Update

I love my friends so much. Below, I posted the poems I read at my poetry reading today (with the exception of "Odessa, AR" which I ended up replacing at the last minute with a different poem). I'm really grateful that so many of my peeps came out to support. I felt super loved and I definitely had the loudest cheering section! hurrah!

I am writing a paper now but here are many things that I want to talk/write about after i'm done with all my work on monday:
1)Libertarianism and its relation to the constitution (which is part of my con law paper)
2) What qualifies as an education
3) The Myth of the Dominant Black Woman (or reality?)
4)Emotional transparency
5)Economics and the auto industry bail out
6) I'm moving!

These are all things that I am interested in right now but who knows how i'll feel tomorrow.

A Notification Letter

You halved her like someone eating a chicken,
A casual separation of breastbone,
Her ribs arranged and flattened like planks,
The woman, a wooden walkway.

You forced her apart like someone reaching for change,
A relentless scraping and her insides pouring
like green pennies from a coin purse,
The mother you left me, made of copper.

You died like one death was payment enough.
But I am writing to notify you that
Upon further examination of your application:
I have rescinded my forgiveness.

I am writing to say:
Our azaleas are still wilted
And have dropped their
petals like eyelids
Through my fingertips.

Odessa, AR

When his mother gave away her son, time didn’t stop.

If it had she would have stayed
Thin hipped, thirteen,
Leaning on the doorframe.

She would still be
watching the arid expansiveness
the determined trees
And the moths that abandoned
their fuzz on her hands.

The orphan stop light
Would hang, mid-swing, always red,
Still bleeding into their side of town.

She wouldn’t have turned around,
Gone deeper into the house,
Gotten ready for work.

3 A.M.

When I knocked over the lamp, I knew
he was dead. In the hotel room with his coma
on my eyelids, my hand woke up needing
light. As if flicking a switch would unstring
The last three days, and re-pin the sheaths of skin
I saw his body shed.

In the next bed my brother
Sighed and through the dark
I felt him turn his back to me and
knew that he wanted to touch my shoulder,
to reach an ember of our father
still flickering in my body.
But we were still stopped by
the sound of his words as he'd unpeel his
belt like a husk from his corncob body,
"You can't raise a boy to be too soft."

Amy Winehouse

“They say decrepit pop hag Amy Winehouse is back in the sick house once again”~bossip.com

The tabloids say you smell of urine and unwashed hair
And smoke cold cigarettes that taste like refrigerator.

I read somewhere that when you’re tired or high
You and your husband lie beneath the windows
With a redwood growing out of both your hands
Listening to the paparazzi in your branches


But I bet that when everyone leaves,
You climb to the roof of your house
And miss those shiny droplets of light
Slow sprinkling like oil
With every flash.

A House Divided

So Barak won. I have been really surprised by the reactions of some of the christians I know. I have like three different friends from my church in jersey whose status was something along the lines 'america you made the wrong decision and you get what you deserve." Like seriously? Does God really call you to rejoice in the future suffering of this nation? And can you really be a Christian and believe you got what you deserved? How is that helpful?

Today my mom forwarded me an e-mail from Dutch Sheets explaining why Obama's election was not God's will. Well, I know God (which is not to say that I know what his will was for the election). But who the fuck is Dutch Sheets? Because he wrote a couple of books on prayer he gets to tell me what God's will is? THIS IS THE PROBLEM!!!!!! Everyone is listening to someone else. We should just burn all the bibles because apparently no one can read them for themselves. I would say that 99% of the conversation that I heard leading up to the election from christians were "Well my pastor says this." Well guess what? I really don't care what your pastor thinks. what do you think? what does God think?

The thing that this election makes me wonder the most is whose pastor was it who decided that the only way to stop abortion was through presidential elections? Anyone who knows me knows that I make it a point to never talk about my personal political beliefs. This is in the most part due to the fact that I think it's usually more useful to listen. But here's a freebie: I am pro-life. With that said, I honestly believe that the day that abortions are no longer performed in the United States will be the day that Jesus comes back to earth. Even if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I personally have had conversations with medical professionals who have said that if it were illegal they would still perform them. And I think that anyone who has grown up in a super liberal state such as NJ or MA will admit that there would be more than enough doctors who believe so strongly in abortion rights that abortion could never really be outlawed more than just on paper. More importantly, the Supreme Court has the most direct impact on the legality of abortion and all the president does is appoint people who might be pro-life (or who might be willing to say whatever it takes to be on the Supreme Court!). And even if they do not decide in favor of abortion rights, they can simply drastically reduce the amount of cases they hear like the Rehnquist Court did.

I'm not saying to give up but what I am saying is evangelicals need to stop pretending that they don't personally play a role in the amount of women having abortions. Women don't just chose to have abortions because they like to kill babies. How many christians actually go to churches that have used their benevolence funds to help a single mother or even have day care services? And even in the case of women who have been raped and get abortions, when have you ever heard a sermon or a christian friend speak out against sexual violence? I have been to dozens of churches over the course of my lifetime and i cannot recall ever hearing a sermon speaking out against rape. not one. So why should it surprise us that women get abortions when they're raped when we as a community don't even provide a space for them to address this trauma!?!?!?

Basically what I'm trying to say is maybe if people took as much time actually living out their beliefs as they did bitching about how Obama is leading our country towards godlessness this nation would be in a different position. If you actually believe in God, I think he deserves more than this inconsistent passivity.

Psuedo-Update

I was crossing the street yesterday and this guy was riding his bicycle and was singing the chorus to that wuthering heights song. It was really weird and random.

My parents and I are now finally somewhat on the same page about my tentative plans for next year. ALL BEND TO MY WILL EVENTUALLY. (just kidding.)

I'm kind of intrigued about the upcoming election. Jessica is convinced that if Obama gets elected there is going to be a slew of racial violence that is going to take place in the deep south. Conversely, I think that if he doesn't get elected, black people will probably never vote again.

On that note, we had the most amazing speaker at IV this past week on racial reconciliation. It was really cool because there was such a wide range of people who were touched by what she had to say. She told this story about this African-American pastor that she worked with who bought a house in the deep south with a white pastor and they moved their families in and lived together for 13 years for the express purpose of working together to serve the oppressed and figure out what racial reconciliation really is. And that is the difference between diversity and reconciliation.

I have experienced diversity my entire life. It has been interesting, it has at times been incredibly awkward, and often entertaining. But it has never been real. In this sense, I mean diversity that brings people together for the purpose of having different people together or because we're supposed to want to have friends who are somewhat different than us. Seriously, if you think about it diversity as its usually sought has no purpose. The only thing it is working towards is a nebulous sense of how we should feel. There's no real connection necessary. For example, I spoke to a friend of a friend last week who made a series of mildly offensive comments. And I wasn't upset because it was like hey i know this person means well and they're not my problem. Basically, I didn't care about them enough to deal with possibly making them upset even if that's what they need.

In contrast to this attitude, an attitude of reconciliation is different. It requires a level of vulnerability that I usually don't have. It requires actually articulating the things that really hurt, both myself and others. It means saying and hearing stuff that is real and honest and sometimes ugly. Quite a calling and i'm not really sure what to do with that.....