarrassed, and fortunate, to be the owner of all my stuff. A woman in transition, I have spent the first four months of this year looking at it. Sorting, choosing, remembering, cleaning, tossing, and ultimately, keeping. Some things anyway. Now that I think about it, this process began most seriously ten years... Continue Reading →
I journal, somewhat obsessively. Nearly every morning. The sunrise and me. I write. It rises. I have had this partnership with the rising sun since I was a wee little thing. My day is just not right if I don't begin it writing. (And funny, the day wouldn't be right if the sun didn't rise!)... Continue Reading →
Parenting, it is argued, is most difficult when your kids are young. When the likelihood of their choking on a cigarette butt found on the ground at the neighborhood spring festival is high. And there are those who believe that parenting is most difficult when your kids are older. And the likelihood of their smoking... Continue Reading →
We're metal, we're 'Mericans. We mine it, we make it, we drive it, we drink it. We're metal. We have it in our teeth. Our joints. Our jewelry. Our music. So when they told me I had toxic levels of metal in my blood: mercury, barium, and lead, I said, "Toxic?" I am not toxic.... Continue Reading →
My Dad Kneeling in Front of Flower Bed on Abington in Detroit I look for lilacs to steal or forsythia even lilies of the valley, those shy bells of fragrance any handful hanging over a fence in an alley along the sidewalk in this mountain town some forgotten flower I can take home each spring... Continue Reading →
via Daily Prompt: Acceptance Of all the things that have saved my life, my sanity, or at least brought survival into the realm of possibility when none existed before, acceptance reigns. And whether I was surviving a moment, a month, or a catastrophe, as in a really big lifetime blow, acceptance did the job of... Continue Reading →
pocket poet 