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Poverty
The Word That Is A Prayer
One thing you know when you say it: / all over the earth people are saying it with you; / a child blurting it out as the seizures take her, / a woman reciting it on a cot in a hospital.
April 2007Free Spirits
I have walked the few blocks down to the pond on campus tonight because I read in the paper that some Buddhists from the local sangha are going to free the souls of a lot of people who were bombed at Hiroshima.
April 2007
An Anthology Of Chinese Poetry
“All has come to nothing,” he writes. / In old age his clothes are tattered and thin, / His hut without a door; sick, / He suffers bad dreams.
April 2007Neighbors
Buddhists and nudists, Peace Corps volunteers, Quakers spinning in their graves
June 2006
World of Trouble
The place in New Orleans, Louisiana, where I went to give plasma looked like it had recently been a small grocery store. I had never given plasma or blood before and had no appreciation for the difference. All I knew was that you got eight bucks, which was the going rate for a full day’s labor through Manpower back then, in 1974.
February 2006What Feels Like Destiny
There were seven thousand Peace Corps volunteers out there, in the most remote places of the world, and if something bad were to happen to any one of them during the night, something tragic, I would take the call.
February 2006October 2005
“We can’t forget,” my friend C. said. “Forgetting what happened to the people of New Orleans will exact too high a price. We can’t just send off a check, and cry again over the images, and pretend there’s nothing left for us to do.”
October 2005What They Taught Me
If the child is near death from malnutrition, then the rest of the family must also be hungry. According to Malawian custom, the husband eats first, then the wife, and then the children, in order of age. Often no food is left for the youngest.
June 2005Rose’s
My stomach lurched because I realized that Carl looked like his father, and therefore would not become handsome. He would never escape the prison of his ugliness. I hated Mr. Leach for destroying the beauty of Carl’s face for me.
January 2005
Sunbeams
August 2004Being a mother is a noble status, right? Right. So why does it change when you put “unwed” or “welfare” in front of it?
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