1
You know, Dorothy, you can’t let people bring you down so easily or you’ll have your nose in the dirt for the rest of your life. From what I make of it, for every person with a good thought, there are about fifty who’d try to spoil it. We have to guard our good ideas, our happy thoughts, and fight for them. Because if we let those others snuff them out, well, we didn’t after all deserve them. .J.M. Lavallee
2
A rural Venus, Selah rises from thegold foliage of the Sixhiboux River, sweepspetals of water from her skin. At once, clouds begin to sob for such beauty. Clothing drops like leaves." No one makes poetry, my Mme.Butterfly, my Carmen, in Whylah, ”I whisper. She smiles: “We’ll shape it withour souls.” Desire illuminates the dark manuscriptof our skin with beetles and butterflies. After the lightning and rain has ceased, after the lightning and rain of lovemakinghas ceased, Selah will dive again into thesunflower-open river.George Elliott Clarke
3
The moon twangs its silver strings; The river swoons into town; The wind beds down in the pines, Covers itself with stars.George Elliott Clarke
4
In school, I hated poetry - those skinny, Malnourished poems that professors love; The bad grammar and dirty words that catch In the mouth like fishhooks, tear holes in speech. Pablo, your words are rain I run through, Grass I sleep in.George Elliott Clarke
5
We build this country ourselves every day and we have to be, in the most positive sense, totally unreal.J.C. Villamere