"self-evident" by Matthew E. Henry, or MEH, caught my attention with its multiple and powerful layers. Told as an adult memory, it enters the moment when a child is asked to believe their own history isn't real but to focus instead on a cleaner, more inspiring narrative. For me, Henry's poem tackles rock-hard truths with personal experience and simple questions, and in so doing reexamines what we teach our children.
~ Mare Heron Hake, Poetry Editor TLR
"Rosaline Speaks"
I hardly think of him these days, except
when asked, or blamed he fell. the looks that say
“if only you had not rejected him.”
should I have shed my maidenhead for naught—
ope my lap, my heart, to golden showers
for fourteen measures of his ill-phrased lines?
and now I’m clept as chaste, as frigid? bound
for a nunnery? I play hard to get,
expect his chase— with love as strong as death—
to last beyond one song, and he exchanged
my cousin’s rose for mine? fuck that whiny,
inconsistent little bitch, and his three-
day bride! I was too fair, too wise by far,
and ‘scaped the passing fancy I thought love.
A sonnet first published in Teach. Write (Spring, 2019). And seriously, Romeo was a punk.
“Kenosis”
kenosis
. . . Because God
is not a flash of diamond light. God is
the kicked child, the child
who rocks alone in the basement
~ Ellen Bass “Bearing Witness”
after reading Roethke’s Waltz
the tension in my class was tangible
: to cast papa as a drunk (dealing abuse
with timed fists), or just a regular joe
dancing his darling to bed,
lightened by an after work beer
but as these immortals debated design
and argued image to metaphor
Katrine’s stillness split my heart;
later she explained her stepfather’s demand
of a demon’s dowry: how she nightly endured
his endless gropes and gasps, in a silence
which left her sister untouched, and a knife
untucked from his thrusting back.
A Pushcart prize nominated poem first published in Relief (2007); republished in Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression - The Best Of Volume 1.
“lady Macbeth”
“lady Macbeth”
auditory and visual hallucinations, she explains
casually, as if describing the weather
of California in July. four months into the semester
and i’ve just learned these familiar fiends
have always been present. …
First published in Longleaf Review (Issue 4, 2018)
Two Poems in The Radical Teacher
when asked what i learned in elementary school being bussed from Mattapan to Wellesley
what they think is appropriate: to treat Black hair
like a pregnant woman’s belly, question if
larger nostrils enhance breathing, probe my legs
for extra calf muscles under skin our teacher said
doesn’t bruise because she can’t see
the bloodscreams beneath. …
the surprising thing
i’ve only been called “nigger” once by a student— at least
in my presence— and that under his breath. i wonder
if i’m doing something wrong, if it’s my fault it happened
only that one time. …
First published in The Radical Teacher Vol 112 (2018)
“stop talking”
stop talking
sitting in a colleague’s class, i listened
to high school students compare a Christian baker
denying wedding cakes to same sex couples,
to Black men asked to perform a song and dance
for the KKK….
First published in Rise Up Review (Summer 2019)