Another clueless American boycotts Arizona

The novelist Tayari Jones has posted a copy of her letter to organizers of a writers conference in Pima announcing her intent to boyott Arizona because of SB 1070. She writes:

That people should be legally required to show proof of citizenship is similar to the antebellum mandate that black people produce "free papers" proving themselves not to be slaves. It recalls the pass system under South Africa's Apartheid. Sadly, visiting Arizona for a conference or a vacation without fear has become an ostentatious display of privilege.

Perhaps she doesn't know that federal immigration law requires non-citizen permanent residents to carry documentation at all times. SB 1070 mirrors federal law. I can't wait to read Tayari's letter to President Obama announcing her intent to boycott DC.

Welcome to the United States.

Not quite almost not maybe yes

That's the story of my life. As a stick woman.

Fractally, my dear

Bucking

that same power,
I like it.
Dangerous--
stealing words on every side,
shaping phrases.
No one can teach you
to move deeply,
to suffer
spontaneous and joyful,
locked away with only
your enthusiasm
and time.

Virtues

Forgetting and losing
until it shows--
flock folk don't deserve
this bleak pleasure.
Tired. It's near enough
flat-out-unbearable,
mistakes you've had
around for ages.
Difficult, but dear. Dear
and intimate as you allow.

Shut the Door

It's better now, our misfortune,
far better than a politics against
freedom and the poet under siege.
It's better now, our resistance
and dialectics of falling syntax,
better than the human agenda-driven
voices. Better now can we sense how
the heart is losing as if it isn't.

The lord of the clouds built
on a world of stray dogs
a mad, haunted life.
But children don't fear his art--
its magic and nameless intensity.
A child rotates sad tales,
and adults rotate old traps.
There's a keyhole they've forgotten,

and there's my story--
a mile down the wrong side
of half a memory stuck in the future.
I don't want to sing that song.
I want to dance, to drift
in brooding rectangles
where no one is waiting to be found.

Harsh Babies

It surprised no one--
the hang of feeling,
the medium of passion.

In the cold, those
harsh babies--bloated,
gaudy--claimed commitment.

With the bottle, the smell
of private love, lean,
drooping too large--
chemistry liberated.

After the war,
he did not speak. Life,

its routine tidiness,
stifled the peace.
His first love, old,
bought secondhand silver.

With some guilt,
no outward hostility,
he accepted affairs.

Exhausted, his forgiveness
lay propped up. He squeezed it.
There was nothing.

Makes me smile

Mary, did you know?

You Fall Here

You fall here soon enough.
In the middle of the night,
into the beat you labor--
draw rhythms and waves.
There's always space
for what you don't understand
to find an opening. Alone,
simple and sad, you can't go
backwards flaming bombs.

I tried

Folly

Quickly
the mind cuts
passages,
framing lines
with gaps.

Loss is an effort
I could resist,
but don't.

Along the tone
I write--
strong, cold,
skeptical
come to mind.

Amazing mystery,
the naked I.
What folly the critique.

Yeha Noha

a place for rubbernecked giraffes

Madness is a work of art

Madness is a work of art.
Fear and failure. Irritation.
Nothing becomes a voice--
a shout, a whisper, a scream.
It's a necessary waste of time.
These spaces must be filled.
I will call it music.

I'm happy. How 'bout you?

My Life I Sing

And more, I'm growing old.
Through it all, the odd
beauty in refusal remains.
Conviction's an awkward feast.
I haven't changed the world.
Risk sometimes is poetry.

Consolation

I suspect it's only
failure you expect.
The tree line takes me
through gentle country.

I lose you in the flow.
I have nothing. No song.
The silence uneasy--
it started like that.

Negative numbers
bother me.
I used to have hands
outstretched.

Those days are gone.
Stronger this time,
identity brings back
what connects.

Fast, oh, yeah

Dwight Yoakam
 
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Spit ghazal

Look there, on your car's hood: Spit!
So? Any dumb bug could spit.

His mouth's full of cherry pits.
He wonders if he should spit.

With Mountain Dew and Cheetos,
you can create some good spit.

Do you suppose anyone
who achieved sainthood spit?

Rabbit, beef, chicken or fish--
Don't forget: Soak a wood spit.

Organized religion sucks.
They say Jesus withstood spit.

If I just knew how to hawk,
I might fly, or I would spit.

Agnes, whatever you say,
you never understood spit.

That's a voice