Mopping
© 2010 Sandra Jean-Pierre I've been mopping the floors of my home for fourteen years. I generally start at the front of the house, at the threshold of the front door and work my way back to the Florida Room. The breadth of my mopping exploits can stretch from my...
Mission Impossible
© 2010 Sandra Jean-Pierre Even at the age of five, I was not to be out done. I remember my disappointment, when upon waking in the mornings and I'd find not only my Aunt gone but my Older brother AND my Mother too. I'd quickly scramble out of the twin bed, unafraid of...
Mothers/Daughters
© 2009 Sandra Jean-Pierre This dance this formative give-take yank-push scream-pull boder?-No boder mi! Mama!-Fe respe wou wi tifi! dance that we find ourselves in the middle of that we can't break away from no matter how far or wide or permanent these miles seem as...
Folding Pieces
© 2009 Sandra Jean-Pierre As I am folding these pieces - these wayward bothersome pieces these fulsome tiresome pieces of this Self, curtailing the the sumTotalall-ness the genteel mock/smallness the wholesome boldness of This Self it occurs to me ... occurs to Me...
Dead People’s Language
© 2009 Sandra Jean-Pierre There is a language that dead people speak. It sounds like Portuguese, Swahili, Farsi, mixed sometimes with Hebrew, French and Czech. If I listen closely I can detect a bit of Spanish, blended in with Tagalog and Hopi. I can only imagine it...
In Miami
© 2009 Sandra Jean-Pierre There is a place in Miami where you can get American Processed Cheese Food for pennies per pre-wrapped slice. Imagine my surprise and gratitude the day I discovered this. Surprise as Abuelo casually shuffled the tepidly chilled slices in the...
Salt
© 2008 Sandra Jean-Pierre paper like that torn too close to the fire piece that no one notices I crinkle and curl up turning light brown and smooth around my edges bright embers lava bright in the pinched darkness dying to ethereal grayish smokes to the sky reaching...
Chain Smoking Cookie Fiend
© 2008 Sandra Jean-Pierre I began smoking when I was 8. My step-father was actually the only known smoker in the apartment and when he didn't have an ash tray handy, he would have me bring the cigarette ends to the bathroom and tell me to put them in the toilet and...
After the Revolution
© 2004 Sandra Jean-Pierre for D.P. I’ll write for you not of familiar revolutions or emptying liquor bottles laced with full gun barrels in dizzying cahoots over which won’t take your life next… Instead I’ll write of after… when hot showers make the revolutionary...
Old Friend
© 2003 Sandra Jean-Pierre For Chris G. On the Sahara plain we were tribesman sharing stories of the hunt beneath crooked-sparse shade trees maybe... we were women in South America tending the men, nursing the children, feeding our families from the Earth while sharing...
Hands
© 2003 Sandra Jean-Pierre My hands… like unsuspecting landmines trigger explosions on the landscape of your body in slow motion as my semi calloused palms glide across the ocean of your skin, un abating to your tides and tremors I begin my work of soothing out your...
Left Behind
© 2008 Sandra Jean-Pierre No Not in that same place- the barefoot on wet shower floor space the dry heaving, chest collapsing place not that half sleep/stumbling pace Not from that place where these lips crack from neglect and under/use where this brow furrows from...