I am driven from this world, alive. I come to this world, in dreams. - Lorna Dee Cervantes

And late that night I tasted
the last of the sweet fruit, sucked the rich pit
and thought nothing of death.

We knew, love, and that was all
we were ever offered.

This is the conscience of trauma. This is a grief book. That's how I refer to it, privately. It's my grief book because my mother was murdered, and raped, and battered. Then they burned the house down. I was dealing with that and with my divorce, and all of that stuff When people ask me, do you believe that everybody can write poetry, in a certain sense, yes, in a certain sense, no. Not everybody can write poetry…