The Most Important Lesson—
Freshman Year 1979
Roommates
I’m going to tell you about my freshman roommate, Lily*. Because when I was seventeen, Lily taught me an important life skill that I am still trying to master.
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You Can’t Keep The House Your Daughter Was Born In
Remember that night, as my midwife Ghuru B, a tiny woman from Chicago, smiled at me? I was on all fours on the bed and mooing like a cow in distress. I knocked my tea mug over, the stain spreading down the wall, while my husband pressed the spot on my back to suppress the pain. And finally after twelve hours of labor, she was born.
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with Laura Grevel:
Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?
Laura: I started writing when I was 17, mostly essays. My first influences were my storytelling grandparents, the books I read, nature, and the visual arts. I loved to listen to people tell stories. I loved to read—fiction, essays, poetry, mysteries. I loved plants and flowers and parks and west Texas and Mexico. I loved the paintings and sculpture of my parents and their artist friends.
Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?
Laura: My biggest influences today are my many poetry friends in the East Midlands, UK, and my two poetry workshop groups, Write The Poem and the Paper Cranes Collective. During the pandemic, Zoom Open Mics have also given me exposure to many poets from all over. Hearing these various poets read their work aloud and reading their poetry books and blogs…
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Texas Freeze Over—February 16, 2021 On that freezing eve in a winter storm, where nothing was the norm, eighteen-year-old Rodney Reese was walking home down a Plano street. He’d finished his shift at Walmart, groceries in hand, still had a good ways to go, slipping and stumbling in ice and snow, still had a good ways to go, when they showed up and slowed. He heard the shout, saw the colors of the car, felt a shiver run over his memory wars: remembered what happened to George Floyd in Minnesota, Eric Garner in New York, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, Daniel Prude in New York. Did the cops remember the truth as they told him to stop? That they’d been sent to make a wellness check? Not to be a pain in the friggin’ neck? That the state was now a disaster zone of ice and snow, bodies freezing in homes?…
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You may think we hang upside down from the rafters at Christmas, or throw purple socks in the air for New Year’s.
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As the November 2018 Senate and House of Representatives elections in the U.S.A. approach, we are again struggling to vote from abroad. So it’s time to send this blog out again!
My fingers tremble, my breath rasps. I flex my thigh muscles and prepare to leap . . . do the long jump . . . go far . . . over the ocean to reconnect with my people, my roots, my dirt.
But first, there’s this little thing called bureaucracy:
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My dad stared at our laundry line. “We used to do that.”Read More »
Here’s a reblog of a poem for National Dog Day, just a little late.
Fen and Petals (2)
He’s dark,
although
Fensitively playful
he’s a son of a bitch
golden, but he has
wild plays
barked upon the field stage
with romping floppy ears
and a dear puppy attitude
retrieving a Labradorean
heritage cool
His Father it is said
was a shepherd who liked lamb chops,
but then in fending for himself
Fen will some day
wolf down Wiener schnitzel
romping with élan and bark
Sister Petals is a dog too
whose nickname is Flower Child,
but she knows she’s a dog
because she knows
how to fight Fen
with gentle teeth-to-teeth,
mouth-to-mouth, and
the canine literati
call her a wag, but
though play is like an apéritif,
lately, he’s been of-Fen-sive
getting under Petals’ belly
and knocking her over; oh no,
but she’s learned a de-Fen-se:
a self-imperative,”Petals down”
Soon dog treats are found, they
bounding into the kitchen
Tellin’ Stories 