For Sale

one cute house (circa 1928) in a not-so-chic-Southern town.

Price: cheap

Laugh or cry?

So, I have a relative that forwards me all of these emails from Christian conservatives. After enduring them for years (usually by completely ignoring them), I finally sent an email back asking him not to forward them to me because I am a Democrat and find them offensive. The email that sent me over the edge said this:

OBAMA'S MILITANT RACISM REVEALED
In her senior thesis at Princeton, Michele Obama, the wife of Barack Obama stated that America was a nation founded on crime and hatred. Moreover, she stated that whites in America were ineradicably racist. The 1985 thesis, titled 'Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community' was written under her maiden name, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson.
Michelle Obama stated in her thesis that to 'Whites at Princeton , it often seems as if, to them, she will always be Black first...' However, it was reported by a fellow black classmate, If those 'Whites at Princeton ' really saw Michelle as one who always would 'be Black first,' it seems that she gave them that impression.
Most alarming is Michele Obama's use of the terms separationist and integrationist when describing the views of black people.
Mrs. Obama clearly identifies herself with a separationist� view of race.
By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desperation of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight.
Obama writes that the path she chose by attending Princeton would likely lead to her 'further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.'
Michele Obama clearly has a chip on her shoulder.
Not only does she see separate black and white societies in America , but she elevates black over white in her world.

So, in response to my request that he stop sending these kind of emails to me, he said:

HI !! SORRY TO HEAR THAT YOU ARE A DIE HARD SET IN ROCK DEMOCRAT. [wife's name] AND I FINALLY GOT OUR EYES OPENED & CAN VOTE THE BEST PERSON REGARDLESS OF PARTY AFFILIATION. WE USED TO BE DEMOCRATS TOO UNTIL JIMMY CARTER. WE THEN HAVE VOTED FOR THE PERSON & NOT THE PARTY. OH WELL THE MOSLEMS ARE TO TAKE OVER THIS COUNTRY ANYWAY & THEY ARE ALREADY HAVE A GOOD FOOTHOLD

.

another woman cussing

Tonight I was inspired by Sapphire.

She was a visiting writer with the Prison Program, and I went and listened. She was amazing. I'll be reading the book Push (see above link) immediately. It is full of curse words (see yesterday's post). And as I sat and listened to her read her book, I thought, this is why censorship is ridiculous. This is a story of a girl/woman who goes through SHIT, fights her way out, and survives. Who needs a story like this more than the woman who booted me out for saying fuck?

But, really, the curse words are beside the point. The point is, she inspired me...I need to stop worrying about leaving the worn path. I need to LET GO.

Jump.

Believe that there is more out there.

F**kin' 'ell

So, my class (this semester) with the prison program is now officially canceled. Why? you ask. Well, the students were offended by the language of the instructor and the language in the reading materials (selected by the instructor).

Yes, that's right. I have offended a group of ex-cons.

Now, I will say that I planned and gathered the reading materials for this class before I knew that it was taking place in a Faith-based facility (it is a halfway house for women -- Baptist). So, it wasn't until I actually drove to the site and noticed the sign out front that I knew what I was in for. But it wasn't until I heard the great intake of breath from the students when I used fuck in a sentence that I knew I was doomed.

I have offended them.

The funny thing, though, is that they are not asking me to leave. I had to tell them that the class was not working when on the third meeting only three students showed up and only one of those three had written anything. It isn't working, I reported. Suddenly, it became my offensiveness that was the problem.

I am relieved. I don't ever want to see them again. I've never been so happy to be told I suck in all of my life.

They can have their Jesus. I'll take hardened criminals over their wimp asses any day.

Poems for ME -- part III

Mother Poet
for Mary Etta Perry

I haul my little poems up to you
on your Pisgah mountain top. You,
with your hair white as chalk, nurse skin-
bruises on peaches, on calves, and retell
those stories that most carry with tight fists.
You’ve lived long enough to find
a church community that will sanction
your coming out party that coincided
with the celebration of thirty years together;
long enough that you can tell the story
of that uncle who raped you in childhood
because you’ve outlived any of the family
that might care; long enough to read me
a poem about a brown girl you once loved
but were forbidden to befriend because it was Florida
and because it was 1945.

The 50 years that separate us, highlighted
by the buzz of your electric armchair
and gold handled cane, wash away
during conversations about how the academy
is ruining me, and how the urge to throw
a baseball keeps striking your poetry,
discussions that make our partners run
for cover, or at least a glass of wine.
As you read me the yellow aged story
of washing overalls in a washtub
or of the swallow that keeps showing up
every morning, I wonder which stories
will amaze my daughter poet when I have one.

From you, I learn to write my stories
so that when that little girl, not yet born,
comes to me when I can no longer
hike to the falls at Moore’s Cove,
I will remember myself as am now:
woman, still becoming, not yet formed.

Poems for ME -- part II

Apprentice

Beneath her, I curl myself into a quiet knot,
watch her work in fits of mania. Her quick,
meticulous hands dig perfect stitches;
my fingers scramble to mimic her methods,
remember her rhythm.

Beneath her, scraps of fabric dance
like axed chickens. My hands reach
across splintered wood floors to the cotton debris.
I steal these fragments for my own quilt box,
run my fingers up the flower prints. Down feathers
cradle my head as she works through the night,
her eyes puffed and bloody, her needle furious
to finish the final pieces.

Beneath her, I tremble. Shards meld together,
become something I can never guess.
In the belly of the blanket, my face blends into
swatches of color, into shapes I cannot see.
She lays the blanket over me, over the table over me,
smoothes the wrinkles of us both.
As light peeks through morning,
I fall into comfortable sleep.

Beneath the place where she once stood, I dream
I stand. Wind blows like her breath,
like my breath over a quilted flower fabric.
Her arms wrap around me, move me in her steps.
Our fingers dance the rhythm of loops,
follow the beat of well-learned stitches.

When I wake, I move into the empty space,
open the rainbow box of gathered color,
begin my own appliqué pattern.
I follow the beat of well-learned stitches;
my hands use her hands to loop in rhythms.