The Days of Relinquishment

What kind of freedom and possibility can writing anonymously offer to women writers, and in…

Spinal Column

Black women are supposed to have strong backbones but my Black back is jacked. Before…

Notes on Writing about Sexual Violence

“What would happen,” the poet Muriel Rukeyser asks in her oft-quoted poem “Käthe Kollwitz,” “if…

Death of a Family

I. When did we become mortal enemies? You campaigned early and hard to be our…

The Patient Records

1.It begins in the middle like this: the sun sets quietly in a Brooklyn sky.…

Anger in the Service of our Vision and future

Several weeks ago I wrote about the need to stoke our anger and nurture it…

I am angry, editor

Dear Editor, I thank you for this invitation. Funny, I composed a poem about the…

Eleven: An Autobiographical Assemblage

Clock I was born with a clock. No twin bells ringing as I made my…

Architecture of a Staircase

11am on a Wednesday I started the day considering the figure but soon became preoccupied…

“The Birth of a Translator” excerpt from Self-Portrait in Bloom

And so began a new life, illuminated already in the choosing of what to translate,…