recollection: a child’s story

i remember… softly shared kisses on porch stoops the fragrance of lilacs lingering in the air late blooming cherry blossoms and forbidden fruits gone fat from worms and too much neglect i remember… lemon sherbet sticking to my tongue and the watermelon man’s bell ringing ringing watermelon for sale watermelon for sale straight from alabama…

proud to be a maryann

the great debate heard in locker rooms on park benches water coolers bus rides to amusement parks and the back seats of surburbans maryann or ginger; sure ginger is hot she moves like jazz and somehow took enough hair spray on a three hour tour to last 3 years into a shipwreck; everybody wants to bed or be ginger with the auburn hair and legs that go into next…

love, indeed: a birthday poem for langston

he is small but in a very big way his feet the size of your average 7 year old never mind that he won’t be five for 2 more days he has taught me more about me than i could have learned in a classroom full of memoir biography and ancestral maps my head a…

motherhood: a molecular transformation

be willing to die everyday to the person you think you, to hand the wave back to the ocean…(Arjuna Arday) motherhood changed me at a molecular level. it restructured my dna. there was a moment in time when i was wanda – woman fully grown and in charge of my destiny. i was capable and…

Preservation

Reluctantly, she answered the phone. “Hello?” he asks expectantly. “Hi,” she is calm and he sighs with relief. “What are you up to tonight?” He already knows the answer to his question but asks it anyway. “Nothing. I have no plans tonight,” she wants to leave it at that, to just continue along with her…

Invitation

i. mommy play with me, the edict yelled from backyards kitchen floors and single paned windows. ii. mommy play with me, a modest request, summons to frolic and for one moment remember again what it is like to be swept away in a hurricane of joy. iii. mommy come play with me often meets not nows followed by…