reclaim your voice.
When do unattended-to childhood patterns Turn away from shame and Toward intentional tools of destruction Requiring only a whispered demand to be handed the bleeding heart’s supply They count on your sadness to Fill their bottomless cup of gladness And before you know it You’ve been punched in the eye Swallowing excuses, like in generations…
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What they’ll say: “What’s your opinion on Palestine?” “You don’t look very Jewish.” “You look too Jewish.” “Did you know that other gentile people died in the Holocaust, too?” What they mean: “Are you a Good Jew or a Bad Jew?” (There’s no right answer) “You would survive the Shoah.” “You wouldn’t.” “Your people need…
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softening denotes a lesson learned and overcome: the reunification of soul wisdom with the mind i examine a slice of the atrium wall, striations of color hidden by a neutral crust. my heart is coated with something gray yet inside it is still alive! i wait for the hardness to weaken by waters crash and…
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On a dark and cold December night that mystified the looming melancholy stretching its wings over the starry blanket, yellow street lights flogging the obscurity and the silenced sounds hovering over the colony away from the hullaballoo of the old city. Leaning on a chaise lounge next to the foggy glass window particular of winter…
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If my heart could write forever, What would it say? Would it just make musings of the pretty shapes on pretty paper to marvel at the sounds your mouth makes? Would it be long-winded Never-ending and ever twining Or would I be overcome with joy My pen a permanent smile on my lips The words…
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When I was an afterling, a young one without knowledge, I imagined the bad things were confined to the dark. It granted me warmth and safety knowing I was gated in the sun. An invisible line, something I couldn’t see but as real and as tangible as anything that kept the monsters and the bad…
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As a woman, people hate when I don’t smile As a black woman, people hate when I smirk A knowing smile Should never belong to me Dumbstruck and following are looks that can get me by. With praise And no regard They comment on the first two in triumph Because they think I don’t know…
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I never really bought into the mythical “falling” into love. I believe in the mystical “rising” into love. The fairy dust of ancestral work. The initial dopamine seed hooks into dirt. The slow growth of oxytocin filled fibrous roots. Beauty grows, oxygen rises in the breath of The never-ending kiss of Heaven and Earth. We…
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Some sex workers Are independent, self-employed Negotiating the game With the forgotten, or unenjoyed Wide lens teaches Wisdom settles into bed “Every partnership has its jail” Beneath the sheets, this soul does not shed It wins them no money Instead a kind of sustenance Sugar-coated power, control An energy here, in abundance Emotional currency Not…
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