DIRGE FOR AMERICANS

by Greg Friedman 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

They came in search of virgin 

land but found earth who was 

mother, sky who was father 

to those who walked on, under, 

in harmonies unknown across 

oceans. Unaware in the grasping. 

 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

They told us the stories: patriots 

of liberating pine trees and snakes 

un-tread-upon, wresting liberty  

from plough-wielding hands and  

chained feet brought unwilling, 

un-asked-for to bondage. 

 

shoot first, 

lie after 

 

We learned the lie, detonate it 

annually with fanfare and fire, 

touting tricornered hats and parchment 

promises which excluded souls 

with hypocrisy’s math which 

wove the original sin into 

the flag-fabric of a nation. 

 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

Even the taciturn words of Lincoln, 

mixing the knife-edged speeches of 

Douglass, passed into shades on blood- 

lands, and twisted into stone idols of 

Lee and Jackson, while newer  

promises stonewalled freedom. 

 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

Riders of terror hiding under white  

in black nights un-re-constructed 

the fragile facades of freedmen’s 

bureaus and the warrior-president, 

while carpetbags carried the poisons  

of our Adam’s choices, the apple  

eaten once and choking, choking us still. 

 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

They marched, some walked into water- 

cannon resistance, some earned ropes 

others bullets. But a people progressed, 

overcame, would not be moved until law 

moved and protections etched on stones 

hewn from prophets’ preaching. Alas, 

though, alas, the original grasp of  

the banned fruit reached again to 

roll back black tides of truth, un- 

write the engraved securities and 

spread denial with ballots and faces 

shrouded lest we see hate’s true faces. 

 

Shoot first 

lie after 

 

What mirrors can poets hold up  

to who we are, the maga-faces of 

us, masked and armed with original 

animosity, that snake-fed wish for 

the knowledge of evil without good, 

the forbidden fruit of persistent 

preferences, potent with orange truths, 

to contrive, convince what eyes saw, 

not innocence—but what hate reshapes. 

 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

Our weak words gain spirit in gathered 

places of open and zoomed assemblies 

of naming, crafted calls for hands to 

join and more voices to move between 

the guns and the victims, recognize 

the lies as they spew like Connor’s 

cannons to push us off the streets 

of spoken truths. We speak first, 

second, third and always,  

after  

and until. 

Greg Friedman is a Franciscan priest, author and poet, currently living in Rome, Italy. 

PUBLICITY STUNT

By Matt Witt

Danny Danon, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, on X.

When 500 leaders from 40 countries formed a flotilla to try to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Israeli government arrested them and said the flotilla was a “publicity stunt” and against the law.

When auto workers sat down in a General Motors plant in 1937 and refused to relinquish the factory until the company recognized their union, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When young Black people challenged segregation by sitting at whites-only lunch counters, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When suffragettes chained themselves to the White House and went on hunger strikes in jail to win the right to vote, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When protesters in India led by Gandhi boycotted British goods as part of a campaign for independence, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

When South Africans deliberately violated apartheid rules like curfews in Black townships, that was a publicity stunt and against the law.

So many laws. So much power. So many publicity stunts yet to come.

October 4, 2025

Matt Witt is a writer and photographer in Oregon. His work may be seen at MattWittPhotography.com. His latest book is Monumental Beauty: Wonders Worth Protecting in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

LOWNDES COUNTY

by Mariana McDonald

Source: Balls and Strikes, April 21, 2025. Pictured: Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who said, “The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens.”

       for Catherine Flowers

A low wind shifts and yet the smell

persists, erasing whiffs of sweetbrush,  

freesia, lilac. Even the gardenia,  

drowned out by the blaring stench  

of waste, raw and moving, straight-  

piped, pumped into the yards of poor   

folks in Lowndes county, Alabama,  

where Jim Crow and ramshackle join   

to spread a putrid presence onto lawns   

where children play, E. coli and danger   

in the dirt. No rains can clean it,  

clear it, make the grass a sea of   

fresh green bending in the wind,  

seed of childhood memories, scent of  

freshly-cut & gathered blades of summer.  

A memory Lowndes County children may not have.  

One brave fighter worked for years to change it,  

got a president to sign his name to fairness,  

agree to let the lilies and magnolias  

one day reign there, redolent of justice,  

until one stinking voice called it illegal, 

overturned it,  cancelling the clean-up,  

leaving stench  

to flourish

Author’s note: 

“Lowndes County” is about the poor and 72% Black county in Alabama where lack of public sewage treatment facilities forces residents to “straight-pipe” sewage into their lawns, creating a putrid public health and environmental disaster. After years of residents battling the state to have the problem addressed, and inspired by the leadership of Lowndes County native Catherine Flowers, the US Department of Justice launched an investigation which resulted in the 2023 landmark environmental justice agreement. The agreement calls for wide-ranging public health remediation and sanitation improvements. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice deemed the agreement “DEI” and therefore illegal, and overturned the agreement this month.

Mariana Mcdonald is a poet, writer, scientist, and activist. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She became a Hambidge Arts Center Fellow in 2012, and was appointed Black Earth Institute Scholar/Fellow in 2022. She lives in Atlanta. 

CRT MEETS THE LITTLE ROCK NINE

by Margaret Rozga

Sarah Huckabee Sanders appears in the center

of my television screen. Her head and shoulders

in sharp focus, that camera angle fixed as if

to convey steadfastness. As if.

In the background a stretch of hazy space as if

she appears out of nowhere. On either side of her

jewel blue, likely furniture, maybe facing couches,

though placed at such a distance from each other

as if to constrain conversation. The camera angle

cuts off a complete view, so they appear flat

surfaces as if they were beds.

She continues to talk, about surviving cancer,

about leaving her children at Christmas to fly

in the dark to Afghanistan in the entourage

of he who she lets remain unnamed. As if.

She moves on.

Little Rock’s Central High School, her school,

she says. Art on the State Capitol grounds now

celebrates the Little Rock Nine, African American

students unwelcomed, demeaned, threatened,

abused when they integrated the school. As if

to erase sixty-six years, she claims in this way

civil rights history is with her, as if her sneer

at CRT were not erasure.

Her service in the administration of the

president she traveled with in the dark

another as if.

Editor’s note: A proposed bill that would have prohibited the use of public school funds to teach the 1619 Project curriculum has failed to make it out of an Arkansas House committee. —THV11, February 9, 2023

 

 

Margaret Rozga served as a voting rights volunteer in rural Alabama in 1965 and was a participant in Milwaukee’s 1967-68 fair housing marches. Her fifth book is Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press 2021).

TIME'S UP

by Judy Juanita

“Burn this city,” a photograph by Anthony Citro.

Just because Woolworth's lunch counters were integrated

And black people could buy their lunch there

Didn't mean that Woolworth's as an institution wasn't fading

Its time was up.

Just because blacks integrated the Academy Awards

Showed up and showed out in 2022 

Doesn't mean that Hollywood as an institution isn't fading. 

I said it once and I'll say it again:

We should all be so disgusted by this perversity

That we boycott the Academy Awards and Golden Globes

As the pimps and hos conventions they are. 

Of course, who am I but a black woman

Old as coffee grounds, talking still 

About the mistreatment of women? 

Besides it being a display by the rich in front of the rich 

Because they're effing rich and can floorshow v. streetfight

The "slap" is good for biz. And there still is no biz like show biz.

Meanwhile the exploitation of "the nubile bodies they peed and shat upon" 

Continues practically unabated. If you think women aren't still peed and shat upon

Please tell me why female broadcasters and weathercasters show much 

Flesh/leg/cannot age while their male counterparts can look like Elmer Fudd

And stay employed until they're way past 65. 

Please tell me why Kevin Costner can walk out and preach to the minions 

With gravitas and brag about being 68 during the awards

While the "sell by" date for females in H'wood is 38 or so 

(unless they're a supertalented Brit).

Please, this slap wasn't shit. 

The real problem is that H'wood is as out-of-date 

An institution as slavery. 

But because it's so profitable for the slave-owners

It hasn't faded out completely. 

But its time is up.

Judy Juanita's poetry collection Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland won the American Book Award 2021 from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). Her collection of essays DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland [EquiDistance, 2016] examines race, gender, politics and spirituality, as experienced by a black activist and self-described "feminist foot soldier." Winner of the Tartt Fiction Prize at the University of West Alabama [UWA], her short story collection The High Price of Freeways will be published by Livingston Press  [UWA] in July, 2022. 

PASSAGE

by Daniel Brown

in memory of victims of the

 16th Street Baptist Church bombing,
Birmingham, AL, September 15, 1963

They crossed the river of Jordan early.

They went across the water
walking down Sunday school stairs.

Adie Mae Collins
Cynthia Wesley
Carole Robertson
Carol Denise McNair

Never made the passage of age
to young womanhood or Motherhood

They are remembered this day
and will be each year.

Hate is able to merely explode
it has no other course.

Passage that is abruptly destroyed
leaves us empty

So we demand rites of passage
the grace of aging for peace and justice

To cross the water with dignity when time comes due.

Daniel Brown is a retired Special Education teacher. He began writing poetry for his own pleasure but is now interested in sharing his work. He reads regularly at CAPS (Calling All Poets) in New Paltz NY and has been published in Chronogram Magazine and TheNewVerse.News. He resides in Red Hook, NY.

NOBODY SHOULD WANT INEQUALITY TO EXIST

by Shirley JonesLuke

Detail from “Answers to Your Protest Questions” by Chelsea Saunders at The Nib, June 12, 2020

Inequality is store security following
It’s the inconsistent punishment from
a teacher for breaking a class rule
it’s the number of times you were stopped
by the police, as you walked or drove home
It’s being fired & taking twice as long to find a job
It’s being an ex-con and no one wants to hire you
It’s having a name on a resume—Jaquita, Kamal, or Rayshawn then being placed in the circular file.  It’s listening to your grandmother tell stories about the marches in the sixties or your mom telling you about being called nigger when she was a freshman in college during the eighties or how even now you hold your child tightly as a police car rolls by, watching your every move. It’s being Black in America and bracing for battle every time you leave the house. Or it’s forgetting your roots & embracing the shucking & jiving that Society wants to see. You entertain & you live another day. You resist & they’ll kill you. It’s a living death versus death. A burden Black folk carry & they can’t carry it anymore.

Shirley JonesLuke is an activist, essayist, and poet living in Boston, Mass. She has an MFA from Emerson College. Her work focuses on culture, race, and society. Shirley has attended workshops at Breadloaf, Tin House, and VONA. She is working on a poetry manuscript.

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I SPOKE LIKE A CHILD . . .

by Marsha Owens

When did he have an epiphany? she asked
unclear about how one is racist and then is not.

I know how life meanders, doesn’t march
in straight lines like VMI cadets stepping
around Stonewall Jackson’s horse, its body
stained with white and black blood before it
was stuffed and saluted, forever revered.

Her name was LaVinia, her body stout,
her words few, her work for my Mama—
clean toilets and stiffly pressed sheets,
her days long, two bus rides from Richmond
to the freshly coifed suburbs, all-white.

I didn’t know why LaVinia fixed sandwiches
for my brother and me but none for herself.

His name was Pete, lanky and dark, head bowed
to say, Mornin’ Ma’am to my Mama, Mornin’ Missy
to me, a five-year-old. His work for my Daddy—
boards nailed, shingles hauled up the ladder, laid
out just so—a few dollars at day’s end.

I didn’t know why Pete sat outside on the stoop
at lunchtime, eating his hot dog on a paper plate.

I swam in the culture into which I was born,
1950s, somewhere between slavery’s end
and the Act called Civil Rights.

I stumbled with other white people away
from horrible injustices and strode towards
desegregated neighborhoods, integrated schools,
JFK, MLK, Trayvon Martin, President Obama.

I listened and learned, read and reflected,
laughed and cried with new friends whose
memories were not mine, nor mine theirs.
No epiphany, just life. And I voted

“for the person who cares about all people,”
Daddy said in his old age, simplistic political
advice that had evolved over a lifetime
and became the politics I chose to follow.

Marsha Owens is a retired educator who still lives and writes in Richmond, VA. She voted for Ralph Northam and Mark Herring, not because they are perfect, but because their policies support "all people."

LAW RAP

by Ian Patrick Williams

We fought the British army to create a new democracy
But it turned out just to be a lesson in hypocrisy
Instead of having freedom in the new Home of the Brave
All the Founding Fathers got to hold on to their slaves.
So as our brand new nation was then starting to be shaped
African-Americans faced lynching or were raped
Abolitionists did what they could to raise a legal fight
But all the slavers said it was a matter of state’s rights.
Dred Scott escaped into the North and thought that he was free
His owner followed, claiming he was just some property
The Court agreed and sent him back, said he was not a man
And all the racists cheered: it was the Law of the Land.

The population grew and so the pioneers moved West
Looking for whatever land might suit their interests best
Killing all the Native tribes wherever they would go
They found themselves in what was then called Northern Mexico
From Texas, Arizona, all the way to California
They turned their guns on Mexicans and said, “We gotta warn ya
That it’s time for all you brown-skinned folk to cross the Rio Grande.
This is white people country, that’s the Law of the Land.”

The Civil War was fought and won and stopped the South’s secession
But they simply organized a new form of repression
The Jim Crow laws would still repress the black community
But that was not the only form of inequality
Only men would have a say in forming legislation
Women couldn’t vote, though they were half the population.
The Suffragettes went marching, but the men said they were wrong
“Go back into the kitchen; that’s where all of you belong.
To vote requires mental work, you couldn’t understand.
Only men can vote ‘cause that’s the Law of the Land.”

The fight went on for years and years till Civil Rights could pass
We thought we had equality for every single class
But greedy corporations came up with a new solution:
They’d simply buy up all new laws with campaign contributions.
Crush the unions, cut their taxes, only pay low wage
And sure enough they had themselves another Gilded Age
With ever-growing profits, keeping all that they could get
Dumping on us peons twenty trillion dollars debt
The one-percenters cheered themselves and said, “Oh, ain’t it grand
When all us billionaires can buy the Laws of the Land!”

This struggle for control goes on, we’ve seen it all before
Deregulation, planned recessions, Middle Eastern war
All designed to line the pockets of the profiteers
The money-grubbing warmongers who’ve ripped us off for years.
There’s only one way out of living under their command
We have to come together and united, take a stand
We cannot have democracy until we all demand
That only We the People make the Laws of the Land.

Ian Patrick Williams won the Chicago Emmy award for co-authoring the teleplay Bleacher Bums for PBS-TV; the script was later purchased and produced as a M.O.W. by Showtime. He has also written and directed seven One Act plays for young people that toured Los Angeles Unified School District schools through the not-for-profit firm Enrichment Works. His one-act play "Provenance" was produced last year at Ensemble Studio Theater.

ANOTHER DEAD PRESIDENT

by Lee Patton

Just wait,
another long week of non-news—the demise itself,
long expected, the prepackaged obits, the lugubrious
commentaries on the long-gone context of his single term,
all of it muted in longing for “better days than ours,”
because the bar for presidential behavior is now so low
that all the deceased had to do was act the decent rich guy—
anything but behave like our intimate casino gangster.

But wait—
it’s just begun. There’ll be videotapes of stilted appearances,
recountings of his public service over and over and over—
with no such tributes to nurses, teachers, roadway flaggers,
restaurant servers, farmers, or home caregivers, no—
that’s not service. No, service is being vice to a treacly phony
who lied and lied to us. It’s voting against civil rights, demon-
izing minority prisoners and gays.  It’s staging bogus wars.

But wait—
there’s more, the body flown from Houston to DC
with solemn militarist salutes, the body lying in state
in some solemn capital venue, tearful attendees
and glimpses of best-forgotten dignitaries, then finally,
finally, for sure, the deposition of the body at a military
cemetery. Please, at last, let's just bury the poor old guy
to rest in peace.

Lee Patton, a Denverite, writes fiction, poetry, drama and commentary. Quarterlies that have published his work include Best New Writing 2012, The Threepenny Review, The Massachusetts Review, The California Quarterly,  Poetry Quarterly, Ellipsis, Hawaii-Pacific Review, Adirondack Review and Memoir Journal. His third novel, My Aim Is True, is out from Dreamspinner Press. "Faith of Power," a novella, appears in Main Street Rag's 2017 suspense anthology Stuck in the Middle.

THE TOILET PROBLEM

Barbara A Taylor’s free verse poems, renku, haiga, haibun, haiku, tanka, and other Japanese short form poetry appear in many international journals and anthologies on line and in print. She lives in the Rainbow Region, Northern NSW, Australia.

RESPECTING BELIEFS

by F.I. Goldhaber

Ad created by AML

If your beliefs include marginalizing other people
because of their skin color, their religious faith, their gender,
their sexual orientation, their origin, their age;
If your beliefs allow justification for depriving
other people of their civil rights to life, liberty, and
happiness pursuits declared in seventeen seventy-six;
If your beliefs condone slaughter, rape, assault, subjugation,
imprisonment, execution of those you see as "others";
If your beliefs create stigmas to prevent those who appear,
think, love, or speak differently than you from making a living,
feeding their families, buying a home, earning retirement;
If your beliefs allow children to go to bed hungry, the
sick to go bankrupt, the disabled to struggle to survive,
the mentally ill to wander homeless, the store clerks to need
welfare benefits, the elderly to freeze through the winter;
If your beliefs prevent access to reproductive health care
while keeping young people ignorant about the facts of life
and the realities of sexual health, choices, and pleasure;
Then I'm under no obligation to respect your beliefs.
Keep your hate to yourself. Keep it out of our country, state, and
city laws, our schools, parks, stores workplaces, and public restrooms.

As a reporter, editor, business writer, and marketing communications consultant, F.I. Goldhaber produced news stories, feature articles, essays, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits in five states. Now, her poems, short stories, novelettes, essays, and reviews appear in paper, electronic, and audio magazines, ezines, newspapers, calendars, and anthologies.

LOW BEAMS IN THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA

by James Croteau

Along the Mississippi Delta. Image source: My American Odyssey

Only low beams lit the road

as my parents drove Highway 61

from Memphis through Clarksdale

to Cleveland with civil rights marches

all around us. I never knew

it's not a delta at all, no mouth

until further south. It's all alluvial

plain, this place of my birth. Grandpa

disembarked in Baltimore's harbor

in 1921, moved south when

cotton was still king but

he never planted. Instead he owned

a five and dime on Main Street

in Cleveland. I was proud

to help clerk. Sometimes he'd aim

squinted eyes my way, talk the Italian

he taught me “follow that N-word."

"It's the longest stretch of straight road

east of the Great River," my dad

always said as he drove, low beams

to avoid blinding the oncoming

drivers like us. We got used to not seeing

anything beyond the white

cotton by the side of the road.

Living legacies are often at the periphery

of the privileged. Even amid

outcries at the murders in the streets

and the churches, we whites miss

the lay of the land by

low beaming our questions--

Was the officer following policy?

Was the shooter mentally ill?

Isn't the KKK really to blame?

But I've been lucky, my eyes

have been pried apart by

a few good people. I see some

beyond the well-meant

intentions in front of my face.

The fertile flatness was freely

brought by the floods of the Yazoo

and Mississippi, then it was stolen

and exploited--Indian removal, slavery,

sharecropping, Jim Crow de jure

and de facto, this history's alive and

denied. If I high beam my heart

I can see that I could have been

Darren Wilson, even Dylann Roof.

I learn how the land of my birth

really lies, only when I can feel

the white of my finger placed

everyday on the trigger of the gun

I was given on the day I was born.

James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 28 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the southern United States and loved his mother very much. He has had poems published in Hoot: a Postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose, The New Verse News, and Right Hand Pointing. He has a series of poems upcoming in April 2014 in Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry.

ALABAMA ATTEMPTS TO STAND STILL

by Jay Sizemore

Alabama is also on the front lines of what some see as the modern-day successor to the civil rights movement. Although a federal court threw out the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, Alabama’s Supreme Court has tried to block the issuance of marriage certificates. Mr. Obama made several references to gay rights but did not directly address the fight over marriage in Alabama. --Peter Baker and Richard Fausset, The New York Times, March 7, 2015; photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times

in a hurricane of rose petals,
in a landslide, where every granule of dirt
is a body clamoring for air:
roll tide, roll.

There’s something holy about crimson,
the color of blood,
the color of a wound left open
like a gash between the ribs
where wind can be heard
whistling
through a punctured lung,
gasps of breath lost
out the knothole of a hollowed oak,
felled when the roots began to die.

Remember the F-5 that tore through Birmingham,
digging a trench a mile wide,
scrubbing houses clean of their foundations.
Remember the hopelessness of the sundogs,
shimmering in the wake
of Death’s coattails
like pearl buttons on a burial suit.
Remember the sounds of rubble
lifted from the cellar door,
the way the world smelled
like a dirty palm pressed over a mouth.

Whose hand reached down
through that rectangle of light,
that swirl of dust and dripping rain,
to pull you free of the cobwebs,
into cacophony and conflicted weather vanes?
If that hand had held
the penis of his lover
just hours before the storm,
would you have refused to be saved?
If Jesus Christ put on fishnet stockings
after the sermon on the mount,
and let Peter call him bitch,
would his words cease to inspire you?

Alabama attempts to stand still
with both feet on a fault line,
shaking its fists like gavels
to pound illumination
out of the stars,
insisting that every kiss
be given with the eyes closed,
no tongue. Leave the lamp on,
so you can see yourself
drowning in the gulf. .

Roll tide, roll.


Jay Sizemore brought the high-five out of retirement. He still sings Ryan Adams songs in the shower. Sometimes, he massages his wife's feet. His work has appeared online and in print with magazines such as Rattle, Prick of the Spindle, Revolution John, Menacing Hedge, and Still: The Journal. He's never won an award. Currently, he lives in Nashville, TN, home of the death of modern music. His chapbook Father Figures is available on Amazon.

ON FLAG DAY I THINK BACK TO MY YOUNG STUDENTS SPEAKING

by Jane Herschlag

Photo: Jane Herschlag

                  
               Two planes, each crashed into one tower.
               People got hit by flying pieces of glass and concrete.
               All people care about the dead people and their families.
               We need to make flags.  The blue part stands for liberty.
               They draped a big one on the collapsed building.
               In France they were praying and many countries sang,
               God Bless America.

Despite the terrorists’ actions they see love in the world.
They see the pure, mythical America
as I saw it in childhood, the country that
saved my family from Hitler when others refused.

Our big red-white-and-blue blowing in the breeze—
a dwarfed pride still swells in me despite our lost democracy,
our taint of WMD’s, of Corporations Are People,
of Monsanto’s GMOs, for the first time in the history of the world,
changing the DNA of humans, animals, vegetation,
contaminating organic farms.

As wealth rules, America declines,
ethics fall to the toxic curb, along with the poor.
Betsy Ross what do you think of us now?
Each of your stitches were sewn with hope
and wishes for America’s wisdom.

I can’t even find my thread; it’s hidden
under years of fallen bodies,
corrupt bankers’ viscous lies.
Big Pharma and giant chemical companies
have smeared our red and blue into
our white stripes of virtue.  Our field of blue is dotted,
not by stars, but by lobbyists demands.

I want our flag to mean what it used to mean,
when city colleges were free, after
the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements.
I want my flag to wave for immigrants,
lesbians and gays.  I want again
to be proud of being American.


Jane Herschlag, a former apparel designer, textile designer, teacher, and model home decorator,  has a degree in Apparel Design, a B.A. in Creative Writing, and Women’s Studies from Hunter College.  Her Masters in Creative Writing is from CCNY.  Jane has won numerous writing awards and placed 1st with her  photography/poetry at Richter Assoc. for the Arts in Danbury.  She is an avid poet, photographer, and loves to Stage Homes for selling, refinancing, and simply enjoying.  She has shown at the Danbury Fair Mall, Midtown Café in Danbury, at the historic building—30 Bridge Street in New Milford, at American Pie Restaurant in Sherman.  She combines her passion for the visual and the written by writing ekphrastic poetry, poems inspired by the visual.  She curated readings at the West Side YMCA in NYC for seven years and has run a peer workshop since 1997.  Her Docu-Poetry collection Bully In The Spotlight is published by Pudding House Publications.