I think the idea that the systemic problems in a society lead to illness is important to know. We shouldn't be separating out how we live with where we live, and what ails us with the environment we're in.

The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.

So you're just moving along and suddenly you get this moment that breaks your ability to continue, and yet you continue. I wanted those kinds of moments. And initially people would say, "I don't think I have any." Their initial reaction was to render invisible those moments weaved into a kind of everydayness.

I asked a lot of friends and people I'd meet, "Can you tell me a story of a micro-aggression that happened to you in a place you didn't expect it to happen?" I wasn't interested in scandal, or outrageous moments. I was interested in the surprise of the intimate, or the surprise of the ordinary.

If you admit to being racist, it says you acknowledge that you are being driven by projections and stereotypes that were formed in the creation of our country. Racism is deeply rooted in America.

The world is wrong. You can't put the past behind you. It's buried in you; it's turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you. Who did what to whom on which day? Who said that? She said what? What did he just do? Did she really say that? He said what? What did she do? Did I hear what I think I heard? Did that just come out of my mouth, his mouth, your mouth? Do you remember when you sighed?

Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment.