American stories...

I got to vocal coach at Jack Straw this morning. Students from Foster HS in Tukwila - all recent immigrants, all extraordinary poets.

Poems about their lives. About a father being killed in what used to be the green garden of Afghanistan, where the streets now run red with blood.

About being a witness to a woman being raped in Somalia and now unable to walk.

About missing the clean clear cold waters of home, and a grandmother left in Nepal.

And they are teenagers... relating these unbelievably heart-rending stories, and then getting excited to edit them on the Mac.

My life, as a middle-class white American = CAKE.

These are stories we ALL need to hear - they are our future, these young people. They have lived through things we wince at when we see them in movies.

I am humbled, grateful. Trying to pay attention.


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Work. Breath. Voice. Death. Life. Poetry.

I was a vocal coach today. At Jack Straw productions, here in Seattle. For high school students, all from other countries, all learning English. They had written poems, in their classes, with a poet/teaching artist leading them. Poems about their homes.

Homes in Afghanistan. Russia. Vietnam. Romania. Iraq.

Poems about their lives. Uprooted lives, begun on one continent and now unfolding on another.

Poems about their friends. Dead friends. Friends, killed by bombs.

Poems about their homes, what they missed. The roses in their gardens. The stuffed animals in their rooms.

Poems about religion. Poems about bombs. Poems about their favorite foods.

And I got to stand next to them as they read, in the recording studio, and help them. Help them articulate, pace, communicate. Breathe. That was my job today. I am blessed, on days like this, to get to do this work. I am blessed.

My life has been so easy. So unbelievably, unmistakably EASY. Help me to always and forever know this, to remain in gratitude and humility. Easy.





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