Here are a few frog facts to ponder before my poem. Frogs are considered highly endangered with over 7000 species. Humans are all from one species, but we have an estimated 5000 human ethnic groups which are defined primarily by cultural practices. What we would consider to be the “modern […]
You can’t audit a course in the skoo of Hard Knocks…. Povertyskola The unhoused, who are said to live on the margins of our society, are in front of our eyes every day we walk or drive down our streets if we look. Too many complain about the view, applaud people’s […]
this is the year of spent tearsdried leaving only salt tracksso many tears have fallenfor so many reasons so many lossesso many deathsso many sacrificesso many wars in all of their manifestationsthat we now sit dry eyes agogeyelids sewn open so that we cannot stop lookingcannot stop seeingcannot deny knowingyes […]
It was not quite dawn on December 11th, 2025, too early to be awake. I turned over under a weight of covers and willed myself back to sleep where a dream came and I saw my brother, middle-aged and able bodied, getting ready to get on a plane with a […]
word time how old is your language he asks and pauses for answers that will not come to the tongue my language of memories is buried in bone marrow spilling out in blood rich with copper salt and ancestor breath my language of touch was inherited from the first ones […]
Calling someone a “treasure” sometimes seems like an overused compliment such that the root idea of a precious gem created through time and pressure is lost. But Kalamu Chache is indeed a Bay Area treasure who has done her work for decades and deserves to be acknowledged and better known […]
Act locally, think globally was one of the mantras of my youth. Culture is a powerful tool for revolution was another. Those two ideas shaped my growth as an artist in a home with a father who wrote and mother who painted, both of whom worked straight jobs and were […]
One of the many great things about traveling is the ways it teaches one about the differences and similarities of cultures, gives us access to new foods and it opens us to, if not new ideas, different faces of old ideas, and for me in Italy, a never-ending sense of […]
Sharing my poetry in Italy was an exhilarating, humbling, exhausting and fruitful experience. This year, given the politics of the globe and the conversations that we share because it is one planet with many peoples, it was especially gratifying. The first reading was a great antidote to my still jet-lagged […]
My birthday falls on a Wednesday this year, hump-day for Monday through Friday 9-5ers. The weather they say will be an excellent Spring Day. My patio is in bloom with flowers, herbs, lemons as fruit and blossoms. So much to be thankful for. Family offering a surfeit of love and […]
