the lessening of the agenda/the elder prepares for Shabbos

I am up near the clouds on a high rock cliff/I am your bride/the daisy crown is on my veil/the pale yellow pumps I dyed for the occasion are slipping in the rugged terrain/lace around my body/a bouquet of gladiolas/red/white/pink/lilac are stationed in my hands / no one seems to be here/your serape/embroidered silk threads is blowing in the slight wind/we have taken the vows but no one seems to be here

Been to Paradox/past Eagle Lake

Follow the scent of fresh spruce/ hold each other tightly
the horses are tan
ned and spotted
the air is fresh

Racism in The Twenty-First Century

what a fool we are to racial profile for poverty too

Getting Around The Mulberry Bush/Or when You Can't Wake Up and You Can't Sleep

• There's this adage that says When the Work's done it's done/when you're dead/you're dead/this spasmadic life keeps feeding me sour grapes/my ole raggedy poems look like dung/I come back to the jealousy issue/the feminine issue/things that I'm afraid to look straight in the eyes...Why did I feel like all life's about is love/you have to do your work and I mine/just because I never get paid like you do/we set it up this way/one money/one love....

On Racism and our trip to NOLA/right before Katrina

• 
  
  Boy did it feel white in the French Quarter/Steve got so much attention/I felt like everyone knew him. People didn't stop warning us not to go out in to the wards/we would get beat. We're from the Bronx/we said..It's a mess up in here. Then Katrina/safely back in the Bronx/we watch T.V./actually we just heard the news from Upland/and from the kids who were glued/thinking about how lucky we were to have missed the hurricane by one week.In these cases it is a miscarriage of the Press presenting a thoroughly corrupt vision of how profiled the African Americans were presented with their flesh still fresh floating in the canals and in the gutter.

We've been away so long it feels like home

• Babies/everywhere/pictures and crawling/creeping/I have come full circle. Today Indy goes under to get a filling posted/we snuggle round the spin-off/eat knishes in Brooklyn with Jacki and Moe/late Passover celebration. We are going nowhere really/the work is piling up and we cannot keep up with ourselves.

The Passover of 2010/We are finding a way

I remember when the kids are young and I'd be up waiting for them to rise. It is such a sweet time/now I have that time constantly/the no wait/the projects/ the getting ready to leave the house. The rumination/the re-evaluation of my work/the writing/the community involvement/I look to the mirror of life.

• We can find the ability to see us from the outside/to view ourselves as others do/the gypsy fight to survive in a world which praises possessions/not art.We have the art and family to create security. I walk West to where the dead pigeons lay/see the sun sets as my heart fetters to keep beating.

Washington Street/Mother Cabrini High School

• She's wearing a red coat,the church lady said to her one-way walkie talkie/Dad just stayed in his pew genuflecting/there is no way out/a shrine w/ gold icons/no Torah cabinet.

Green water in the canal/rippling ice/Melisa growing/her baby smiling/the life of the artist is continuing to be interesting despite the frustration o

of flowers grown in the the snow/yellow Marigolds/Where are the Hyacinth bulbs. The plaster statues and McCoy cookie jars sit nicely on the card-table/an era of creating Steve's second novel The Poet is complete/4000 hrs of typing in the pappersroon with no heat in -30/and the rewriting in the most vicarious of situations/no money stashed for a rainyday/no comfort as the parents used to say/just the kids/calling and padding our palms with shekels/a hard reciprocation for forty years of pain/struggle and humiliation/I am now at Social Services receiving my pension plan-$240.00 a month for the rest of my days awarded monthly/I can't wait for the first installment. There are women here who get cash payouts/(I wonder how you get that) one lady is counting her $67.98. The street yield an kind of rough torrent. I stood in Barnes'n Nobles and read Ina May Gaskin's new book on home birth Csections/ now at night I hold my belly and wonder how deep one must cut right above the pubis to pull the baby out/the umbilicus long and white like those carnival balloons one makes crowns or Poodles out of twisting them.

What can be said that hasn't already been rehashed

• We triffled through this sequence/you drew for seventy hours and I sat in the cold room and flipped through poems/trying to find one extraordinary piece to publish in this year's edition of "Frost". The children scrapped around working to their capacity/earning prestige and honors from their perspective fields. We wanted to all be together for one night but the hotel refused us/No bohemian blood allowed here/If the parents have ever been involved with long-haired activities/they are not welcome. And so we keep running.