Americans who read and think are patriots of the first order. The kind who know enough to roll their eyes whenever anyone tries to claim sole custody of the flag and weild it as a blunt instrument. There are as many ways to love America as there are Americans, and our country needs us all.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me.

There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.

Come to think of it, just about every tool was shaped like either a weenie or a pistol, depending on your point of view.

For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light.

From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for men.