It’s maybe her first memory: The rocking boat, tempest-tossed* and cutting through Atlantic waves. “You always remember what makes you afraid,” she smiled. Fear mingled with hope as the USNS General M.L. Hersey entered the safety of the Lady’s harbor. Embrace was not a word she understood. Not in English. At three years of age, […]
Poetry
The Magi
Editor’s Note on “The Magi:” A dear friend recently confided that she loves the Season of Epiphany (beginning in early January) but secretly dreads its first Sunday. Just as Christmas is neatly tucked away, her church musters up one last pageant to remember the Magi. Far from the orchestrated order and beauty of Advent’s Nativity […]
In Like a Lion
On the night before my grandmother died, a tornado struck Mills County. You can always tell when it’s on the way; just slip your hand behind the sash and press your nose against the screen. Can you hear the echo of sparrows? Do you smell the sweet- ness of rain? Then draw in your […]
A Place to Land
I wrote this poem for Kate Motaung’s book release, A Place to Land. Kate’s journey to find home was a story I could relate to as a mujer navigating my own sense of home and place. I was overjoyed with she asked me to write a poem to read at the Festival of Faith and Writing, […]
What Does It Cost You?
“¿Mijita, que te cuesta? What does it cost you?” Grandma forces her eyebrows into a plunging V so sharp I think it’s going to rip off the top of her nose. “My dignity!” I stand feet raked across her linoleum floor, a bull ready to charge, except I’m wearing the red reboso. I am […]
Listening to my Mother is an Act of Learning to Love Myself
Listening to My Mother is an Act of Learning to Love Myself When I learned I was pregnant, I was scared because I was the shape of the moon and I didn’t think that my body carried enough light to make the night sky shine. Whittling a daugther from your flesh feels […]
Introducing Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros!
At the beginning of the year I send our monthly contributors an email highlighting the previous year’s stats and ask them to answer a few questions about their ongoing capacity as writers for The Mudroom. Last year was hard for our writers. A few took sabbaticals due to family crises, a couple of us experienced prolonged […]
Wij Zijn Hier/We Are Here
We are here and you’d like to forget it, have us more hidden then our black faces and tired, old eyes. Isn’t it enough to leave my own country as a teenager? Isn’t it enough to run on bare feet from my home that is at war with itself? Isn’t it enough to be homeless […]
Safety Net
When it came to Jonathan’s education life was a balancing act on a high wire with no safety net beneath or if there was one, it had holes in it. Yesterday as I read a Haiku written by my son I was swept away in a torrent of memories and emotions. ENDURANCE I am a […]
Psalm to Mom
You’re not my own but you read me to bed, and tickles me to the bone love how my fat cheeks dimple up. And I’m barely two and my curls are brand new. And you don’t know what she’s doing, trying to make my braids, Put your head down, hold your head down, hold it […]
Faith Is Figuring Life Out
Who’s to say I came out of the womb triumphant and beckoning, suckling sunlight and justice with indignant power, bewildered eyes ablaze to teach and be taught, or renting immaculate spaces with poise and unconscious infatuation. Suppose the wind coughed me out into this new world and then made me stand up and become my […]
A Prayer for Resilience in the Face of White Supremacy
I can feel the ground crying out From all the blood that’s been shed The earth is tired of absorbing These bodies These bones These people who are living on our land But have never found home The wind catching their breath as they pray The rain multiplying the tears Creation is groaning and […]
Resigned
I just didn’t want to continue not like this, not like this – – thinking the same feeling the same responding the same reacting the same Even if not much will change, I just didn’t want to continue, not like this. Fantasies lead me to believe days can be better than this, and I know […]
Portrait of A Both Girl
I am not black. I am not white. I am somewhere between the ink and the page, the word that is blurred out. I am not what you assume She speaks Spanish… can’t quite place her…. definitely not from around here I am from around here. I grew up down that stone road […]
Black Love: A Sacred Oneness
In this country the Black body has always been subject to the breaking and the taking—yet we’ve clutched tight to the promise to love. Against all odds we willed our oneness. Finding the other half of ourselves in moonlit fields, dimmed juke joints and strobe-lighted clubs. Safe places allowed us to wash away the touch […]
Can Opener
When I think about you trying to open me I think of a can of tomato soup It’s the only thing you can afford when you’re so broke You let strangers into your body. I think of my can opener, how I can never find it in the gore of underused utensils. I think of […]
Benediction For Unity
Benediction for Unity It is hard to admit this because we are kind people but we wouldn’t know unity from contempt we wouldn’t know togetherness from war we wouldn’t be able to say that the church body is whole we are too mixed up with who is for us and who is against us we […]
In Memoriam of Morality: end quote
It’s hard to look for a good laugh when so many of our channels expose the madness of what seems to be consistent harassment of what some might call . . . How do you converse and talk about videos and uploads from people on their walk about showing millions and millions what to […]
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