It's here!

Friends~

I'm excited to let you know that my first full-length poetry collection, We Remember Ourselves, has been published! This is a watershed event for me because I've been wanting to do and been encouraged to put together a book for years. And finally, as Poetry-Editor-in-Residence with Flying Ketchup press, it's happened!

I would greatly appreciate you buying my book directly from me rather than Amazon so more money comes to me rather than Bezos who did not spend years crafting these poems. And, if you purchase from me, I'll sign your book! If you do purchase from Amazon, kindly leave a review.

Currently, I'm working on lining up readings to share the poems in this collection as well as new ones I'm working on. I'll keep you posted on when and where. I'd love to for you to experience a reading with me.

In the meantime, here's a baby poem I just birthed yesterday. Now you'll have to buy my second book to see what she grows into!

make way

does not each no make way like a plow

for your every yes

sometimes no is bright as death

glorious as heartbreak

a whisper in the lonely dark          

that unlocks

the cage of coerced yesses from your lips

even when your innocent ancient wise body sang no

just as a bird wings no to gravity    yes to sky

knowing no is the biggest yes

~Mary

how is this progress

There is something delicious about the initial quiet that follows the loud boom signaling a power outage. With the humidifier, furnace, and fridge silenced, I feel a spaciousness within, as though the low hum is an auditory weight I carry without realizing its burden. Like noticing your shoulders are scrunched up to your ears then dropping them suddenly eases your tension. Is there a cost to our nervous systems to have constant, subtle auditory stimuli?

But then I started to feel the impact of no power. As I stood in my cold kitchen, I was struck my complete dependence on electricity. Without it, I could not do anything for myself. I could not warm my house, make tea, cook, or work. I don’t know how to do anything without electricity. Who does?

How is it progress to make ourselves completely dependent on something that we cannot function without? Moreover, how is it progress if the thing we’re dependent on comes from the destruction of ecosystems, communities, cultures, other species as well as threatens our own species through disease clusters and with extinction? In fact, to be ignorant about how we get electricity, which many of us are, doesn’t seem like progress. Unless this is what we mean by progress-to have what we rely on without having to know how it came to us.

This type of progress seems precarious and dangerous: to exchange our self-reliance for ease and comfort; to trade our life (time, energy, skills) to pay for this thing we cannot live without yet have no control over; to be in agreement with industries that perpetuate injustice, inequity, and extinction for this thing we cannot function without.

To be clear, I’m not (necessarily) against electricity. How could I share this otherwise? Indeed, we’ve organized our society such that we’re all reliant on these electricity-based formats as the primary ways to have conversation, conduct our work and transactions.

I’m advocating for us to examine what we mean by progress. We bend our will toward progress that makes our lives easier, more comfortable, efficient. As though easier means better, as though easier does not come at a cost to ourselves and others.

With the hum of my appliances muted, there was wide open imaginal space and I wrote by candlelight. What if, once we realize progress means the sacrifice of some for the benefit of others, we go back to the drawing boards. What if we refuse progress if it is built on hierarchical paradigms, extraction, slavery, destruction. What if progress was equitably accessible.

Nearly 45,000 homes lost power yesterday, and some are still without. On any given night there are nearly 2000 unhoused people sleeping outside in Kansas City. What if the warming stations they seek refuge in lose power? Further, we know that 59% of the US population is one paycheck away from homelessness. How is it progress to have a society of people who only know how to labor for money but not know how to directly meet their own basic needs for shelter, food, water, safety? How is it progress to have a society unaware that their way of life threatens the shelter, food, water, and safety of others?

What if progress was about resourcing ourselves and each other in life-enhancing ways for all beings; deepening our self-reliance, creating communal and shared reliance, honoring our oneness.

Curiously, once the electricity kicked in these thoughts receded under the hum.

sufra

the word sufra

is                table

but it is when I am across the sea from the tables I have known

that sufra opens

and I discover

not like Columbus

encountering a country

without ever grasping

it was already populated

I discover sufra

is hospitality

the word sufra is     yes

a flat surface used for food

now after all these years

of eating moored at the sink

a writer who sits too much

my excuse

to refuse the table  

to refuse

sufra which now scatters

bright meaning through

me   like a prism

worlds unfurl from words

worlds unfurl into words

either and both

there are countries

secreted in syllables

meanings beyond the initial horizons

I had limited them to

before knowing what

seems plain planed constrained denotation

waits to detonate into connotation

I grasp     finally     table’s true inhabitant

sufra is      embrace

opening wide only after

do you hear me

I offer hospitality

to the scarred and scared selves

that navigate dark seas

that buoy me

through darknesses

when I extend sufra

to my shipwrecked selves

at the shore

anchor in my own harbor

in the country of self

and feast at the table

of my making

table at last

is                sufra