In E.S.L. class
                  where new friends can’t converse, they
                                hold hands, beaming joy.

You will never think the same about immigrant workers and their children after you read these poems. And you will better appreciate the passion, frustration, pain and joy of those who teach English as a second language. A remarkable achievement in a few words. - Newt Gingrich, 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

There are 325 languages spoken in the United States and over a million immigrants enrolled in federally funded English classes. Most are beginners. In this collection of poems, an ESL teacher and former expat illustrates her students’ struggles and triumphs by addressing their linguistic challenges and culture shock alongside broader social issues such as poverty, spousal abuse, religious traditions, illegal immigration, education, the role of women in other cultures, and the mental scars of war. Their stories are heart-breaking, uplifting, and tinged with unexpected humor that shines a new light on their place in America.

“...touching without being heavy-handed, insightful without being too ponderous. Accessible, understandable--it was a collection that I really enjoyed and highly recommend. “ Out of the Best Books Blog

INDULGENCE: We are not pedicure people. We are tough . . .

SHADES OF LOVE AND DUTY: It’s a year of slipping standards – showing up for school in snarls, bare feet, and big brother’s shorts; doodling in class. But a six-year-old tied to a lonely desk needs leeway, and I’m happy to claim this routine as ours. . . Read more here

RIME ETCHINGS, a prose poem: I can’t recall when frost last kissed my windows . . .

SANTA STORIES: He must have landed in the street rather than on our steep roof. I’d never expected to see him; it was a miracle I’d heard him, but he was real all right. Read more here on pg. 17

INITIATION: Walt Disney’s The Story of Menstruation didn’t mention babies directly, and I didn’t connect the dots. I thought my mother must have skipped this phase of life, because she’d never mentioned it. Read more here

COWLATERAL DAMAGE: We heard the animals before we saw them, their great bells clanging a cacophony of copper, bronze, iron, and brass. First came two chestnut draft horses pulling a wagon with the farmer’s family perched on parade. Then came children driving half a dozen white goats with wooden walking sticks. Read more here

DREAMER, DWELLER: The places I could never forget were places I could not consciously remember. They came to me in dreams from a time when I was pre-verbal, pre-visual even. The first came from the womb, or so a dream analyst told me. Read more here

ALTERATIONS: Mom was as unforgiving as a bias cut on a belly.

My fingers are slow to wake up today. I lick the thread and poke at the needle four times before I find the eye. My first project is a trouser hem, using the ugly crisscross stitch Mr. Nagy insists on. His wealthy clients prefer its security to the slip stitch my mother taught me. The inside of a garment should be as attractive as the outside, she insisted. The fabric feels oddly bulky this morning, like cotton batting instead of polished wool. I fumble a pin, prick my finger, and quickly suck on it to stanch the blood; but it’s nothing compared to last week’s sewing machine needle through a nail, a bull’s-eye bruise that’s still healing. It’s a sort of out-of-body experience to look at my hands in that moment, as if the digits are sewn on Frankenstein-style. I go and run cold water over them to shock them awake. I hate cold hands. Something I rarely have to deal with since moving to Miami. I crack my knuckles, do some dexterity exercises, and get back to work. Read more here

A Report Based on the 1985 DoD Survey of Military Spouses: He got a bonus telegram when the baby was born.

In 1985 the Navy asked how I felt about life as a military spouse. Their survey made me feel like I mattered, though I’d heard it whispered at Wives’ Club functions that we did not. Our men kept America safe for democracy by plowing circles under the sea for President Reagan. The job was a game of “cat and mouse on the high seas,” my husband said. “See who blinks, and nobody gets hurt.” Read more here

My $2.56 Christmas: My folks thought the best things in life were free, but they bent that rule for the Yule, which was why God made J.J. Newberry’s. You could get anything there, cheap. Read more here.

Pink Flamingoes: A postcard taught me everything there was to know about Florida. It looked like Gilligan’s Island, but with mermaids, and I thought my grandparents were the luckiest people in the world to vacation there. Then they came home with my souvenir, and I knew Florida was ten times better than New Hampshire because our stores had nothing half as beautiful as my new pearly-pink, plastic change purse. Iridescent as a gasoline rainbow on the water and decorated with a flock of shocking pink flamingoes, it was my most prized possession. I loved the way it shone in the sunlight, the way it caressed my cheek, the way it smelled so good that I couldn’t inhale deep enough, like the new car I had once sat in.

            Its benzene scent was still heady six months later when I opened my closet and donned shorts and a T-shirt, instead of my school uniform. It was a strange Friday all around. We were going on a field trip, my first, and I needed to retrieve the wallet from its secret hiding place behind my shoes. It contained 26 cents, all the money I owned, which I wouldn’t ever have thought to bring, except Sister Theresita insisted. Three times she told us, “Be sure to bring some money, in case there’s anything at the beach you want to buy.”

            Of course we all knew there weren’t any stores at the beach, but no one would contradict her. She was the teacher, after all. And speaking for myself, at least, I would have died rather than disappoint her. Maybe she planned to take us to some other beach far away that we didn’t know about. Maybe a place that looked like Gilligan’s Island with mermaids.

            Mama warned me it was a dumb idea. “There’s just an over-priced snack bar,” she said. “And besides, you’re bringing your lunch.”

            “But Sister said three times, ‘Be sure to bring some money,’ I told her. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

            “Bah. She’s not even from around here. She’s in for a surprise,” Mama said, turning back to her pan of scrambled eggs.

            I rode in a purple convertible that all the chaperones coveted, but I didn’t like it much. The wind whipped my hair in my eyes, and my sweater wasn’t warm enough for the overcast morning. There were four of us crammed in the back seat, all misfits. I was the youngest in the class, branded early as the baby. Then there was Wayne the wild kid, Celia of the scratchy voice and kinky hair, and Keith, the cute but poor boy who made my heart beat faster. When we passed a Coppertone billboard, the famous one showing the little topless girl with a dog tugging down the bottoms of her swimsuit to expose her white behind, I looked the other way and blushed as the boys pointed and snickered.

            “Oh, isn’t she cute?” our chaperone said, patting the lavender headscarf that tamed her bouffant.

            I pretended not to hear. One person’s cute is another’s immoral, even at age six.

            When we got to the beach, it turned out to be the same old one I visited year round with my family. The most impressive thing about it was the boulders, which Sister wouldn’t even let us climb. The snack bar was closed, and there weren’t any other stores in sight.

            We searched the tide pools for starfish and walked along the water’s edge like clutches of sandpipers, racing the waves as they advanced and receded. We dug with our toes for the elusive clams that blew taunting bubbles and tested our balance against the tide as it swept the sand from beneath our heels. It was an impossible contest to win. Sooner or later we had to step back with grace or fall back with an undignified splash.

            At noon, one of the chaperones unpacked a Styrofoam cooler stuffed with twenty-seven brown paper bags, identical except for our names printed on the outside. I welcomed the chance to hunker down in the warm sand with my tuna fish sandwich and tonic. I ate my Ring Ding and took a quick stroke and sniff of my change purse before tucking it back in my lunch bag for safe keeping, and was still peeling my orange when Sister Theresita announced clean-up time.

            Faster than a seagull diving for a potato chip, Wayne swooped in, arms outstretched like an airplane, and grabbed my lunch bag. He stuffed it under his arm and grabbed a dozen more from all the other girls on nearby blankets, kicking sand in our faces as he sped away. He was gone before I could speak a word. My wallet, my favorite possession, was still in that bag.

I jumped up and tugged a chaperone’s sleeve. “Wayne took my lunch bag with my wallet in it!”

“. . . nine, ten, eleven . . .” She was counting heads.

            My lips were moving, but I might as well have been dumb. The breeze carried my voice down the beach in the opposite direction.

            I ran to our teacher. “Sister, my lunch bag got thrown away, and I . . .”

            “It’s just a paper bag. Go back to your group now,” she said, patting my head. “It’s time to go.”

            “But it has my . . .”

            “Go on,” she said, with her business face.

            Wayne was everywhere all at once, uncountable. It was so unfair! He was a nuisance: a loud, intrusive, obnoxious thief. Why didn’t someone stop him?

            I ran to the tall garbage can and peered through its wire mesh to see if I could spot my bag among all the others. I knew only that it was out of reach somewhere at the bottom, under twenty-six identical, crumpled, brown paper bags.

            Our driver herded my group back to her cold purple car, babbling about what a lovely day it had been.

            “But, my wallet,” I started.

            “Yes, indeed, a gorgeous summer day,” she continued. “You kids sure are lucky. We didn’t take field trips to the beach when I was your age.”

            I wished I’d gone to her school.

            I slid into the back seat, silent as a sand dollar, and turned my head away from the others as if to watch the receding waves. The more I tried to forget, the more my vision blurred. But crying wasn’t an option. I hadn’t been called a baby since turning six back in November.

Wayne dove in right behind, like Superman, landing against me with a mighty whump that punched the air from the upholstery. I sighed with the naugahide. It was a long drive back to school. ~ The Man Who Ate His Book: The Best of ducts.org – Volume II (2013)

A Day of Firsts: My nostrils flared against the smells of disinfectant, paint, paste and dust. Cracked slate boards and desks with empty ink wells summoned the ghosts of five generations whose Buster Browns ruts warped the glossy wood floors.

We walked hand in hand in New Hampshire’s late summer chill, me in my checkerboard dress and my mother in her eternal Madras shorts. A fine mist bathed our legs, but I was enamored of the hand-me-down that looked most like the school clothes in the Sears catalog and so I trusted in the sun.

Haven Elementary was three blocks from home but new to me – a Federal Era brick box with a double-wide iron gate, like the orphanage on the edge of town. I was relieved when we used the side entrance.

Pushing our four hands hard against the massive door, nubbly as broken safety glass from decades of painting, we stepped into a vestibule paneled in mahogany wainscoting puritanical in its beauty. My nostrils flared against the smells of disinfectant, paint, paste and dust. Cracked slate boards and desks with empty ink wells summoned the ghosts of five generations whose Buster Browns ruts warped the glossy wood floors.

We stood in line, strangers amid friends, until it was my turn to shine. I knew Kindergarten admission would be easy, even though I was only four. I could see every E on the eye chart, knew my colors and the alphabet, could count all my fingers and toes, and knew that people liked me. School was going to be great. There were more toys than I knew existed, even a toy sink that squirted real water.

After free play came the medical exam at a table in the back corner, remote but in no way private. The doctor was cheerless with wiry hair, a white lab coat, and pale women’s hands.

He weighed and measured me, pressing too hard on my head, then told me to sit on the table. He glanced at my file, nodding and grunting. His eyes said he owned me and my mother. He pinched my ear, turning me this way and that to peer into my head. He tapped my knees with a hammer but made no jokes about my kicker as a good doctor should. He grabbed my feet and turned them till my legs hurt. He made me feel more like a doll than a person. Then he plugged a ticker-teller in his ears and told me to take off my dress.

I looked to my mother for help, speechless.

He looked at her with impatience.

She repeated his instructions, unzipping me.

I couldn’t believe what was happening. How could she expect me to undress here, for this cold man with the grabby hands? She, who had taught me to always cover up, even at home, especially in front of my father and brothers.

I panicked. “No. Don’t.”                         

She shushed me. “Behave.”

“NO,” I shrieked, trying to climb down, but she was too fast and strong. Off came the dress and white slip in a blur, the pastel flowers of my panties wilting in the light of day. Gulping back tears of shame, I surrendered.

It was a long walk home. My mother said she’d never been so embarrassed.          

“How could you behave that way?” she scolded.

I wondered the same about her. ~ The Delmarva Review, vol. 8 (2015)

The Lesson of Mother Duck. Sit back, relax, and just watch them grow. Bay Weekly

The Day They Buried JFK. I have always believed, secretly and guiltily, that President Kennedy was canonized by his assassin. Bay Weekly

Forty Earth Days. It’s taking longer than I expected. Bay Weekly

Pickerel Lost and Found: a Memorial Day Memoir. They smiled and waved, the sailor boarded the bus — and that was the last any one from home ever saw of Paul Cynewski. Bay Weekly

To a Child at Enlightenment

What I recall about that Fourth
isn’t fireworks but fireflies,before.

At dusk, the bushes teemed with light,
neon points in random flight.

I placed one in your tiny hand,.
and your face beamed, I understand. Rhyme On 2016, Loudoun County Public Library

Pioneering Women, Topology Magazine (Feb. 7, 2017)

Bodhisattva Guanyin
(hollow dry lacquer, 16th C. Ming Dynasty at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore)

Guarding the exit – Jewel In the Lotus.
Mystery Princess draped in gilt silk.
Manicured, tasseled, lounging barefoot.
Pendulous lobes heavy with cares
gleaned from the cries of a suffering world.
Infinite, peaceful, wise beyond words,
Goddess of Mercy, blessed, enlightened.
Mary for Buddhists you’re sometimes called.
Do you also hear Christian prayers?
Salve, Salve Regina Guanyin.
I entrust you with my secret.~ Angle Journal of Poetry in English  (Autumn 2014)

Hot Jesus

Tell me, hot Jesus, when didst Thou appear
on Mama’s bedroom wall?

Thou of the luminous Newman eyes,
divine Depp nose, sweet Gyllenhaal mouth,
Thou whose chiseled features
veiled in flawless flesh
art rugged and rosy as dawn?

How dost Thou keep Thy Fabio locks,
so radiant, swept from Thy brow,
Thy Connery beard so neatly groomed,
Thy chest so smooth? Dost Thou wax?

From whence didst Thou come? 
Church basement thrift shop
or miraculous apparition?
Hast Thou considered an upgrade from
Thy gilt scrollwork, chipped plastic frame?
For Thou art all good and deserving of more.~ Off the Coast (Summer 2012) 

 Moving Day

You moved into your dorm a sticky day.
We schlepped your stuff and sweat with no AC.
I vowed I wouldn’t bawl. I’d be OK.
I, too, was moving on. Now I was free.

My mind a knot of hopes, unbidden fears.
A sign: Hydration ~ Health: Your Body’s Link.
A stupid thought to cap our eighteen years,
my last advice was, “Don’t forget to drink.”

A horde of tourists swarmed Colonial town.
Your Dad bought food. I found a bench outside.
I would have been just fine, but sitting down
I bumped my head, and cried, and cried, and cried.

My mother’s death. Your sister’s crash. Now this.
Of all that I held dear, it’s you I miss.~ life in me like grass on fire: love poems, Maryland Writers' Association (2011)

Murmuration, Helen (Sept. 2015)

Off-Roading on the Tundra, Silver Birch Press (April 2016) 

The Face on the Milk Carton, Ink Stain (April 2016)

I am a Certified Handwriting Analyst with an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars. A former graphology instructor at Anne Arundel Community College, I have published and spoken on the subject for such venues as Retirement Living TV, The Bay Weekly, Chesapeake Family Magazine, and The International Willa Cather Seminar. My current work-in-progress is Mother’s Ink: A Momoir in Handwriting Analysis, portions of which comprise an essay that was recently named a finalist for the 2021 Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Prize for Nonfiction. A separate excerpt from the memoir is posted here at Reconciliation: How Handwriting Analysis Helped Me Forgive My Mother and Myself.

I am further interested in the authorial use of handwriting as a plot and characterization device, the topic of my MFA research at Bennington Writing Seminars.

To learn more about the discipline of graphology, watch my segment from Retirement Living TV’s Daily Cafe.

CLIENT TESTIMONIALS:

Your analysis has made a difference for me. You've clarified some of my tendencies. . . (so) I've changed my pattern of working on my writing. I want to read the analysis again and again. Thank you so much! ~ Cathryn Vogeley, author of I Need to Tell You

You really wowed me. It is as if you are psychic! Your analysis was definitely helpful. ~ Denise Clougherty Smith, Greenwhich NY

That was AMAZING—fascinating—out of this world! Holy cow—I’m blown away. ~ Erica Archambault

You were spot-on. ~ Bernice Stevens

Your analysis ran very, very true! Your description of my traits and way of presenting myself was spot-on! I loved these insights and was even surprised by some elements that figured in. ~ Erin Mantz, Potomac MD

I have been an avid guitar player for more than ten years! How did she see that in my handwriting? ~ Ken Fletcher, Annapolis MD

FOR MORE SNIPPETS on HANDWRITING ALAYSIS, see my blog, Jottings.