I told this story as part of a Moth Storytelling Intensive workshop. This is a five-minute snippet of a decades-long experience my family had with eminent domain. Eminent domain, as outlined in the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, allows government bodies (with just compensation), to seize private citizens’ property for “public use.” But, like James Baldwin said…
Prompt: Write about the most interesting job you’ve had. “I don’t dream of labor…”
My grandpa, a WWII vet who suffered “shell shock,” always said to me, “Your birthday’s the only date that’s a command.” And it’s served me well. My friend started to tell me about her near-death experience. Wading in a 4-foot swimming pool fed by thermal springs in Colorado, her boyfriend interrupted her to say something…
“A Poem About My Mother’s Cervix” She had 3 kids carved out of her—“guts in a bucket,” estradiol dreams, and a reopened scar in the shape of her name: a ‘C.’ The first, though, was natural: a perfect baby boy who “hardly ever cried,” who played trombone in band and straddled straight A’s his whole…
