Fall Back

Daylight Saving Time 2011: Why and When Does It Begin?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/110311-daylight-savings-2011-time-savings-when-does-spring-forward-nation/

Fall pries back the numerals

Of the ancient clock,

Gnarled knuckles wrestling away minutes

Until withered hands become smooth

Autumn whispers with fallen leaves, crackling under foot

Spring riots with toddlers in brightly colored costume

One stolen hour of sunlight

Will help harvest the corn

And fill the silo for winter,

Who meanders on soft white paws,

Blanketing creation in frosty silence

Unknown Hands

All That Authenticity May Be Getting Old

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/garden/all-that-authenticity-may-be-getting-old.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hpw

Bird silhouette perches on spare branch

Jute grain sacks and fading maps adorn walls

Hand knit blankets in roughly hewn wool

Folded inside armoire built with salvaged timber

Surround ourselves with the work of unknown hands,

Totems for authentic lives  

Sold

Jailed Occupy Chicago Protesters Describe Harsh Treatment By Police, Plan To Picket Rahm Emanuel's Office http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/24/jailed-occupy-chicago-pro_n_1028081.html#s427949&title=We_care_about

Youth, bearing protest signs,

Your reward will be metal cages.

Rubber bullets.

Tear gas.

Stolen hope.

Democracy,

That veiled virgin,

Whored to the highest bidder.

Longing for Home

Native Survivors Of Foster Care Return Home

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/27/141728431/native-survivors-of-foster-care-return-home?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

I.

Eight year old boy

Living in a teepee

On the Western Plains

Shiny white van emerges

Whisks away the child for “summer camp”

He spends twelve years with white strangers

Surrounded by four white walls

Dreaming of sage and tobacco

Hearing Grandfather’s Voice

“Never forget who you are”

Still waiting for the van to return

Infant From Rubble

Turkey Earthquake 2011: Three More People Pulled From Rubble

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/turkey-earthquake-2011-rescue_n_1032222.html#s431136

Earth covered in ashes

A painting in shades of gray

Yet you emerged

Pink and sobbing,

From under bricks and wreckage

As if the Earth itself birthed you

Infant pulled from rubble

Braving Chaos, Parents and Kids Occupy Wall Street for a Night

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/parents-kids-occupy-wall-street-dan-zanes?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+motherjones%2Fmain+%28MotherJones.com+Main+Article+Feed%29

Toddlers cordoned off

Devouring cupcakes covered with icing

Playing with pastel letters on playskoolc mats

 Zucotti Park rages around them

Fire trucks blaring, protesters chanting

Children with pint sized backpacks

 Dorac and Elmoc  covered over by political slogans

A lone baby cries, demanding to be heard

Nakushi

The Indian girls called 'Unwanted': Children branded by their families chose new names for fresh start
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2052606/From-undesirable-Goddess-Hundreds-Indian-girls-translates-Unwanted-chose-new-monikers-fresh-start.html#ixzz1bhRWCxjX

Nakushi

My name is no longer “Unwanted”

Call me Aahna, because I exist

Call me Bahumathi, I will be a scholar

Call me Dakshakanya, able daughter

Call me Ibha, for I am all hope

My name is no longer “Unwanted”

Nakushi

Wingspan

Brooklyn mother dies shielding schoolchildren from gunfire

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/10/brooklyn-mother-killed-while-shielding-children-from-bullets-near-school.html

She spent her whole life

With arms open wide,

Her wingspan generous enough to cover

The children

As the bullets rained from rooftop.

Rag Picker

Chinese toddler left for dead in hit-and-run crash dies

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15398332

Perhaps death is a blessing

For a child

Mowed down by a van

Her little form driven over like a small pile of refuse,

Only to be driven over again.

Eighteen people walked by her bleeding body,

Averting their eyes,

Before a rag picker carried her away.

Perhaps death is a blessing

For this child.

Halloween with Penelope

These are the days of kitty cat purrs and princess gowns

Of petting goats,

Painting pumpkins,

and greeting flowers by name

These are days of bare feet in sandboxes,

Paper bags worn jauntily atop your little head,

And saying goodnight to beautiful bugs, tall trees, and star bright stars.

You long to play in the clouds,

To pet ducks and geese,
To see dinosaurs,

To pull fistfuls of basil and put rocks in the bird feeder

To stay a little girl and not grow bigger,

May you always dance with your Dad,

Find comfort in your mama's words,

Know the peace of the summer sun 

And greet the flowers by their name

Escape

Exotic animals escape Ohio farm; owner found dead

 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ohio-exotic-animal-escape-20111019,0,2040741.story

Perhaps you gave yourself a tranquilizer

Opened the doors to their cages,

Deactivated the electric fence

Before sailing on oblivion’s ocean

Or perhaps you were strangled by strong paws

Who stole your keys

And set free the bears

No matter.

Exotic animals prowl the interstate

Lions running the roadways

Giraffes eating leaves in the medians

Camels  at the convenient store

Wolves at the Walmart

Humans hide at home

Cowering behind closed curtains.

The Nameless

Freed Soldier Gilad Shalit Returns To Israel

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/18/141452716/freed-soldier-gilad-shalit-returns-to-israel

1,000 stories silenced

From unknown men

With unspoken names

Nameless women will shed countless tears

For returning husbands and brothers

With untold tales

The only name uttered is Gilad Shalit

One life worth 1,000

What strange calculus

Privileges 1 to 1000?

What curious math 

Sentences so many lives to abstraction?

Not Sybil

A Girl Not Named Sybil

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/a-girl-not-named-sybil.html?pagewanted=3&src=recg&adxnnlx=1318852883-/AjM2pCOLKRt0gmrJY8Cpw

She claimed she awoke in antique shops

Surrounded by shattered china dolls

Or in foreign hotels in far flung cities

Quiet woman transformed into pigtailed girl;

And arrogant student;

Frightened loner;

Chatty rule breaker.

You believed it all,

Crawling into bed with your patient

To administer electric shock

Feeding her sodium pentothal , barbiturates

Tape recording endless sessions

Where she spoke of Mother

(and the flashlight inside her, blanket over her eyes, cotton stuffed in her nostrils; silver boxes and glass bottles, arms and legs held down)

The only doubt you had...

When she confessed so many lies...

Homecoming, 20th Reunion

Manicured hands will be shaken

Expanding waistlines carefully obscured

Doubts, like sharp bursts of pain,

Will be smoothed over with a bleached smile

Stay a while

You will remember the feel of catching a football,

When the wind used to sing your name

Every audience gave a standing ovation

And came bearing roses

Sitting on the back of your daddy’s convertible

Arms around a girl wearing a rhinestone tiara 

You wished all of life would be a sunny morning

At a hometown parade

99%

Occupy Wall Street Inspires Worldwide Protests

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/15/141382468/occupy-wall-street-inspires-worldwide-protests?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

“We are unstoppable.  Another world is possible”

We are chanting on Wall Street,

Marching in DC,

Bearing signs that say “There is enough for everyone,”

and “Give us our 92.7 billion back”.

We are in

Toronto, London, Sydney, Singapore

951 Cities

82 Countries

We are the 99%

Scene from Dream

Lifting little glasses of wine in unison

We sing blessings in Hebrew and Arabic

I sit with survivor of the Shoah, a poet with covered head,

We eat with our fingers

Steaming pita, creamy hummus, rich falafel

And drink sweet red wine

We walk through my city,

But not my city,

To an unknown  river

The poet dives in,

Swimming like a porpoise

I wade slowly into icy water

Surrounded by young Yeshivah students in black suits,

Their swimming, a frigid prayer

Modern Day Slavery

Alabama brings back slavery for Latinos

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/12/alabama-slavery-latino-immigrants


Water shut off
Children chased from schools
Fields of cotton lie unpicked
Attempts to flee Alabama failed


Now jailed on immigration charges
Sent as a prisoner to pick your cotton
Modern day slavery

Still Alive

Orange Line service suspended…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dr-gridlock/post/metro-person-struck-by-a-train-at-clarendon-station/2011/10/11/gIQAjI7FdL_blog.html?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost

After the jump

I expected crashing emptiness,

Bone crushing release.

Instead, pressed  between the rails,

Noise so loud it raged silently;

Universe reduced to metallic echoes and tremors

Straight shooting tornado,

Streamlined silver city,

Twentieth century relic

Crashing over my body

Despite my best intentions

I’m still alive

In Her Own Word

Gbowee Talks About Winning Nobel Peace Prize

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/07/141162208/gbowee-talks-about-winning-nobel-peace-prize

The voice said, “Gather the women and to pray for peace”

100,000 dead

Hospitals destroyed

Sewage flooding the streets

Boys given drugs, forced to kill

The women of Liberia,

Cloaked all in white,

Protested in Monrovia’s fields,

In wind and rain

We are tired of war.

We are tired of running.

We are tired of begging for bulgur wheat.

We are tired of our children being raped.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mithers-gbowee-nobel-peace-prize-20111009,0,839019.story

Victoria

Daughter of ‘Dirty War,’ Raised by Man Who Killed Her Parents

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/americas/argentinas-daughter-of-dirty-war-raised-by-man-who-killed-her-parents.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimes

“The heart doesn’t kidnap you, it doesn’t hide you, it doesn’t hurt you, it doesn’t lie to you all of your life…Love is something else.”

Even as a child,

Some seed in me recoils

At your pride over torture

At the dinners of silver candelabras and leaded crystal

At your tarnished gun, slammed on white damask

Some dislocation unfurls within

Sending green tendrils through darkness

My ‘mother and father’, my kidnappers,

This is What Democracy Looks Like

Wall Street protesters bullied by police

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/10/201110781816308874.html?utm_content=features&utm_campaign=features&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=rss&utm_medium=tweet

This is not your bridge

Not your pavement

Orange barricades protect asphalt and stone,

Bankers and Power

You shrink as the pepper spray assaults your wide, trusting eyes

You sit unmoving, as we attack with clubs

You state your name as “Troy Davis, Emmet Till, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King."

You recite the First Amendment.

We rule this block, these streets

To protect order, to keep the peace

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.5/jeanne_mansfield_occupy_wall_street.php

Better Angels

Is Human Violence On The Wane?

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/07/141156404/is-human-violence-on-the-wane

Born abhorring pain,

Violence, an acquired taste,

A bloody delicacy,

Favored by aficionados

Unidentified

Woman says she's runaway, wasn't killed in Syrian custody

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/world/meast/syria-woman-alive/index.html?eref=rss_world&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+rss/cnn_world+%28RSS:+World%29

Face bruised and beaten

Beyond recognition

Brown eyes bloodied shut

Head discarded

Limbs dismembered

Burned to ash

Given to someone’s mother

Who ululated, collapsing into the dusty street

Buried under the wrong name,

Unearthed from the grave

Yet another murdered woman,

Unknown even in death

Anywhere But Alabama

After Ruling, Hispanics Flee an Alabama Town

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/us/after-ruling-hispanics-flee-an-alabama-town.html?_r=1

Trash blows down silent streets

Motor homes marooned on cinderblock

Once loved dogs left to scrounge through garbage

Of abandoned bodegas and shuttered cantinas

Brown eyed children pulled from school,

Ushered to overstuffed cars,

By parents undocumented and invisible

On the Acquittal of Amanda Knox

Amanda Knox Verdict: Murder Conviction Overturned

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/03/amanda-knox-verdict-_n_992798.html?ref=mostpopular

What happened that last night

In Perugia?

Tumble down villa

With silent stones 

A feline beauty,

Her bespectacled Italian lover,

An immigrant from the Ivory Coast,

A British exchange student,

(Half-naked, throat slashed)

Left like a crumbling statue,

Mute as marble.

What happened that last night

In Perugia?

Smolder

Isobel Dobson death: Man arrested over stables fire

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-15142626?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

                                          

Twenty horses

(with shiny manes and prancing steps)

Ushered to safety

As the little girls burned

Neuron, sweat, muscle, blood

What broken stuff built you,

Unworthy father,

Preserving your investment

As your own children smolder?

Speak

Viral video shows woman hearing own voice for first time

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20111001/deaf-woman-hears-video-111001/

After a life of silence,

The uproar of your own laughter

Startles and delights 

The timbre of your own voice

Steals your breath

Like meeting yourself for the very first time,

You drink in sounds, banishing the mute past