I come from a long line of eloquent illiterates whose history reveals what words don't say. Our anger is our way of speaking, the gesture is an utter… - Lorna Dee Cervantes

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…

I am driven from this world, alive.
I come to this world, in dreams.

Our dreams wafted over the sullen skyline
like crazy meteors of flying embers:
a glow in the heart all night.