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Slur

“Chink!”She tossed the word with careless scorn,darted back into her first-grade classroom. And I, just passing in the hallway,caught it up and held it,turning it over in my hands. Like night slowly creeping inthe knowledge that it was thrown with purpose. Child...

Lifetime Warranty

I have a Briggs & Riley suitcase I bought before Ken and I met, 20 years ago. It’s a very good suitcase. At the time, it was the most expensive thing I owned, next to my 1990 Honda Civic. I traveled for work, and it took a beating. We’ve taken it on every trip for...

Four Weeks In

If I had only knownThree days was nothingFour weeks now notched on my belt of motherhoodFour weeks with a sick child, one at a time, usually on ThursdaysFalling not like dominoes but like patient drops from the tip of a stalactite J.D. Fitzgerald’s mother was...

Limericks for TJ

For Tennyson, who says it isn’t a real poem unless it rhymes. There was once a 9-year-old kidWhose stomach decided to ridItself of its contentsUnder the pretenseOf denying itself, so it did. There once was a boy fair and jollyWho snuck a lick of his friend’s lollyBut...

Three Days In

Three days in to the stomach virus in our houseAnd I am checking every twingeWas that nausea I feel?What was that gurgling in my intestines?Something sinister?Heaven help the child who complains of anything abdominal;It means quarantine for sure.And constant...

Dreams

I used to dream that I showed up at school wearing only my underwear.That I missed the bus and couldn’t find the school.That I never began the research paper we were supposed to be writing all semester. Now I dream that I’ve forgotten my son’s camp forms and they...

Haiku

Spring Couple Welcome strangerShy with uncertain hopeLeaves unfurl shining, wary Summer Couple Rosy plump and lavishFruit drops from heavy branchesLove thick and close Autumn Couple Conversation cools then slowsDeath comes leaf by leafWord by word Winter Couple Slip...

Stream of Consciousness

tonight I read a poem and thought it was beautiful and had so much heart and then I learned the author was a man and I was shocked and I knew I had read the voice as belonging to a woman and it somehow made a difference though I’m not sure why and I signed up for his...

Song of Myself

I used to read poetry curled up in a comfy chair, sipping tea, just Walt Whitman and me. Now I read it in the dining room on my laptop, while Ken fixes dinner and the boys watch football and sound barbaric yawps and Geneva clomps around in my shoes and drops her bread...