Iran speaks through musaddas,
six-line poems in Farsi script writ
                                         
                                       right
                        to
      left

giant postage stamps pasted
in a tableau, two to a row,
laid out like tarot stone
tablets from Mt. Sinai, each
nearly identical to the other                        
                                                    to my eye   
                                                    but                                                 
I can’t read the language &
Englishmen don’t understand

Musaddas writ in black on white
hard as Hammurabi’s diorite
held, by faith, impervious to bombs

Bargaining not transactional
more revelation or judgment
how the Prophet did back in the day  

Get your damn car
out of my driveway.
I don’t even know you.

Why do you think
I should tolerate you
claiming my space
as your own?

You speak like
I owe you something.
Demanding I wait
until it is convenient
for you to get out of my way.

I called for backup
and relocated your Tesla.
Good times with friends,
beats arguing with
you over texts.

The car has now entered
an enjoyable citywide edition
of “Where’s Waldo”
scheduled for tomorrow morning.

I’ll be sound asleep.

The best part of having the family you choose,

Guiding fingers and thumbs I sit with 
Andrea, nine years old, fists tight on needles 
that sing like raindrops seeking their pace
 on a tin roof. We both long for the rhythm 
of stitches easing from needle to needle 
untroubled as spring lambs following ewes.  

After an hour, there is a small swatch, 
soft as moss’s fleece with latticework 
intricate even with its youthful flaws— 
mighty in the way it binds us. 

My heart rate increases when I return to the scene in my mind.
I never imagined you, respected colleague, tenured nonetheless
Could bestow the level of vitriol I witnessed upon the head of a child.
Sixteen years is still a child, and you should know better.

I listened to it happening just outside my office door.
The child’s distress becoming heightened and more evident
Voice trembling, responses cut off again by your brash accusations
Until the tears began to flow and the sobs came uncontrolled.

At first I didn’t understand what was happening, I didn’t react.
When it clicked, I was out of my seat and walling her off from you
And your brow-beating, name calling, shaming, accusations 
Becoming louder, your frame towering over her cowering body.

I    LOST    MY    SHIT

Gulping deep breaths so that I didn’t shove you into the nearby desk
My response was mama bear protecting young…ALL young is MY young.
That’s the job…protect these precious beings and usher into adulthood.
I didn’t think I would have to protect them from one of my own.

When I finally backed you off and moved you away from your prey
I was left with the heap of eviscerated child in the corner unable to speak.
I scooped her up, made the call and delivered her safely into parents’ arms.
What to do next…how do I stop you, monster from striking again?

Immediate report to Admin, this is what I observed, what do I do with it?
It’s the right thing to do, right? I must protect and report, protect and report
Be fearless, be brave, be an advocate, be love, be righteousness, be strong!
Right will prevail and all will be well, that’s the way it works, right?

Except, that’s not the way it works
Tenured teachers, it seems, are untouchable
“Clearly you misinterpreted what you saw. Ms. Tenure would never…”
“Let’s schedule a facilitated meeting to clarify what you thought happened?”

And so it becomes painfully, crystalline
The voice of a peon won’t be heard over the thundering of tenure.
Deflated, battle worn I was left to assimilate this sickening realty.
Would I react the same way again?  YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I WOULD!

What a blessing that now
we must measure our humanity 
by our mistakes

can only identify the difference
by our flaws

The dirty water & numb minds
shall be our greatest lesson
on spelling & grammar

Patience was insane.

Everyone knew it though no one could

say what had pushed her over the edge.

Her life was no harder than that of any

farm family, filled with ups and downs,

now made worse because of her.

Her husband Lewis was never a patient

man but he hated to see his wife suffer.

The birth of their latest daughter had left her

with fanciful notions, like her grandmother,

now deceased, telling Patience she would

die long before her husband.

She cried that her grandchildren not yet born

would die of yellow fever. Perhaps it was her

obsession with death, especially after her four

year old daughter died, that made her seem

tormented by voices from the other side who

spoke to her nearly every day.

After their last child was born, it was clear

that Patience had gone mad. The rigors of farm

life and the birth of ten children had worn her

down. She neglected those still living to speak

endlessly with those no longer there as she

wandered aimlessly about.

Lewis listened to reports of the new asylum

that promised to correct damaged minds and

nerves with purgatives and tranquilizer chairs,

and, above all, rest. He sent her there, praying

she would return to him as she had been before,

whole and filled with hope for the future.

But when she came home, it was to face the deaths.

of both her grandchildren, taken by yellow fever.

Four months later, on February 2, 1841, a note in the

records of the Dutch Reformed Church reported that

Patience, “Insane for eight to ten years. Burnt to death

in the house where she was chained.”

the only cornfields i’ve encountered
were flea-ridden
probably big agged
and on the trip where i found out
my beloved was a rager
we loved july-high cornstalks
city people that we were
didn’t know what  longterm relationship
with fleas
we were forming
as we walked through
on the side of the road

surrounded by cornfields
i barricaded myself in our old
sunpatinaed
chalk-red F150
and honked the horn 
trying to alert someone
in the McDonald’s parking lot
to the danger
no one came
or called police
Iowa being so unafraid of white men
the horn finally gave way
i was left in silence
the only option to unlock the door
and continue
barricading myself next in a motel bathtub
making me late to see my prospective advisor
at the school in Michigan
that wanted to pay me to study there
feminist anthropology
curled up in a bathtub
i’m so sorry, it took me an hour to find parking

all these years later
I need a cornfield
cornsilk my mother threw out
cornsilk a powerhouse for organs
inflammation
the whole system
that’s broken in me
my synapses still afraid that growing corn
will bring fleas to my yard
irrational fear
given that i’ve irradicated fleas from the yard altogether
sulfuric wizard that i am

i think i’m ready for corn in the yard
but i dont come from starch people
so i have no idea when to plant or where they want to be
the corn seedlings i bought didn’t survive, fried in my east spring sun
what does that say about them surviving 
learning how to bring life in a yard
balancing the prospect of eating a ton of something i’ll have to pressure can
another pot
another storage problem
is the hurdle

and like most years
an illness that suboptimizes the 
timing
too late to plant this year
i guess?

seasonal people in procession