joy ride

for E.M.

our car crawls through I-96 

and idle light

we race through conversations

wondering 

at coincidence and serendipity

of finding the exit 

for "Baldwin Street" just as we 

gush about 

James Baldwin's centenary  

or of seeing 

"Dayton Freight" just as we were

discussing 

a time at the University of Dayton

So... now fired up

by our "power to manifest" 

we tidy up earth--  

call out all we want: world peace,

an election landslide,

an end to poverty... and billionaires,

humane higher ed...

It's as if we believe in the madness

in ourselves

as we believe in the hopeful darkness 

cradling stars

___________________

Pic: The Red Cedar through the grille on the Spartan Bridge.

you probably *should* read this

Bestie KB wrote a novel and it arrived in the mail today. 

Nu had a sleepover last night, went to the Mint Festival in the afternoon, and then watched a movie at someone else's place in the evening--was basically gone all day--so I curled up with Huck and Max and read KB's book from cover to cover... it is so, so good. I know all our friends are reading it with bated breath to see if we show up... luckily, we don't (with one satirical exception, IMO).

Pic. I took this photo when my copies arrived. I posed KB's work with that other Minneapolis treasure... and I think there's a reference to "Raspberry Beret" on page 229 just for me.

you probably shouldn't read this

you probably shouldn't read this     I've said it all before        I get through another day          it piles up and becomes a life         what can be said       you've seen it all yourself       another school was bombed today in Gaza         Al Tabin School        I watched it in words         but there are pictures if you want it          can you bear to see another photo of dead siblings huddled together under the rubble       who picks up the bodies and the pieces of bodies      the guts       the hearts     the ashes    white phosphorus buries itself into the body and burns all the way down to the bone like a firework        it is sick         I am sick          there's a great sickness in this            there's a sickness in doing this       and a sickness in a world that allows this to happen         we know this is happening       how have we not shut this shit down          I fall on the same rock         I beat against the same rock             massacre       genocide       holocaust        the words are not enough          and also the words are so old and immense             they sound a bit like I might be misusing them                    like I might be exaggerating a bit               I'm not                     I feel self-conscious for saying the same thing over and over           186,000 dead after living through this over and over and over     I feel I might go mad       I go mad      I feel myself going mad      I keep saying words that have no power           they have no power   they move no one             they have no power   nothing happens after I say them           they have no power   they cannot answer the blinded child asking "why do they do this to us"        I am an adult in this world this child lives in        I bear responsibility      I am American and my taxes pay for those bombs       I bear responsibility         they will never forgive us for reminding them they are human

___________________________

The wonderful June Jordan said all of this and so this beautifully back in 1982 in an unpublished letter: "I claim responsibility for the Israeli crimes against humanity because I am an American and American monies made these atrocities possible. I claim responsibility for Sabra and Shatilah [sic] because, clearly, I have not done enough to halt heinous episodes of holocaust and genocide around the globe. I accept this responsibility and I work for the day when I may help to save any one other life, in fact." The whole article in the LA Review of Books about Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, and Palestine is awesome.  

midwest represent

We had a visit from Engie today. Huck and Max *loved* her; Nu and Big A automatically looped her into the ribbing and silly jokes around the dinner table. Engie has the prettiest toes and sparkling quips and tried hard to get us to follow "dog" rules. I loved hanging out with her solo later and we took a long after-dinner walk to Beal Gardens before saying goodbye.

It felt like meeting a dear long-lost friend... it was meeting a dear long-lost friend although we'd never hung out in person before. I love all the ways we can connect in the world.

(Also, this is Engie's 20th year of blogging. I helped celebrate by writing a guest post on poetry a few months ago and forgot to log it here.)

Pic: Engie and me--our hand signs are supposed to rep the midwest (MW). Pic by Nu.

magic beach escape

heart full

belly full

all out of words

Pic: Sailboats at Ottawa Beach in Holland, MI with EM.
 

"I could have danced all night"

What...  What is this feeling? I can be counted on to find moments of joy, hope, gratitude--but a whole day of feeling like I'm floating on air? Of feeling smiley, dance-y, and happy? Not even being thoroughly drenched repeatedly while running errands could dampen my mood in the slightest.

I was so hoping for Tim Walz to be picked as Harris's veep, and could barely believe it when Big A texted to tell me. 

I've been a fan of Walz since last year when he signed universal free breakfast and lunch for all public school students into law in Minnesota (and to think I was paying attention to MN, only because bestie KB moved there, lol). This 48-second video was making the rounds, and I watched it like 15 times right away and sent it to multiple family and friend chats, because it's just so wholesome and joyous. The occasion itself is joyous of course--but I was also taken by how Walz, despite the photo-op nature of the moment, offers only respectful fist-bumps to the kids around him, until one kid offers him a hug... which he accepts... and then he is absolutely deluged by the other kids hugging him. Compare the tenor of this, for instance, with the meanness and despair in the picture of Sarah Huckabee Sanders repealing child labor protection laws in Arkansas. 

The Walz pick gives me so much hope that our politicians can be receptive and responsive to progressive demands. That we can have leaders who can just be normal about women, kids, LGBTQ kids, indigenous peoples, public schools... and understand their job is to serve people, to fix problems like poverty, prisons, homelessness...

Also: I won 20$$$ from the family betting pool for my pick. 

Pic: A quote from the Insta-poet Nikita Gill, which really helped me this week. It reads: Everything is on fire,/but everyone I love is doing beautiful things/and trying to make life worth living,/and I know I don’t have to believe in everything,/but I believe in that. 

long quote; short reflections

from James Baldwin's The Price of the Ticket

"One must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is. For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
_____________

it's how we'll always want it:
the mechanisms of the morning, the dynamics of the day, the tang of exhaustion
the branch whipping back in our face, the clefts weathered into the faces of trees
like the slight path overgrown into almost nothingness and meandering into forest
I don't know where we go

_____________

Pic: Morning tea in my happy place. I have some cherry tomatoes and chilies that I MUST pick now. They are literally rotting on the vine... I'm good at growing things, but overly cautious about harvesting.