Personal Essays & Reflections

What’s the Payoff

What’s the Payoff

Verbal abuse, what’s the payoff?Distance, disconnection, abandonment.I don’t matter, I don’t belong; sense of community lost.No trust or accountability. No safety, no safe-harbor.Up in my tree as soon as I could get away.Comfort, nurture, understanding, support from...

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Lush Life

Lush Life

In college, I majored in Voice, but my studies took a backseat to a steady diet of cocktails and cigarettes. The school’s music program had a distinguished opera faculty that took the train from Manhattan to Poughkeepsie each week to give us lessons. I didn't care...

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Filling the Hole

Filling the Hole

It was 2004. I was incarcerated in Wisconsin’s Dane County Jail. I had forged checks on the account of my seventy-year-old friend, Miss Milele Chikasa Anana, one of the most prominent, renowned, highly respected members of the African American community, Madison,...

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