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Family and Relationships
The Union Waltz
After work we would be headed to Smitty’s Bar, where the twangy music would kick up, and I’d try to find the courage to dance in public.
March 2021
Fighting Back
When I was nine, / my father began / telling me how to hurt / other boys. He said to / squeeze their upper lips / until their eyes watered / or twist their ears and / hold them low so you can / walk them like a dog.
March 2021I Still Don’t Feel Free
I’m sick of being defined by the prison experience and long to be a normal human being with a past that doesn’t need to be discussed.
March 2021
Rain Shadows
When you have been through something terrible, and you know deep down the outcome could have been otherwise, you develop a strange gratitude for everyday life. The smallest acts of generosity can make you cry.
February 2021
Noses
It was never / in the news / or on Twitter / or Facebook or / Instagram / that on October / twenty-third, / two thousand / eighteen, at six-thirty PM
February 2021
In The Middle
of a life that’s as complicated as everyone else’s, / struggling for balance, juggling time.
February 2021
Birthday
Ropes pulled tight at the huge plastic tarp / we tied from the house to the trees / like a sail, in case it rained. / It rained. I became fifty. Then the sun shone, / then the moon.
February 2021Salt Of The Earth
I was drawn to quite the opposite: curiosities, anachronisms, misfits, innocents, and angels. They quickly became my family. They gave me something my blood relatives could not, something fresh and immediate, accepting and nonjudgmental.
February 2021
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