Swimming pools
Hot dogs
Potato salad
Freezer pops
The smell of wood smoke
From a campfire
And hot chocolate
Graham crackers
Burnt marshmallows
On the end of a stick
Tire swing over the lake
Girls in bikinis
Boys in cutoff shorts
T-shirt tossed in the grass
A sandy towel
Shivering under a full moon
I really should reach out more,
back to the old pot and steam
back to the savor in the air
when Dr. Tom was alive
I was the cook, he the dishwasher
now i close all the doors to the kitchen
Penelope’s mom is neutral to me
but likes the way I feed her hunger
I barely try to keep to her good side
the precious butter, the blue throb
of shrimp, the sauce balsamic
a dish from my navy days,
it was how I won Dr. Tom’s heart
when Penelope’s mom tracked me down
(unbeknownst to me I was her grandfather)
she was a little off-put I was living
with a man. she recovered
at the offer of baby-sitting services
just before dark the doorbell
and wild barking are simultaneous:
two artist friends, their dog & gummies,
lo and behold the repast passes
When officers gave Rodney King
50 blows with their whole bodies,
& metal batons, in tandem,
shot a stun gun at his chest,
on camera,
there was no consequence.
His brown skin,
size, strength, list of sundry sins
kept his suffering “other”
even though we all saw,
we all knew it had been
excessive, rage-filled.
Generational anger
gathered its voice,
first in righteous indignation,
passive resistance,
but relief did not come,
so the warning was chanted:
No justice
No peace.
Fists smashed, glass flew,
arms threw flaming rag-stuffed
bottles at businesses.
At the intersection,
Reginald Denny was pulled
from his truck & sacrificed
by a mob seeking biblical vengeance:
a cinder block to the skull
for a billy club to the face.
No justice
No peace.
I was just about the age
my daughter is now
when I watched my hometown
burn, that time.
This fall, I watched it again
from across the country,
my old neighborhood on the news,
homes & businesses gutted
to charred skeletons. I tracked
the flames like some
predatory animal I had
managed to tag,
on wildfire maps,
calculating speed & breadth
of the destruction
relative to my sister’s location.
Now we are witnessing
the incipient stage
of the next burning.
Workers ripped off the job,
parents torn from children.
The sanctuary city
now a myth.
No justice.
The underbrush is short,
the people’s lungs
still clearing smoke
from the last inferno
but new kindling is growing,
fed paper thin tweets
written by gaslight
doused in the alcoholic breath
of the fire chief.
No peace.
someone told me once
“don’t shrink yourself to be held.”
and yet i still did.
pieces of myself so small
that i slipped between fingers.
All living humans share a common maternal ancestor, known as Mitochondrial Eve. Every human can trace their matrilineal lineage back to a single woman who lived in Africa approximately 200,000 years ago. Not the first woman, but the one whose DNA has been passed down unbroken through generations to all living humans.
Thought I was special
My momma is black like hers
Great great grand a slave
The DP wants to introduce me to the great
character actor: MS. And my first reaction is wow!
I love his movies. But these days, I have so little
to say.
Just last week the director asked my name
and before I knew it, he was walking away.
Bri turned to me and was like, “Dude, you just stared
into the distance. He was talking to you.”
I feel such a deep sense of meaninglessness.
I stare into the camera, and open my mouth
but nothing comes out. There’s no fourth wall;
I’m not mugging. I’m not even here.
But the DP says MS is a “real blast to be around.”
He told me last week that they sometimes
smoke crack alone together. And he thinks
I would really get a kick out of meeting a professional,
but I pretend I have stuff to do.
“__” I say.
After a minute he says, “ok whatever dude.
It’ll be a good time is all I’m saying.”
Lay your head upon the pillow of your arm,
like Mother Goose tucking her bill into feather down.
Forget, for a moment, your heartbeat.
Watch sideways the little gray gosling clouds
skim the surface of the lake.
There is a breeze.
There is a mist.
It is summer.
You are here.
I’m not sure I know what normal feels like anymore,
but I want to to get back there.
Not some perfect state
but a level of pain and energy
that I can handle,
without the nausea.
I don’t want to sleep through my weekends
and my summer
and my life.
I’m not asking for
the deeply weird dreams to stop
or some miracle cure for my headaches,
but a version of life I was used to,
one that fit better
if not exactly right.
I want to feel
the same kind of bad as before,
not this new worse.
I want to reach the pathetic level of productive
I used to be able to achieve
instead of this nearly nothing.
I want to get back to normal again,
whatever that is
(for it has been so many different things
at different times).
