StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XIII, No. XXXII

Today is the first day
I left Sharon home alone
Since Cedar died:

While I'm losing myself at work,
She is walking among the echoes
As she attempts to fill the void
With housework and computers
And I sit here wondering
How she is doing.

There are eyes outside
Filled with testosterone,
Watching every woman,
Tracking every movement,
Every hip and breast
And bounce of hair
As she passes on the street,
Waits in line at the market,
Shops at a crowded mall,
Listens in a classroom,
Exits from a public bathroom.

Walk on.

We've said, at the end, we put Cedar down
But that's not entirely true,
Cedar was already eighty percent there,
He knew it, we knew it,
No one was fooling anyone.

That morning's second stroke,
Coming some eighteen months after the first,
Had taken the guesswork out of his life:
He had a day left, maybe a week,
All of which he would have spent
Unable to stand or control his weakened body.

Cedar was looking for a way out with dignity
And together -- Cedar, me and Sharon --
We chose the path that would set him free
From both his pain and the traitorous flesh
That now imprisoned him.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (August 2012)

Shall I ever use the "N" word, my mongrelization, after all,
Includes North Africa by way of Sicily, and I do call my tribe "Indians,"
Only acutely white people and guilt-ridden liberals
And those oh so proper academics ever use "Native American"
-- None of us are natives to this continent and my Iroquois
Certainly did not think of themselves as "American."

Fuck, a word is a word with connotation and denotation,
No more or less than the speaker means it;
Sicilians are the "niggers of Europe" in common parlance,
My grandparents from Palermo used the word "Colored"
To refer to any flesh shade darker than Sicilian,
Later they switched to "Negro" along with the nation
And we all moved on gladly when political correctness said "Black."

I dropped out the name game when "Afro-" became "African"
In front of the "American," especially when Africans in this country
Called themselves "Black" (or Ethiopian or Nigerian or)
And visibly bristled if they were lumped into "African American."
I do still find myself saying "Dago Red" for a certain class of wine,
But then my Sicilian relatives agreed and my Italian friends
Never got up in arms as long as they could have a glass or two.

The White House leaks,
Asserting their masculinity;
Desperate to show they
Are in charge and control
Of both world and situation,
They pass Presidential Findings
Among their media friends
Like adolescent boys on class break
Boasting of their weekend conquests.

This is how far our
Leadership has fallen,
This is how poorly
We select our presidents;
A high school clique
Lead by the most most popular,
More concerned with our clothes
And social standings
Than the fabric we are made of.

Sunrise over the Potomac,
Capitol, Memorial, and Monument,
Airplane taking off from National,
Metro descending to Crystal City.

After the tourists,
Before July Fourth,
The 'Skins still a fantasy
And the Nats in first place.

The cusp of next summer,
The eve of the next election,
The heat slowly building
And the ocean out of reach.

So glad to see you, welcome,
Though I'd do this on my own and have
Just to shush the words volunteering in my head
To form a couplet, a sonnet, or a quintain.

Into the Bright Sun

Into the bright sun drive the Washington Fifty Thousand,
Braving on-ramps and traffic stops and H O V de-merges,
We happy few who dare the commute some eight days a week
With little sleep, we, and only we alone, know that
This damn highway is laid out like Stonehenge, aiming
Directly at the rising and setting sun at Solstice.