that feels brave enough to speak up to me when i am treating it unkindly and thankful that i am privileged enough to answer his call. today i am working through a thesis about building structures to support my students with heavy hands that feel hot gravel graced each time i click clack a letterContinue reading “today i am grateful to have a skeleton”
Category Archives: spoken word
you can’t leave a mirror
the first time you really see your reflection realness, alive in awe and echo and everything you are. you can’t fly away from a fire that flies you forward like fruit flies towards tangerine you are light like love that kaleidoscope kisses you kindly and kicks you kindly like a kite in a climate itContinue reading “you can’t leave a mirror”
Cramped in the corners of my crisising cranium, I cringe, I creak, I forget my own value again, forget my own name again. There are fifteen days of every month that I am not myself and therefore I am still myself but a part of me I prefer not to present, presently I am learningContinue reading
on a Thursday when a student writes a poem and she shows only you
and it says that she is afraid of being herself and you ask why and she says it’s personal “like, really personal” and you say if she wants to tell you, that you would love to know and she asks why and you say you care and she asks why (because kids are really goodContinue reading “on a Thursday when a student writes a poem and she shows only you”
If I had a dollar
for every time someone put me atop a pedestal I didn’t ask to definitely don’t deserve to be on I would have enough money to buy each of those people a mirror the size of their insecurities. one that would show them what they actually look like. how striking they actually are- one like thatContinue reading “If I had a dollar”
I don’t know the last time I lived in a cage that didn’t rattle
or a body that didn’t feel like a cage I mean, this is my home but my armor feels like I mean my skin feels like that fifteen seconds of terror when I misplace my keys sometimes feels like movie marathons in folding chairs sometimes like I really need to get up and be anywhereContinue reading “I don’t know the last time I lived in a cage that didn’t rattle”
maybe
we are the parts of the story our mother’s never wanted us to tell each other. maybe we’re the cliff- hangers if we read close enough and if we put seashell up to our own echo maybe we’d realize how pleasant we sound too- how tide pool, how deep sea wouldn’t need necessarily to longinglyContinue reading “maybe”
when your skin looks too much like oppression
too much like hatred too much like grim reaper like death personified on you it is your obligation to speak- even though you know your hands hold not strangle your lips kiss not cut- you are still part of the problem if you don’t use them to speak up against the problem. this is theContinue reading “when your skin looks too much like oppression”
when I read that the average life expectancy for someone living in the neighborhood I work is 68, I sobbed for the circles my students will likely not circle around the sun. I cried in the middle of grad class then realized what a damn privilege it is to be crying in the middle ofContinue reading
questions for my students and no these will not be on the test but they are so very much more important-
do you know about Einstein? and is it E=MC2 or the fact that he didn’t speak until he was 9, thought to be slow, was expelled from high school? do you know about Dr. Seuss? and is it all 1 fish 2 fish or is it the 27 rejected publishing attempts before his first success?Continue reading “questions for my students and no these will not be on the test but they are so very much more important-“
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