Especially at this time of year I miss the violet explosions of your Azaleas; I miss your dogwoods; I miss your Spanish Moss and Live Oak and cicada chorus lines and the first drops of the syrup in the night air that will become an unbearable garment by July; I miss the long, tapered filets of your catfish and the spark of vinegar deep in the soft flesh of your hogs; I miss the feral cats that used to
Near midnight sometimes I hear the whine of their backdoor An instant before the security bulb Produces the trick of day Upon the dogwood and shrubs And she stands there, looking out Maybe at a toddler tumbling In a pile of autumn leaves And she turns her hands over In the wash of light Like fresh spring blossoms For a moment
“I’ve been thinking…” “Historically, a hazardous notion.” “See? Now I’m going to say something all wounded and you’re going to say, ‘Christ, it was in jest,’ or something.” “It was in jest. But probably not the way you think. I meant that ‘historically’ it was a hazardous notion for people, not you. I was being caustic about humanity.” “You’re being caustic about humanity. Before ten a.m. That’s what I mean.” “Is there an appropriate hour
For Pongo Teen Writing mentors and youth, 2011-2012 There are funhouse mirrors arranged in these cell blocks that we do not see; maybe it’s a trick of how the light falls through plexi-glass or just the angle at which they are positioned but only the youth catch glimpses of themselves in them and feel the implicit instruction not to mention the existence of these mirrors or maybe merely sense the futility of doing so
Like many hundreds of thousands of social media junkies (though, I swear, I only hit it once or maybe twice a day), I’ve been entranced by the bright weave of tracer bullets fired by opponents in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman tragedy. Like many millions (at least hundreds of thousands?) of genuinely progressive white people, I’ve been following the maelstrom of American Pain as responsibly as possible through alternative and mainstream media. There are a lot of analyses that have been