find a broken pencil in the back of your kitchen drawer
Category Archives: Poetry
Just Ordinary People
In their puffy parkas, knit hats,Babies bundled in strollers, bewildered toddlers in tow.Just ordinary people like you and me,Parents and old folk, neighbors and strangers,Teachers and plumbers, students and programmers.Gathered at train stations, huddled in subways, piling on buses,Clutching hastily-packed bags and wheelie suitcases, cellphones in hand.Did they think to grab a few family photos?DidContinue reading “Just Ordinary People”
The Tale of a Fat Ugly Crow on a May Afternoon
The next morning, not a morsel left,
not even a bloodstain, I checked
I Would have Called you Oma
I would have called you Oma
Cardboard Cemetery
I pass by them on my way down the hill to Safeway, or Peet’s names inscribed in simple block letters draped on stunted trees in the median or scrawled on cardboard “ grave” markers in a makeshift cemetery on a small rise excised by the cruel scalpel of racial injustice their hollow voices cry outContinue reading “Cardboard Cemetery”
Super Nova
she brought solace to a broken country deeply in need of healing
A Winter’s Day
Taking a walk on a stunning Northern California winter’s day a teasing, tantalizing morsel of spring the sky a flawless blue, the sun inviting and healing a day begging for short sleeves and sunglasses barren tree limbs practically stretching like purring cats basking on a window seat I pull down my mask stealing a breathContinue reading “A Winter’s Day”
Interlude in Trader Joe’s Parking Lot
A man playing a saxsits on a makeshift stoolin Trader Joe’s parking lot, scrounging for his three kidshis sad story splayedon tattered cardboard, his reedy notesa brass confessionsoulful, plaintive, squandered in this shitty parking lotwith the bouquet of urinedrifting in from dark corners. I’m pulled in by the musiclike a rogue wave,and he has noContinue reading “Interlude in Trader Joe’s Parking Lot”
The Cuervo Gold and Clorox Blues
It’s not a good sign when you’remesmerized by the Westminster dog show.Got to get out of this place.Yes, even a well-planned forayto Safeway will suffice.I know I shouldn’t go, but I can’t relinquishthis last vestige of my old life. Grocery list clutched in my gloved hand,mask in place, fogging my glasses,cart wiped down.I try toContinue reading “The Cuervo Gold and Clorox Blues”
A July Afternoon at the Wharf
It’s a day framed forever in my memory.
I remember envying the tourists,
carefree, riding the cable cars,
delighting in their crab cocktails and sourdough loaves,
Joanne Jagoda 