Long Horizon
© 2010 Sandra Jean-Pierre ...there but for grace and mercy... I've walked the thousand steps, by the thousands before me, in this thousand moments journey. Favored children, sleeping restless sleeps, eating fetid dreams of those unaccustomed to dreaming, much less...
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...
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...
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...
Brown Baby
© 2003 Sandra Jean-Pierre Brown baby Brown baby Brown baby Brown baby… It’s not supposed to happen this way but day twelve looks back at me while I look at them with no way to explain why beans and rice were too much of a luxury to have on the same day… …in this...