Afrika | e.g. bailey

i think of you often now,
dream you like a dense forest
in which is buried my Birth string,*
miss your tenderness
the softness of your desires
i am more a stranger now than i ever was
foreign in every city
home, a moon to which my mother sings
home, my heart pulsing at midnight
i stand outside of time looking at myself
i stand outside of myself looking at time
and how far we have strayed
we children of forgotten gods
dancing for the stars’ forgiveness
unable to remember the rhythms
borne of communion with God
unable to see the river which bears our name
which flows like the water from our mother’s womb

how will i sing your memory
how will i speak your pain
am i strong enough to love you
with the love you deserve?

* A Mandingo tradition, told to me by my mother. A birth ritual my grandfather would do for his children and his grandchildren, so that they would always remember where they came from and would one day return.

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Places | Ted Bowman

Safe Places
As children
Our games included safe places:
Bases where we were safe, free;
Lines that the monster intruder could not cross;
Areas off limits, out of the game;
Parents around whose legs we wrapped ourselves yelling,
“You can’t get me, I’m safe here!”

Now older
I’m still looking for safe places.
But, the fears inside me
Seem to know the safe places I seek.
They wait there patiently for my arrival.
Courage and faith, my only legs left to stand on.

Imagined Places
As children
Our games included imagined places
Where, for as long as the game lasted,
We were smart, strong, and in charge.
In those brief moments
Possibilities overcame barriers;
The world was ours.

Now older
I still play the same game
Hoping that before my time expires
I can be smarter, stronger, and in charge
Just long enough for
Imagination to open its doors
Inviting me through.

Home Places
As children
We played house.
Sometimes I was the father,
Sometimes a child,
Sometimes a teacher or cop.
House was wherever we were playing.
We didn’t play home; we played house.

Now older
I know that home is more than place.
Still . . . place,
A loving place,
Place that you can count on
Makes home easier.
I wish my children could play house
In our home.

read Ted Bowman's biography

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Out | Stephen Burt

“But I thought she knew about you and Shavon,” I said.
“She did. But she didn’t have to deal with it, you know what I’m sayin’? Kind of like your dad is, now, with you. He probably knows, but he don’t wanna know, and as long as you’re single,
he doesn’t really have to face it.”
—Nina Revoyr, The Necessary Hunger

Too high & stark for watercolor
To capture, the fire escape documents
The slim field of view for the willowy argument
Michaela, née Michael, faces. Should she
Take it, climb into another

Century to represent
The confident
Future of youth like her, on her own behalf?
Or should she unpack again? It is hard
To be halved, confused
To be made whole, unsure
& flattering by turns to be
A center of attention . . . The Plexiglas
Attached to the bus shelter booms with the wind. Home
Is not home. Rain spins. The night
Sky, a barrage of archery &
Street lamps, invocations and three-story

Families, makes things
Harder. What she
Needs, she thinks as she finds
The curb, swinging the duffel bag whose
Ivory stripe is her cloud-trail, is not even
A place to stay—just a place to land.

read Stephen Burt's biography

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Evolution | Sha Cage

We be an amber people with blue and red voices
Tangled in thick twine with musty flavors
A cross-generation walking with raw feet and open arms
Extended to women and men
Young minds and street souls we call our brothers and sisters

Exchanging
Hand slaps, shakes and fist pounds, head nods, what’s-ups,
hey girls, praises
And soft gazes in recognition of our potential

We be an amber people trying to be strong, forceful,
and defiant
In a world that promotes the individual over the collective
In a world that rewards the rich and taxes the poor
In a world that continues to close its doors on those whose
backs its house was built

Erecting black shops, cafes, homes, mom & pops
in parts of town deemed ‘uneconomical’
singing kujichagulia
as nia and imani fall from our lips
seeking refuge between
blank pages of tattered journals
Lying in cramped Minnesota beds
remembering the taste of cornbread, mustard greens,
and sugar cane
forgetting the smell of burning flesh dissipating across
damp air

we continue
walking silently in orange shadows
Grasping for something/anything
Yet
we falter sometimes believing that we are incomplete

when what we must do is
find strength in our own hearts and
Evolve within the spiraling continuum that
is Evolution

read Sha Cage's biography

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Home | Naomi Cohn

We circle three times
in the grass, lay down,
and call it home.

We nail images to the wall,
We upholster and paint
burn scented candles
and call it home.

We crouch in the long grass,
freeze, listen to the pounding
of our rabbit heart.
If the dog passes by,
we call this bowl
of flattened stalks home.

We pull feathers
from our breasts,
making ourselves naked
to the wind. We line
a frail cup of dead twigs,
and call it home.

We snuggle
into the lap of chaos
and call it home.

read Naomi Cohn's biography

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Home Without a Home | Tim Connelly

I travel with a heavy backpack
strapped across my shoulders,
and a plastic bag of clothes.
When you are homeless,
these are the things you carry.
And tucked away somewhere
are the memories of a war
that are still fresh.
No yellow ribbons greeted me
when I returned home.
Now I soldier on each day
trying to find some place to call my own,
riding late night buses to shelters
only to be rousted out at dawn.
A private first class,
now a second class war veteran
walking the darkened streets.
Home but without a home.

read Tim Connelly's biography

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American Dream | Tim Connelly

A small house.
A quiet street.
Colors balance.
Chi flows.
A childhood dream come true.
Harmony abounds.
All seems wonderful.
Life in full bloom.
Day, after day, after day.

read Tim Connelly's biography

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Deconstructing Home Part II | Kathryn A. Cullen

I don’t think a house forgets
long after it’s gone
death by cremation or flood
Long before it's leaving
it takes the space where people moved
and hallows the ground its
founded on, claims the spans
as a shrine for forgiving

Here is the faint tint of lavender walled
there where the hearth burned
brighter yesterday, there against an
imagined pane, the flicker of a hand
Here under the maple bough
a Poe-like heart, tell-tale
in its staying power for once
a house goes, the elements of what was
congress and build another

read Kathryn A. Cullen's biography

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In Eden | Amy L. Doeun

The placenta may be the soul’s jacket
but in Cambodia feet
still walk
still run from ancestral homes.

Mahk and Bpa used to live in Eden
now Eden has become a casino
an ending of home
an antithesis of home.

I don’t want to be eaten by
rats while I sleep.

Why do they bite dad
so much
when he sleeps the troubled
sleep of fathers with children
who have no place safe to lay
their heads.

I have always been fond of willows
weeping, weeping willow trees.

When I buy a home I will plant one.
Mahk and Bpa will come
and sit under the shower of nature
weeping.
While my baby moves in its first
home, wondering where its feet
will first touch the ground.

read Amy L. Doeun's biography

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Where Does My Mail Go? | Joyce M. Garcia

I am here

My mail is in Afton . . .
It was a nice ride

My cat is in St. Paul . . . that’s where she got lost

Here, here is in the hospital . . . I think, I’m in Anoka

It’s better than a shelter . . .
The hospital I mean

The problem is—I can’t get out
I’ve nowhere to go

Tuesday, Tuesday will be good

My case manager will take
me to see an apartment

He can only go to one place

No matter what it’s like—I’ll say yes

Oh, did I tell you— my truck is at Mary Beth’s

Where does my mail go?

read Joyce M. Garcia's biography

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This Dollar | Leigh Herrick

This dollar won’t save her or keep her
from her own rotundness where it backs her voice
begging largely for the money

This dollar won’t keep her warm forever
or bring her kids back up from mom’s or change
anything in her life completely:
not the man who beats her
not her joblessness or homelessness

This dollar won’t change her waiting
or asking for the handout & it won’t
keep another from bending his head low
as he passes

It won’t stop any sorrow or shame about what is
or change how suddenly she lets go the deepest sigh
This dollar will not provide a father’s
tender touch or a mother’s loving arms

This dollar won’t tuck her children in
warmly tonight or keep the sudden tears
off her cheeks or stop her from cursing
the passersby who refuse to find her story
in their eyes or even ask her why

This dollar cannot detect the distortion of truth
truth itself or a flat-out lie or
warm the bricks of Nicollet Mall

This dollar this one this buckaroo
small piece of dough thinner than
a Sunday wafer this greenback this old
georgie-o thimble against rejection’s prick

This dollar hoped to be one-of-six
giving ears for the hearer letting another speak
This dollar has only come to tell
how one seeks shelter from September’s cold

This dollar that only in a moment passes hands
where she is stopped that another may not have to
stand without

This dollar is simply representative
for how it unifies the space it crosses
like a door spread wide between two bodies
where human souls do meet

read Leigh Herrick's biography

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A Place Called Home | Evelyn D. Klein

Home is the place
our parents first create
in rooms of their hearts
warmth of their touch
food of their spirit
in space of their vision
life’s daily language and tasks
where we fit into the order of things
which helps shape who we are
in safety of belonging
inside borders of the family Haven

When flames of war or misfortune
lay claim to people’s houses
they devour structure and soul
of their existence
a family’s hope of being
the children’s dream of becoming
in the void and chaos of displacement
they cling to daily subsistence
in the circle of familiar faces
Homeless they drift like refugees
by the side of the road
without means or identity
between jobs
between countries
they look for a New World
a place to settle
moving from one state to another
strangers at the door

Like pioneers they long
to start over somewhere
stake their claim
on the American Dream
inside the fence of their means and direction
build a future in a dwelling
of their own reflection
furnished in colors and styles
that open the world to their children
to grow new roots and branches
members of the chosen community
in a place called Home

read Evelyn D. Klein's biography

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Homeless Poem | Katherine Greene Lewis

I had a room once high in the sky
with stars on the walls and a bright
globe of light over the bed and doors
everywhere and nothing to fear.
The hands I love carried me
up the long stairs that echoed
with every step and voices grew
like vines in the stairwell.
Now with sky for a roof and street for a floor
and bent walls of air and no door
I wake to sirens like copper wire
forced through my head
and cold flows through
the river of my body.
When I was born clean and new
I came through a door
into life. I was home.
Now home is the hand
between me and fear.

read Katherine Greene Lewis's biography

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An Image of Home | Ruthann Hanson Magler

We open the door to home
And enter the world
We open the door to the world
And enter home

Home is where we are
Its realities shape us
Its dreams inspire us
Its hurts give us
Something to grow beyond

In good times/In bad times

We enter our homes
There’s a meal/a quilt
Sometimes people who call us by name

Home is where we imagine
Goodness to be
A shelter against
The chaos of life

A launching pad
From which to enter
The world
In exchange for
A purpose in life

read Ruthann Hanson Magler's biography

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No Place | Stephen Morse

You know
I’m not out here
for you to look at
because I want to be

I made a mistake
and I’m sorry
very sorry

excuse me for living
I wouldn’t do it
in front of you
if I had a choice

I threw it all away
house, family,
a good job,
credibility, self-respect
every damned thing
because I drank too much
a few too many times
had too much imagination
and way too much ability
to do stupid things
well.

Gleeful righteous anger
trumps all

and here I am

a dog would hide,
and die
privately

but I can’t crouch in bushes
or curl up behind a dumpster;
the invisible homeless man
is a fallacy

there is no place to hide.

read Stephen Morse's biography

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Home | Tim Nolan

So I always knew these rooms would be here,
these small closets, the close nooks and corners.

So I knew I would open this door and breathe
deeply in and see the floor plan of the future—

down the hall to the right or to the left. So
I knew I would be within these shingles and studs,

looking out this clear glass into the yard, to the sky
which goes on being blue and bright. The trees

are just leafing out. I knew it would be this way.

read Tim Nolan's biography

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Ready to Rent | Judith Pinke

1.
I remember to cast off the hat
of shame for my voucher. I remember
to pick up my purse full of criteria
for a good landlord.
I hold up my head with my collar of pride
and start dancing under my ethnic dress.
I clothe myself in my great value
as a renter. I’m ready to rent.

2.
When he hears what I sound like
on his business answering machine
or sees me, if I get that far, at
the empty apartment door,
he is thinking something
about whether he’ll rent to me
and my son—our diction our colors
our height our heft our cleanness.

When he checks my credit history
and rental references and looks
for a criminal record, he counts how
the cash will flow through me from
his investment. Or will it? he asks.

3.
Sponge-painted walls, two doors,
roller shades in a few narrow windows—
so I got it, with water light and heat,
on lease; it doesn’t belong to me.
If I could be buying my home, I’d
climb on the wings of my hard work.
I’d begin my belonging to and weaving in
the social order, tight with the twigs
and strings and leaves of my nest.

read Judith Pinke's biography

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Not Home | Laura Purdie Salas

I stay a lot of places that are
not home

crowded shelters sweating tears and Lysol
church halls bulging with helpful people who stay
8 feet away
dingy motels with watching desk men who think
I might steal sheets
Aunt Loretta’s small warm house on 24th where
she begs Daddy to turn his life around

all of them have pillows and soap and
space for us to stay
for a while

but they don’t have room for my past, my secrets,
or most of all,
my future

they are
not home

read Laura Purdie Salas's biography

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Smaller | Laura Purdie Salas

Life shrinks
without a home to live in.

It shrivels until it

fits into a
torn grocery sack or a
holey old suitcase,

until it is itty bitty enough for you to
throw your socks, your comb, and
your dreams
into that sack
flat out fast
when Mama snaps,
“We got to move. Now!”

My life has melted so small—
soon I expect to disappear completely.

read Laura Purdie Salas's biography

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Walking with Wilson | Kenneth Lee Smith

Since we washed up on the shores
of the Hummingbird Family Housing Center
Wilson don’t walk with us no more.

In the folds of these city canyons
he taught us to scrape our soles
hard on the white sidewalks
just to make a sound,
a people noise
so they don’t forget we’re here,
always walking
always walking beneath the slanted sun.

Mama said Wilson’s eyes
was the second best gift God ever gave.
She smiled down at me,
I knew what she meant.

Last Saturday, the food bank ran out of turkey.
Us hungry trudged up the hill
to the Catholic place.
I got to taste the cotton candy air
on Wilson’s broad shoulders
as he carried me.
Up there, I cried without noise.
I didn’t want him to know
I loved being off the ground,
the ground, if he could, he’d grow roots to.

Under the bridge
him and Mama
would rub elbows in the dark
even on nights stuffed with black.
I could tell when Wilson’s strawberry eyes
would guide Mama to a soft landing.

He was all ours,
our tall hanging tree
till we got “lucky.”
Got the call
a place with a door we could lock,
a place that didn’t take men,
We don’t walk with Wilson no more.

read Kenneth Lee Smith's biography

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Bulldozed and Buried | Debra J. Stone

Houses stood here once
Yes right here, the old ones say to young ones who have
no memory

Sidewalk games played by loud and quiet children
Drawn with rainbow colored chalk
Bicycles and tricycles whizzed or wobbled
Jump ropes lay resting in the grass coiled like snakes
And vacant lots were fields for kick ball and softball

Hot summer, the time I remember best
Men washed and waxed cars
To a high glossy finish underneath tree lined streets
Women hung washed clothes
To dry on rope strung between poles in backyards
Hoping to catch warm breezes
Fourth of July and family reunions came bringing sweet
smoky smell of barbeque

Yes right here
Grandma Essie and Grandpa Joe’s house bulldozed and buried
For Interstate 94 going East and West connecting big cities

Displacing

Bicycles and tricycles, rainbow colored chalk games on sidewalks
Memories of friends and neighbors aunts and uncles and cousins
Houses once lived and stood

read Debra J. Stone's biography

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The Heart of the House | Susan Marie Swanson

The heart of the house is the table where chattering kids
stir and slurp their chocolate milk.

The mind of the house
is its books—like the bike-repair manual
on the basement floor,
and the dinosaur book with torn pages,
a Shakespeare where an old phone bill
marks The Tempest.

Steps and stairs are the house’s plan for what comes next.

The locks are its fears.

The house has a good memory,
especially the floors,

and more bones than anyone can count—pencils,
spoons, toothbrushes, and such,
besides the lumber and nails.

Not flute, not faucet, not radio—but the breath
of the family asleep makes the music of the house.

The hope is a kite and string waiting in the dark closet.

The wisdom?
Windows.
Lamps.
Laughter.
Every source of light.

read Susan Marie Swanson's biography

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House Key | Susan Marie Swanson

Here is the key to the house.
In the house burns a light.
In that light rests a bed.
On that bed waits a book.
In that book flies a bird.
In that bird there is a song.
In that song rises the moon.
On the moon’s face shines the sun.

Sun in the moon,
moon in the song,
song in the bird,
bird in the book,
book on the bed,
bed in the light,
light in the house.
Here is the key to the sun.

read Susan Marie Swanson's biography

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804 Parkman | Noukou Thao

Our houses board
In ghosts, they hold
Us there.
When I was little my cousins and I played
War. We pulled grass from the dirt so that
The roots wore down the earth,
We threw it across two yards.
It settles in the other camp’s
Territory, a grenade.
In the crevice of memory, we are forever alive in
This sea of games.
Every town we live in
Becomes one
Country: this nation of
Barefooted children and
Twenty-six addresses,
Eight elementary schools,
Never a chance for college.
We live here, in this ever expanding
Field of clapped homes, duplexes,
Fourplexes, crammed bedrooms
Filled with bags and bags of underwear
And closets full of shoes, hallways
Dirty with handprints, rice morsels.
The smell of spice
Permeates our bodies, the gardens
Never ceasing, the slaughtered chickens
And eggs put beside our cribs.
Our hearts always
Moving across an alleyway
Of gravel, where we picked up
Rocks and made them
Pieces of games.
Now this neighborhood isn’t ours
Any more than the hill above Concord
Street is ours.
Now the block has been knocked down
And a store is erected, selling life-size pork rinds,
Which we eat in a beef stew.

read Noukou Thao's biography

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I Can Taste This House | Marilynne Thomas Walton

Remember when the bread
we bought was stale enough
to be called “for the birds”?
Our on-sale peaches soft; browning spots
to cut away. And when new boxes
arrived at the Salvation Army, it was
like opening a Grandma’s treasure trunk.
Then the kids' only new clothes came from
relatives birthday/Christmas presents.

Did I ever tell you
about the rented duplex
I lived in when I was little
in South Minneapolis. Next door
to a green stucco hardware store
and a bar, seeping with amber whiskey smell.
Neon lights flashed on my bedroom
wall at night, red, blue, green, then
green, blue, red again.
In my dreams floated a white colonial house
with green shutters, overlooking
Hiawatha golf course, that Martha,
a classmate, owned.

That’s why when we
bought our first house
at age forty-one,
it felt like a church when
I walkd in. That gold
shag rug was mine!
Every blade of green grass,
the wild purple violets
spotting the lawn like on a
dotted Swiss dress—mine, too.

I’m an old lady, now,
and I can still taste
the sweet, sweet bee nectar of
this house, I share with you,
my old spouse.

read Marilynne Thomas Walton's biography

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January First | Maya Washington

Cornbread crumbs in the greens,
drips of Tabasco sauce form beads of graduation.

Johnny Cake fills the belly,
a golden chant
caught in the murmur of centrally heated air.

Guided by real window dressings,
skating glass balcony door
opens to city views blinking
red-yellow planets.

Watered by fresh painted interiors,
eyes turn cartwheels
over plush carpets emitting
hope’s simple scent.

Turnips and collards flirt with steel utensils,
a delicacy
sizzling on a brand-new stove.

Cornbread crumbs in the greens.
This year will be what never was!

read Maya Washington's biography

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