Poem of the Day - Archive - April 2021

4/30/2021

Weft
by Ed Dang

I am weaving myself a mask using careful over-understatements,
Pokeweed and
Burlap,
It can be hard to tell from a distance,
Something to wear to the gig tonight.
Eyeholes painstakingly spaced,
I need to interface with the audience.

Some people are social butterflies,
I’m a social submarine,
Navigating deep unfriendly waters,
With nothing but a prayer and a carpenter’s level.

My ears pop and I’m down again,
Six stringed security blanket hums me into a fugue state
Eyes flashing behind my carefully arranged,
Under-overstatements.

4/29/2021

For Ma’Khia
By Biko Eisen-Martin

There are some of us who are remembers
 
The police celebrated Chauvin’s guilty verdict with a gunshot
Left a 15 year old girl dead in the street
Memorializing the act of killing
Pumping blood into the veins of a giant
That stomps from sea to shining sea
The sun never sets on their trigger fingers
The night gives no rest to our children
 
I don’t need to watch the news
The gunpowder in the air tells the story
 
The city is named after one of the most gory villains
To give glory to white supremacy
Columbus Ohio they call it
 
Full circle
Their bullets travel in time
Whiz around the planet
Children falling before they can call their mothers
 
My little sisters and brothers
It took 400 years from Columbus’s arrival
For the Haitian revolution
To knock imperialist of the land Columbus stood
 
It better not take 400 years
For us to revolt again
To get these killer police
Of stolen land
Where they murder children and go home to their children
So they can grow old and kill our children again
 
My little brothers and sisters
I remember the first time I was accosted by the police
I don’t remember the second, tenth or 100th
 
Can’t tell you how many times I had to force my pride into my stomach
Face dirty on the concrete
Praying I’d make it through  another search
Don’t get used to that hurt
 
Swallowing your words is like swallowing your teeth
Sharpen your mind
Until your bite is strong enough to take back these streets
 
Its going to take every one of you
To turn history inside out
To alter the trajectory of Columbus’ legacy
To alter the trajectory of San Francisco
 
No trial will bring back the Ohlone
No poem will bring back Ma’Khia Bryant
 
The black Jacobins defeated the French with self love and machetes
Why they feared her with a knife
 
I see Erzuli Dante dancing in the sky
Teaching spirits how to yield a sword
Before forming in their mothers wombs
 
All wounds return as warriors
Saints, No longer confused
that christendom will never be christlike
 
Angels need the living to protect them
To speak their names day and night
 
Another black future destroyed to keep Columbus white
To celebrate Columbus
And every life
White supremacy will claim to remain on the throne
Leaving piles of bones on our corners
For mothers to sort through
Because not every victim gets a news cycle
Just a noose rifle while their killers parade
 
Meet me under the plantation
We are sharpening blades
 
The one Ma’Khia Bryant was holding is around my neck
The one Mario Woods was was holding
I’ll use to carve our names in the cliffs of ocean beach
They will remember the last 3%
 
Before they try to sweep us under history
 
Don’t ask me why I am wearing a pigs head on my head like the online wore deer
If you know you know
Either we grow or become bones
 
1492 has turned into a millennium
But revolutionaries are perennial
 
And its time for black eyed pees
 
Its time for another Haitian revolution
With the whole diaspora up to speed
 
Put some revolutionary news in the air to reads
Until the sun sets on the giant
 
And our babies can sleep

4/28/2021

SMOKE
by Marian Villafaña

We shouldn’t be able to change
the water and the wind
but we do.

Human bodies,
pulsing cables
that carry water, electricity,
and the color red,
flooded with responsibility.

The smoke of the wildfires
in my lungs,
as the ashes
from my homeland volcano.

The smoke is us.
The fire is us.
That fire is ours.

It’s okay
to breathe in the smoke
for a couple of days
because

                  we are the fire

we are the forests
    
                  we are the rest of the animals

running away.

Forests mean clouds.
Forests mean rivers.
Forests mean insects.

I’m not from here
and I take pride for having a hard time
pronouncing “Forests mean insects.”

The sun
where it is
means water

                   but we don’t understand the sun.

There are flowers blooming everywhere
    
                    without us noticing them.

4/27/2021

Sonnet for Lewis
by Marilyn J. Dykstra

In youth, we hiked up snowy mountain peaks
And overpasses chasing thunderstorms
Across knife edges and snowy patches
Through icy alpine streams that rush downhill.
Turning sixty, my knee began to creak and ache,
Then replaced with titanium, plastic, and glue,
You cooked, cared, and coached me back to health,
So we could hike through hills of purple lupine.
But tonight, you lie in bed and wake me up
To fetch our son to lift you out
In dead of night to take a piss
And to your face bring a smile or flinch
This morning, I lead you beside creek banks of poppies
Waiting for thumps from my cane in your hand.

4/26/2021

PRO MUSLIM
by Michael Rothenberg

She wants to know if I am pro Muslim
Why not pro Muslim?
Of course, I am pro Muslim!
Hugely pro Muslim
Pro Muslim like my life depends upon it
And while I am at it
I am pro Jew, pro Christian,
pro Buddhist, pro Fish, pro Swan,
pro Rose, pro Daffodil, pro Biotics,
pro Sun, pro Sky, pro Moon,
pro Trout, pro Limpkin
Pro Marmalade, pro Peanut Butter,
pro Volone, pro Cheddar
and pro Poetry!
Have you a got a problem with that?

4/25/2021

Cutie
by Jireh Deng

Coated by your exhale, I am a mandarin
orange, ripe for your picking.
My skin is tender rough, but still
soft enough for you to peel
back to see my naked sweetness.
I want you to choose me
from a bag a dozen, judge
my weight in your palm
& press your lips to my bare,
sigh as I burst in your consumption.
I would let you feast on me,
I exist to be swallowed by you.
Here I am to foster your nurturing
& growth. Slice by slice,
I disappear into my desire to be
desired by you. I don’t want to say
a word because you would
know my fiber and being
is always an affirmative
yes.

4/24/2021

imagining a conversation with my mom
by Anouk Yeh

i cannot imagine how
you could watch a burning city

and press your arms behind your back
i do not know what it is that blurs

the ellipse of a jacket hood into the oval
of a bullseye, or the barrel of a toy

gun into the barrel of a casket, or what splinters
a boy’s tender belly joy into

a threat, but i wonder if you
ever read about Latasha Harlins

the fifteen year old Black girl murdered
by a Korean shopkeeper just years after

Vincent Chin, how both died from cloaked fingers
cracking a trigger: one of them shot

by the Grand Wizard, the other by his
cowardly apprentice, i wonder

if you know which role we play
in that movie, how we are no strangers

to having scalloped wax poured down our throats, our comfort
built on the butt of a whip, so harsh

our amnesic hands melting
wax for any other other than us, so disposable

i imagine you rolling
your eyes as you listen, but i also

imagine a hearse rolling
through our city like a parade float

i imagine a man draining blood
from his brother’s wrist and presenting the cruor

as wine, i imagine you
wading through a valley of whistling corpses

closing your eyes and
complimenting the breeze

4/23/2021

THE LIBRARY OF MY DREAMS
by Virgina Blair

Welcome to the library of my dreams.
Come all ye who are weary, cold, and hungry.
Drifters possessing nothing, the homeless.
Enter these open portals, young, old, disabled, forgotten.
A comfort stop to wipe the tears of children unloved,
of mothers bruised and battered from life gone wrong.
 
Bookshelves beckon—a magic carpet to lift you airborne
to far lands. Word-visions from fragrant temples
to the Land of Midnight Sun, rainbow ribbons
waving across the skies. Deep are the pages
of laughter, tears, the sweet, the bitter, the sparkle of stars.
Finger the pages of the red depth of Hades, crime, sex, drugs,
or the redemption of love. Burnt are the pages of soul kisses
in strong, beloved arms. The choice is yours.
 
Passengers of the street—black, white, brown,
round eyes, almond eyes, no eyes at all—all aboard
to the multihaven, to rest, paint, sing, dance or pray.
No charge, no questions. Come in, find love.
Be naked of your woes. Turn the pages of joy. Lift
your prayer hands of compassion to all who enter here.
Bridge the canyon. Collect not the cobwebs.
Embrace each other in this Freedom Hall
far from bitter life winds. The flags of prejudice
do not fly in the library of my dreams.

4/22/2021

Good Company
for Al Young-you will be deeply missed
by Kim Shuck

People say things about artists in general
Often about poets in particular
About anyone with a voice that shivers the pillars of living
Even if only read from the page
That we are
As a group
Difficult
Distracted
Anti-social
And it may be that you were the exception that proves it all
 
When I stop crying I will only remember you laughing
Your advice about good music
 
From the gulf to the Pacific
Water sang you
You sang
Water and
Other soft determinations
You as song
Your songs
Your joyful
Your quiet
Powerful
Politic

4/21/2021

We the People
by SUSAN KITAZAWA

That woman
just said
You people
to Tiana.
Tiana doesn’t like this
one bit
but
she hasn’t figured out
what to say.
Not yet.

Perhaps
you have been
caught and tagged
as one of
You People.
Micro-chipped
like a pet
like livestock.
Perhaps you
don’t know what to say
either
when the
You People
net
ensnares you.
What do
You people
want?
Why can’t
You people
understand?
You People
always over-react.

Sometimes the snare
is hidden under
flowering vines.
You People
have such clean hair
have such rhythm
are so polite
You people
cook food that’s
out of this world
get straight A’s
can shoot hoops
like no one else
live so close
to Mother Earth.
You people.

We the people.
We the people
truly long
for that
more perfect union.
We the people.
We
the people.

4/20/2021

Blues for Malcolm X
by Al Young

When I decided to go hear you speak
that week, it was Oakland, it was way out
west, it was long before Blue Tooth tech,
it was youth, way beck before the truth
got put on commission. I was older
than the early Sixties, younger than the rain.

It was when a café colleague declined
my invitation for her to join me to catch you
that I got it right. She was white.
She declined. She declared: “No, you go.
I don’t think he’ll like me very much.”
My political black friends- none of them
had the time, either. I took the bus.

To bust the chops of the integrationists-
your mission exactly. You carried it out
with charisma and charm. For dignity
and equality you spoke. “I love all black,
brown, red and yellow people, “ you said
at the close of your spellbinding talk.
Then you blew us kisses. This is memory.

Now the very government that shot you
down for dead has made you postage,
stampable, sendable, official at last.
Does this surprise you? Official history
-a snake that hisses, a snake that hushes-
smoothes you out, burnishes. I still prefer
the kids who called you Malcolm Ten.

They didn’t know where to hide you, so
They put you on a stamp. With Booker T.,
Who wouldn’t sit with Woodrow Wilson
And the first Lady at his White House Dinner,
You wanted us to separate and split.
And that was it: You, Malcolm X, would fix
The system with the ballot or the bullet
May these blues clarify your red position.

View Al Young's work in the Library catalog

4/19/2021

My Lowell High School
1960 as recalled in 2014
by JUDITH LEVY-SENDER

I pass my old school in iconic Haight Ashbury
named after James Russell Lowell, now John Adams Adult School.
Across the street I go to the Bread and Butter Café and drink Fiji water, and eat an avocado and cream cheese sandwich on a sesame bagel.
It used to be a pharmacy, and still has the remnants of wood and brass drawers.
We used to sit at the soda fountain on red leather seats like the other high school jerks,
I sipped my coffee black while they drank colas. We all smoked, some pretending to be Bohemians.

Governor Pat Brown, Carol Channing, Stephen Breyer went to Lowell, too.
It was like Boston Latin, Creme de la Creme of Academe.

Then came the iconoclasts. Among them one married a writer, Sender, the other a Steinbeck.
A whole testy zoo of us caught between superciliousness and depression,
who followed teachers such as Mr. Mason: sensual-lipped, bald T.S. Eliot bespectacled, WWII veteran, married to Colette from Paris.
He let us hide from the cheerleading rallies at lunch, the footballers and acolytes who yelled "Yay, Yay, Indians!”
I called out the racist mascot, later to be banished, in a ”California Tomorrow” article.

Our enclave studied every slanted rhyme and synecdoche, crafting poems, playing guitars and banjos in room 313.
We were children of Unitarian ministers, civil rights advocates, psychiatrists who authored for example: "The Quest for Identity."
One day after school, we read to Mr. Mason a summary of our final essays, such as mine about
"The Four Loves “by C.S. Lewis," "Cry the Beloved Country," by Alan Paton, "Sons and Lovers" by D.H. Lawrence and Erich Fromm's "The Art of Loving."

In my head I imagined a kiss from our balding genius.

After school we students "wondered and wandered" through Hayes-Masonic half-deserted streets
to the local Chinese tea-room up the next block where we pondered life over green tea leaves and Chow Mein and mused about whether "the world would end in ice or in fire…” and “favored those who wanted desire."

That spring of ’60 we wore pleated bandstand skirts, black turtlenecks, leather bracelets, pirate buckled shoes and pink lipstick.

Then there were the weekends for study and for fun.
Some students would go see "Psycho "with Bill Gold in his white jaguar or
if you belonged to my group,
we'd
instead
go to
readings at City Lights,
pepper our language with French or lines from Ferlinghetti, Kerouac or Ginsberg..

Where is that coterie, those friends in quest of identities – today all septuagenarians?

Where is that "lost generation"
of
then?

4/18/2021

COME, BEAST WITH ME (for Michael, Diane, Q.R., and Lawrence)
by D.S. Black

Go Beast, old man — she told me.
That’s easy for you to say
I’m not gonna mince meaning
Beauty and the ineffable F-word

effin jay-walkin’ mask-talkin’
lockdown a knock-in not mockin’
these rockem-sockem turn-style live
streaming xylophone teeth-gleam
missed opportunities squandered
bored game’s imitation of life
 
I heard the beast call, and I heed it.
 
Meat science, companies of flesh, gourds of
tears cellared for years
For the love of catacombs and Amontillado
the Beast Poet deposed in surly repose
a deep draft unchained released from encrustations of
nitre a gaseous tag cloud of nitrous released from a
cylindered whippet on a late crisis actor’s cakewalk.
 
Beast crawl calling out my meat, my not-so inner aminal
Did I misspeak, did a word come out edgewise
inverted, transposed, syllables flapping in the breeze?
Puhleeze.
Whatever you do: do not call the po-lice.
 
A sip from the Silver Age and
The centuries surround me with fire
sighed Mandelstam, his fate sealed
by Stalin a ruthless man of steel
when the time comes
I hear the owl call my name
I heard the beast call, and I heed it.
 
Now more so than ever. Fire is a rival
fleets in on its own course and trajectory
catalyzed by incivil disconnect
the environment the noo-bios-fear
contagious disdain for knowledge
the avarice of housing and coddling
clueless rich not to mention
the forgetting of tree wisdom.
 
We’re in a time on a decisive cusp it’s
recuperation or I dare not say
(terminal devastation?) rejecting the rapture the
b.s. of nothing doing (that is: fuck everything)
a way of life, a given that is not begotten just as
a cotton mist lazes into view.

4/17/2021

Feathers of Gold
by Anna Scotti

Last night you came to me, barefoot,


nightgown damp and twisted with sleep,


and said you’d lost a thing with four rooms


and no doors. That’s easy, I said. Your heart.


Last night you turned, pushing the dark


from your eyes with both fists –I’m calling and

calling but only my own voice answers - and I

smoothed the blankets around you and whispered

echoes on water, feathers of gold. Last night


you muttered, an acorn, a chestnut, and many eyes,

but cannot see, and I knew that you would cry


out, still trembling from dreams of sphinxes


and corridors, deserts, hot breath. Hush, I told


you. Never. Forever. The ocean. I will.

4/16/2021

Diary of an Insomniac
by (Hediana Utarti)

1.
The snore goddesses are neglecting me  
Maybe juggling hails left by the storm is more thrilling
than flying over to my roof sprinkling sleeping dust
I lay awake waiting, searching for the tip of their long scarves
slithering in the purple sky
I’m counting to thousands  
Running out of dreams to dream
Foghorn echo, vanishing and,
 the five-dollar clock ticking, stabbing my ears.

2.
A crow flies out of my worn-out blanket
disappears into the ceiling
I see you, by the door
In your suit, ready to go
It is 2am and the winter rain fall endlessly on the asphalt--
bright under street lights--stoic, stark, lifeless
On tv, the kids who lost their limbs in war smile faintly
The gaze of abandoned dogs, empty
The crow slides back onto my desk
Holding a fortune cookie in its beak
Pronouncing “you will be showered with riches someday”
You fade away
The clock thumps
Battered my bones

3.
Tell me tell me what you demand,
you who sit on my bed and breathe on my faceright when my eyelids fall.Is that you, who scream into my ears, shake me with force,And throw me to the gloomy hallway where I could see your shadow sometimesHave you lived here long time, hey Muse?Will you let me doze off tonight for once?
Let me descend into that deep pondinto its swirl, endless, boundless,where I can see the eyes of the fish, eels and wormlight up just like the stars.
Lady, in the abyss I’m content,
                                                    will you be tempted to come? 

4/14/2021

Avian Existentialism
by Keeley Finn

Pigeons aren’t afraid
Not when humans scatter
Hide their faces
And throw breadcrumbs

Pigeons aren’t afraid
The humans are lonely
Walking solo, suddenly interested
In the business of the birds

Pigeons aren’t afraid
They don’t run from humans
Not anymore
Humans barely walk

Pigeons aren’t afraid
Their lives are better
Not like the humans
Doomed looks under masks

Pigeons aren’t afraid
Where are the humans?
No more bread crumbs
No more scattered pairs

Pigeons aren’t afraid
Because
Pigeons are still here

4/13/2021

WTF 2020?!: A Neighborhood Anthem
by MERCILEE JENKINS

Nobody cries as loud or laughs as hard.
Nobody knows how to celebrate like we do.
Give us a reason and we bring out the pots n’ pans
We bang until those who don’t understand, complain.
We hope to wake the dead because the shadows of so
many young men walk with us and they feel “mighty real.”

My neighborhood knows how to throw a party
in the darkest hour to provide care, we clean up
our own messes, but we can set the town on fire
when we’re wronged. We bring out wedding dresses
and give them away when we are allowed to marry.

We love a parade, a march, a picnic, a dance, a speech
over a wonky speaker on a truck and will drink champagne
out of a paper bag when our team wins, our candidate,
our country decides to give a damn about queers,
Black citizens, immigrants and those who are dying
of this plague. There will be others.

The Castro knows how to put up a stage, put up a fight,
light a candle and never stop flying our freak flag.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence guide the way.
We know how, and it hurts plenty, but once in a rainbow moon
I can open my front door and hear the roar of pure joy.

Special thanks to Sylvester for his song, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” 

4/11/2021

Invitation to Dance
by JEAN LOURA

I am signaling you through
               the light of consciousness

         shining on truth
               on thought
                 on feelings
                    perceptions

Poetry grants free form
                         to express yourself

            in words arranged
                         as poets dance with them

           finding ways to bend
                          sway    quiver    reel
                             exult   swing and   fall
                                     down below ground

           rise up through moon clouds
                                     and beam back again

                          Poets are astronauts
                                                    of the mind
                              they are healers
                                            translators
                                                somehow making sense
                                                      of indecipherable existence

                                                                                                 so flawed
                                                                                                   so precious

March 1, 2021
- after Ferlinghetti

4/10/2021

Unease
by Sharon Elswit

He knew
the raccoons were planning
to try the doorknob with their clever thumbs
and gain entrance
as soon as it got dark
but he failed to lock the door
so as not to frighten us,
a definitive click
would alert us to dangers
perhaps in the very construction of the wooden door itself.
Those same raccoons distracted us by day
outside
hanging upside down
curled into balls
hairs sticking out like hedgehogs as they cupped
round the swinging birdfeeder
and thrust their heads in
to steal peanut butter and seeds left for phoebes
We laughed
but it was a trick
Now they take turns, the raccoons
stretch out toenails and balance on hind feet
grasp and shift the doorknob
to the left, to the right
They grow more massive on the porch
It was his job to tell us and instead
he left the door unlocked
The raccoons will enter without knocking
move in
leave yellow crystals
with the stench of subway corners and
it won’t feel like our home again for a long long time

4/9/2021

ghazal for asian americans
by Karina Fantillo

laid transcontinental railways crouched as denied americans
skin reeks of manure from stables where resided americans

raised to bow or pagmamano our elders not knock
them down like mahjong from behind in america  

disease helixes fevered globe gagging gasps
a virus isn’t chinese, asian or mine, america

no yellow bellies, we stand bruised indigo to stop
hiss on spider silk hair as slanted eyes blind america

i was a dear little girl, white woman clutched her child’s
hand when in my brown face she couldn’t find america

4/8/2021

Getting Drunk
by Julia Vinograd

I’m drunk of fire-hydrants, doorways and cockroaches.
I washed down winos on the rocks with a twist of the blues
I’m sloshed on the undiluted streets.
I’ve been gulping down high rises, neon-lit martinis
and ambulance stingers.
A spare dime bobs in my glass like an olive.
I’ve drunk the drawn beer of a knife and got wasted on garbage.
I’ve been tossing off rip-offs and giving my gullet
The nice warm glow of a burn job with a chaser of screams.
            Tomorrow I’ll have a hangover
             and they’ll call it a city.

From a A Symphony for Broken Instruments, Zeitgeist Press

4/7/2021

UPON HEARING A RECORDING
At the Exploratorium
by Tamsin Smith

I am listening to Muriel Rukeyser
Conjugating water into wine
À la paramecia amid the pop and hiss
Of other poetical scientists
Something about cilia-surrounded horns
Makes me strain for Bunk Johnson 
See I’d spit teeth to learn the trumpet
Or meet the high priestess of soul
Who would never surrender the sound of her own
Ache to feel less alone
Secure in her lady slipper self
Never forcing the choice
Between waiting or running
Or acting like you’ve won
Like President Eileen Myles
In her White House without homelessness
A poet in every pot
Not wandering lonely or mild
She raised a platform for two women loving
A female face to grace a greenback
But hey I have wives too
More money than currency
And a sterling child
Who gives thanks for winter
Doesn’t need a metonym
Or stand in religion
For certain people
Certainly those certain people
You miss even as you meet them
Wishing you could never leave and keep on
Loving nonetheless
Your card said manifest
A there-there as Gertrude Stein observed
The language we all speak
Repeats but did you
Mean it when you said the words
You’d give up
Oysters just for me
A ritual to be now and new
Happy on this stage in realization
Color is nothing but a confusion of light
Glory to be book-drunk people-drunk
& pulsing with oblique destiny
Your card said forgiveness
One atom dispersed and another split open
A social algorithm solved
That can’t be sold
Or blown by mere
Molecular embouchure
Slang formed notes
Pulled apart in segments
A peel of hot brass
Citrus bright
Nostalgia for tomorrow-
Tomorrow
I am so-so
Grateful for this life

4/5/2021

Night Rain
for Brianna
By Wanda Sabir  ©2020 All rights reserved

We are the girls who get up when pushed down
Shake off the pain and keep walking ignoring the blood dripping from ripped shirt
Taking off the offensive item
Our shame in the dirt where we drop it
In the dust
The clouds a place to hide until we can re-member where we placed our hearts
II
We are the girls who grit our teeth to keep our tongues from jumping out of our mouths
We are so full of ourselves we have to open channels so that we don’t explode
We levitate
Fly and try to remember boundaries
Human boundaries
Limitations and rules adults press like gravity
When we’re into grace and gratitude and escape

III
We are the girls who don’t have addresses
Girls you can’t find
Girls you’d better appreciate now, ‘cause ya blink and it might be forever
We are that impossible to grasp
Hold
Destroy

IV
Destruction
That is a problem
We are the girls who abhor reformation
We like flying instead of walking
Leaping and singing instead of sleeping
We lay me down to sleep when we die and not a second before
We too busy thinking and plotting and planning our future to doze off

V
We the girls who get sent to the office

Learn to smoke cigars with the principal
And blow smoke and laughter in teachers’ faces
We are the smart girls
We are the girls who figure it out long before the answer is discovered
We only ask for a small royalty cut
We are the girls who know her worth and make a world pay and pay and pay
We not taking any checks
Nope
Gold, silver and . . . pearls
We like the trade
VI
We are the mean girls
We are the girls that will cut your throat before you think about cutting ours
It’s easier that way, ‘cause we are the kind of girls you either love or hate
The binary is hella clear

We step over the dead,
Burying our secrets with the slain
We travel light and don’t allow hitchhikers
We are not into charity and well, if we have enough to share--
We probably won’t
Yeah, we that girl!
VII
We hard ‘cause we learned drinking formula, the formula
Even family is unreliable
Family can hurt you worse that an enemy
Something about the blood
The way family organs are stitched together along a seam (that fits perfectly next to kin)
Carry a seam ripper and amputate it before it atrophies
A prosthesis is better than gangrene
Cut your loses
Talk mean
‘Cause the world ain’t feeling no pussy cat
Wear your armor, cause the armor gets respect and respect spends a lot further than
kindness
Fear is an even better deal, but fear is hard to sustain

Ammunition is expensive
And then you need a firing range and ducks

VIII
We are the girls who give birth to themselves
Who never had a mama
Who don’t miss what they never had

IX
Mean girls make it rain, so carry an umbrella.

X
We are the girls who live in cars
Who walk the streets
Who ride BART all night
Whose looks will rip your heart out

We are the girls wishing for a bit of peace
But all we find is trouble
We are the girls who call home and hang up before there is an answer
We are the girls who erase memories
And feel so alone
We are the girls who can’t forget and can’t forgive
We are the mean girls
Tough and strong and invincible
Between layers insecurely latched
We admit
“Mean girl” is a persona that can’t last

4/4/2021

We’re still here, but it’s getting old.
Cajoled to follow the rules we were told,
Living our lives within our own household.

We’ve been with this pandemic for almost a year.
So far, we’ve been able to persevere,
But it’s time to breathe in a new atmosphere.

Is that light ahead at the end of the tunnel?
Or will it narrow to the wrong end of a funnel?
Are we making progress, or just befuddled?

Vaccines have been rolling out,
But my anti-vax friends have been sowing some doubt.
And I can understand what they’re talking about.

The vaccines have only been approved for experimental use.
With pesticides and chemical additives still on the loose
Should more foreign substances into me be introduced?

The government lied about Iraq, and about Vietnam,
Ignored white supremacists—said terrorists only come from Islam
They said we’re really a peaceful nation—just study the psalms.

Who can we trust, and under what conditions?
Still, I want to see this coronavirus in full remission.
So, poke me with that needle, you have my permission.

What can we do after we’ve been injected, protected, no fear of infected?
If you think life will return to the way it was, you need to be corrected.
The virus remains contagious and still needs to be respected.

We still need to keep our distance and wear our masks
As we start emerging and return to our old tasks
What else can we do?  About time you asked!

Risk reduction is what we’re now defining
It’s still wise to avoid indoor dining
Being outdoors is still safer, and less confining

Stay away from large groups, still avoid travel
Do whatever you can so our progress won’t unravel
Being careful a little longer will win this battle

Shot one is done, I’m awaiting shot two
Supplies are short, what can I do?
Just stay patient, we’ll eventually get through

Seems like this poem never ends, it just goes on and on
It’s ok to be tired, it’s ok to yawn
Bear with me now, as we await the new dawn.

4/3/2021

Postscript/Unspoken
by KATE MCCARROLL MOORE

Do you remember that moment?
I was living in the city with that boy.
The one you hated.
(By the way, you were right about him)
I remember.
 
One particular day, I came home to a dark apartment.
Nothing eat. I scraped together some change from the bottom
of my bag, his coat pocket, the dark recesses of the Goodwill
couch. It was dark, the rain coming down in loud brown sheets of
sorrow. I walked to the corner market, cursing the rain and him.
The fluorescent aisles were eerily empty. I rounded a corner to low
voices. Two men talking. One of them was you, Daddy. There you
stood, a salesman in a raincoat and fedora dripping rain. So out of place-
both of us. Our eyes met.
 
Even now, my heart leaps, my throat catches. Your eyes meet mine,
for a moment only. Silence. Sorrow. I turn away. The moment
becomes the moment. Unspoken.
 
Postscript: If I’d left five minutes later, if there’d been enough
to eat, if it wasn’t raining, would the moment have been?
Hard to say.
Would the moment become the moment that became the moment
I grew strong? Silence. Sorrow. Regret.
The strength to walk away.
The sense to leave.

4/2/2021

How Superman became Cholco
by HAROLD TEREZON

Around the time the phone rang
& your mom still hadn’t returned
from Bakersfield, you tied two corners
of a yellow towel around your neck.
 
Y ZAS! like the wind
 
you were around the living room,
the kitchen, in the bathroom, up the table,
on the walls. You ran so fast you disappeared
in the backyard, except for el copete,
it skipped across the top of weeds
like a porcupine racing on a pogo stick.
I tried calling el coyote in Tijuana, but
you reappeared, I couldn’t hear the where
or when, ni mangos con tanta bulla
with your flying  past the moon,
past staws, maws, moh-cue-wee, & bluto.
 
While your dad unpacked your pj’s,
in your red superman fruit-of-the-loom
& x-ray eyes, you declared the house
an evil-free area cus el essuperman
es here. As I backed out of the driveway,
you stood con la panza all out, barefoot,
top of the sofa, hands to the air, Up up
& away showing tus chiches & ombligo
 
& when you woke up the next morning
to see your mom & dad off to work,
you were all happy, cholco with all
your missing teeth cradled in your hands.

4/1/2021

chiu where you parked your car
by Ali Chiu

Chiu shines this white skin i wear everyday like a shirt tail sticking it’s tongue out at people just regular people living their regular lives high & low definitions of belong & betray

Chiu written on the clipboard i wait for the 2nd dose of vaccine with every other mask covering faces all wishing for a painless quiet pencil prick just real fast move along chit-chatless kind of thing not even a ban-aid because that takes too long

Chiu, oh how long have you lived in San Francisco?  bouncy voice the hand getting the injection ready oh-most 29 years  from imported toothpaste i hiss maybe my attractive $20 ROSS sunglasses and battered white cane made his voice even more bouncy today oh? so general hospital windows looked like this 29 years ago?  tapping the wall poster hand asking still bouncy song edge of bubbley gong

Chiu i carry my ID flatten you do know i can’t see  pulling my inner ears close is this a game show i hear everyday questions over and over again meaning only to the questioners box 1 box 2 box 3 skin colors names hair curly straight disabled why so complicated

Chiu laughing co-worker behind forgive him this guy is oh legally blind  he meant no harm of course only meant to put down the vaccine hand put down all the same oh, no offense taken i have to be nice so y’all won’t hurt me more with that needle but i’ll be nasty later  flat flat flat no surprises ban-aid now

Chiu please take a seat walk you out in 15  bouncy dude where did you live before moving to San Francisco?  just won’t give up his box-ing chase i knew he really wanted to ask where i am REALLY from San Mateo  i finally smile after the ban-aid’s on solid

Chiu my lasting name till the day box i in with mama earth why my skin my tongue don’t match boxes and shapes but why all the questions & questions & questions don’t the world know by now a day of getting the 2nd dose of vaccine should just be a day of getting the 2nd dose of vaccine

Chiu, where you parked your car?