**Backpack Part II
It’s not that I shoulder a navy
pack on my disintegrating back.
It’s not that I have swallowed
the kind of pills that retch
even the rage out until
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*Lincoln from the Grave
Oh to be unconditionally loved when dead,
division dissolved by the peaceful inevitable.
Oh to the victory that made us one,
the blood of battle and repair
no longer questioned as worthwhile,
immune to “what if?” in its sad reality,
replaced by “what is” and “what was.”
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The Wisdom of Ancient Things
I return to that Place of Peace,
and the wisdom of ancient things,
the one that reintroduced itself
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Ode to Charles
See, you were the only Black kid in the whole damn school,
and the teacher had to split us up because of how hard
we laughed together.
You Made Me Feel Illegal
This (unedited) poem won first place in a contest on The Political Poet. And while I am grateful, that’s not necessarily the important part. The important part is the way this debate spun out of control. The way citizens were encouraged to gang up on other citizens as the county turned a blind eye to hate groups and racism.
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Witchcraft Once Started
So I found this short story I wrote back in 2009. I am not a fiction writer. It’s really not my forte. And while I don’t even remember writing this piece, I do remember WHY I wrote it and what was happening at the time. I have not bothered to edit it. So with that, I will let you enjoy a piece of what I will call magical realism. -Katherine
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Advice Giving
I am not sure what is more important: to tell you how I used
to narrate my life in my mind while I walked the neighborhood
as a child? How I never moved my lips, but somehow
made more exciting that single horse farm on the corner,
the one without the palomino I imagined should have been there?
**Storyline
You see, after a while, you get tired of telling
the same old story again, the sad one, where you
are the interstitial animal living between grains
of ancient sand, separated from both
land and sea, by some careless hand that said
you were made to be lonely. And while I know
being a writer is solitary (how else will we ever
get these so-many-words out of our salty-sweet
minds?) I do not think anyone was made to be alone.
Dichotomy
I called it “The Dichotomy,”
not because I knew someone
had already used the title
(that was after I wrote what I wrote)
but because I loved the word—
the way it tore itself apart
Bloodsport
Last night was another nightmare, except this time, they attacked my brother who somehow also worked there. And while I
Angels in the Architecture – A Love Poem of Sorts
I kept listening to that old cassette
in the radio of my beat-up car,
the used one I had paid too much for
and financed with my soul—the voice
of a Texas woman, accent thick as my debt,
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For My *Thriends
My dearest ones, I want to tell you
what I saw today just from looking outside at the sky: yes, it was grey, and a mist hovered about the window in shadows of condensation. And yes, a heavy fog had been gathering around my heart
Apologies to the Trashmen (a draft)
This one is for the trashmen,
and all the people who have to pick up
before the sun implants itself
into the womb of daytime, disposing
of useless and discarded things through
the harshest nights.
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Dear Mrs. McGreevy (a draft)
Dear Mrs. McGreevy,
I am sorry I was a little scared of you when I knew you were alone,
how afraid I was to kiss your cheek – you see, I could not bear
the way that rude hair on your forgotten chin would puncture
the innocence of my own, and I was so very much afraid
that your mouth had resisted its own skin, taught against the gums,
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On Dreams and Poems
Strange how dreams
and poems work,
how everything mixes
together, and some of
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Because You Wore a Rainbow (a draft)
Because you wore a t-shirt with a rainbow on it, and because your earrings
looked like the ones I wore in college, oblong and shell and dangling
to your lovely thin shoulders, and a smile that invited me in that first
time we met, and because you talked to me about writing
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On Being The Other (a draft)
Last night I dreamt of a girl,
not just any girl, she was eleven
and had long, black, pretty hair
and an innocent pale face with a little nose
and serious lips and a chin that had not seen
as many meals as she needed and her mother
didn’t want her anymore and her father had disappeared.
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Love Song to Men
This is my love song to men.
And men who identify as men.
Not men who pose, snap pictures of you,
then drop you in gutters to drown
in waters they pour from the rooftop.
Doctrine
They called it
The Baltimore Catechism—
every doctrine has one,
but this book had a special creed
for teens: God, remind me
to obey and do what I am told,
remind me in order to be loved,
that first, I must be lovable.
Once, I Saw a Soldier
Once, there,
I saw a soldier,
leaning against a barren tree,
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