Poetic Justice for Minneapolis

is a 2-part, in-person class with Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D., an award-winning poet, novelist and trauma scholar who grew up in Winona, Minnesota, and is returning to the Twin Cities to offer this special opportunity to the community.

Part 1, “Poetry as a Way of Healing,”

on Saturday, September 26, will introduce students to her innovative method of using poetry as a way of witnessing to and healing from trauma based on her book, We Heal from Memory. During the class meeting, we will read poems from the poets Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Joy Harjo, as well as from the anthology, ICE OUT: Minnesota Writers Rising Up, published in February 2026 after the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

Each poem will be studied for the emotional healing power it presents, and specific elements of what makes a poem effective as a form of witness and recovery will be explored so students can write their own poetry based on carefully crafted and trauma-informed writing prompts.

Part 2, “Poetic Justice,”

on Saturday, October 3, will gather our community back together to address how poetry can address both individual and collective trauma in order to help create a safe and nurturing environment for all.

This class will allow time for processing the lessons of the first class through writing, discussion, and poetry readings by students themselves.

Special attention will be given to create a supportive, caring, and non-competitive experience where students — from those just beginning their writing and healing journeys to those with expertise in writing, teaching, publishing, or the mental health professions — can explore poetry.

For more information and to register, visit The Loft Literary Center.

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1. A Very Happy Berry

Heron flew low and steady, each wing beating a slow arc toward tree and sky, and I rested securely on his back, just as I had learned from owl.

But unlike the flight with owl, the sun was bright and hot, and once, as a plane passed over us, its silver wings cast a shadow upon our bodies, and I was glad for even this brief respite.

I felt myself growing thirsty.

Heron must have sensed this, and he squawked his landing call as we veered toward a field of green without trees.

“Good stopping place,” he said, and I hopped off his back.

“Why do you call before you land?” I asked him. I had always wondered this when I heard him doing it at home, but I’d never asked.

“Herons do not sing like other birds. But it doesn’t mean we don’t have a voice. Everything has a voice. We use our voice to announce our arrival and to allow others to prepare for us. I am named after this call.”

I had never known his name. Now that he was my teacher, I asked him what it was.

“My name is Harold the Heron,” he said. “Will you accept me as your teacher?”

“Harold the Heron,” I said to him. “I am honored to have you as my teacher. You were very kind to my mother when I was just born, and after.” I stopped. I did not want to talk about my father. So I simply said, “I have come to think of you as an uncle.”

“Thank you. Uncles are very good at feeding hungry nieces and nephews. Hungry?” he asked, and that was when I smelled the sweetness rising all around me.

Everywhere I looked there were small, red berries. Their shiny skins held dark and tiny seeds and glistened in the sun as they peeked out from hand-shaped leaves.

“What are these?” I asked.

“Strawberries,” Harold said. “Eat.”

I took a bite from a berry near me. It quenched my thirst and filled my tongue with a tart kind of happy.

“You’re not hungry?” I asked Harold between bites of juicy sweet.

“This isn’t the kind of food I eat,” he said. “I stopped for you.”

I was touched by his generosity. “Thank you,” I said. “But I feel bad. You’re the one doing all the flying.”

“It’s okay, Barney. My food lasts longer than yours and gives me great energy. It makes me happy to see you eat. Have some more.”

If I’d been home, I would have been more than full, but I didn’t know how long we still had to go, and I certainly wasn’t sure when I’d ever be able to stop at another strawberry field, so I ate more.

The sugars were making my brain feel giddy, and I chuckled, imagining the colors of red mixing in my belly and mingling with my red blood under my red feathers in this field of red berries.

“Humans make wine from this berry sometimes,” Harold said. “I’ve seen them laugh like you are laughing when they drink it.”

“It certainly is a very happy berry,” I said, giggling.

“Yes, it is. But I think you’ve had enough. I don’t want you falling off when we are flying.”

“Okay,” I said, taking one more swallow. “You’re right. Let’s go. If I have any more, I think I’ll fall asleep right here in the field.”

I climbed aboard his back, and off we flew.

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5. The Trouble with Humans

When we arrived back in the garden, we settled into the magnolia tree, Jasper and Ruby on a tiny branch near a large white flower, and me in an abandoned wren’s nest nearby.

“Wait a few moments,” said Jasper. “And then look at us before you sleep. We don’t sleep like other birds. It is how we manage to have such energy.”

I wondered what he meant but waited as he told me to do.

The peach of the sky turned such soft lavender, and then indigo blue bled the night’s ink from the east to the west to write the night. As the first star twinkled, I looked over to their perch.

They looked dead.

I couldn’t even see them breathing. I was glad Jasper had warned me of this. Their tiny legs were on the branch, but their bodies had fallen forward, their long beaks still pointed slightly up, and they were unmoving as if frozen in middle of falling to the ground.

They practiced detachment even in their sleep, I realized.

By the time I woke the next morning, the sun was hot and bright and the sprinkler had started again. I looked over to the branch where I’d last seen Ruby and Jasper, but they weren’t there.

I swerved down to the ground to grab some breakfast but still didn’t see them.

“Are you new?” asked a robin who was pecking for worms nearby.

“I’m visiting Ruby and Jasper,” I said.

“Oh, the hummers,” said robin. “They’ve gone to eat.”

“I thought so,” I told him, not revealing my worry. I was anxious to discuss with them what I’d seen the night before.

“This is a lovely garden,” I said, trying to be friendly.

“I was born here,” he said. “Come back every year.”

I thought of my home and wondered when I would see it again.

“Where do you go in the winter?” I asked him.

“Further south. But it gets harder each year. There are more roads and buildings. And the buildings have hard fields next to them for the cars to sleep. There aren’t many shaded gardens like this one, and there are fewer forests than there used to be. And the worms, they aren’t as plentiful. Fewer sweet places in the soil for them to live.”

He pulled a long, plump worm from the ground and chewed on one end as he eyed me suspiciously, as if I wanted to take his worm from him. I knew he didn’t mean it; robins just looked that way sometimes.

“I’ve heard about those changes,” I told him. I hesitated, then asked him a question.

“Listen,” I said. “Do you think there’s anything we can do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Birds. Do you think we can do anything to stop the changes, prevent the destruction?”

He slurped the end of the worm into his beak and cocked his head.

“What are you suggesting?” he asked with his mouth full.

“I’m not. I’m just asking.”

He swallowed the worm. “I keep to myself mostly,” he said. “It’s the way to catch worms and also the way to avoid trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“With the humans.”

“You think they mean to hurt us?”

“Of course they do!” His red belly flashed in anger as he said it.

I was just about to refute him by telling him about the lady at the lake, but Ruby and Jasper whizzed by.

“I see you’ve met Randy!” Jasper called to me.

Randy? Oh, the robin, I thought.

“Come play in the sprinkler with us!” called Ruby, from under the water.

When I got close enough, she whispered, “Randy is so grumpy. I’m surprised he was even talking to you.”

“He was telling me about the destruction he’s seen on his migrations,” I told them.

They looked at each other.

“It’s true,” Jasper said. “We’ve seen it, too.”

“It’s happening across the vast water, too,” said Ruby sadly. “Long places of jungle along the giant river-- they’re just-- gone.”

I asked them the same question I’d asked Randy.

“Do you think there’s anything we can do?”

“Do?” Jasper asked. “How?”

He sounded just like Randy. Was I the only one who dared to ask this question?

“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “Maybe, well, could we try to get a message to the humans?”

“They don’t listen,” said Jasper.

“What about the helpers?” I asked.

“Sadly, there aren’t enough of them,” said Ruby. “And we’ve noticed that most of the helpers are older humans. They don’t go anywhere in their cars much. That’s why they spend most of their time in their yards with us.”

I nodded. I knew what she meant.

“Listen, Barney,” Jasper said. “You’re here to learn about serenity, not to try to start a revolution. The best thing for serenity is to learn to accept the way things are.”

He sounded a lot like the grumpy robin, I thought, just from another angle.

“Hey, what was that you were doing last night in your sleep?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

Ruby smiled. “Isn’t it funny? The first time I saw my mother doing it, I couldn’t stop laughing.”

“It’s called torpor,” said Jasper. “It’s a kind of deep sleep. It’s what allows us to have so much boundless energy during the day.”

“Is it scary?” I asked.

“Not at all,” said Ruby.

“Do you dream?” I asked.

“Dream?” asked Jasper. “What’s that?”

Poetic Justice for Minneapolis

is a 2-part, in-person class with Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D., an
award-winning poet, novelist and trauma scholar who grew up in Winona, Minnesota, and is
returning to the Twin Cities to offer this special opportunity to the community.

Part 1, “Poetry as a Way of Healing,”

on Saturday, September 26, will introduce students to her
innovative method of using poetry as a way of witnessing to and healing from trauma based on her book, We Heal from Memory. During the class meeting, we will read poems from the poets Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Joy Harjo, as well as from the anthology, ICE OUT: Minnesota Writers Rising Up, published in February 2026 after the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

Each poem will be studied for the emotional healing power it presents, and specific elements of what makes a poem effective as a form of witness and recovery will be explored so students can write their own poetry based on carefully crafted and trauma-informed writing prompts.

Part 2, “Poetic Justice,”

on Saturday, October 3, will gather our community back together to
address how poetry can address both individual and collective trauma in order to help create a
safe and nurturing environment for all.

This class will allow time for processing the lessons of
the first class through writing, discussion, and poetry readings by students themselves.

Special attention will be given to create a supportive, caring, and non-competitive experience where
students — from those just beginning their writing and healing journeys to those with expertise in writing, teaching, publishing, or the mental health professions — can explore poetry.

For more information and to register, visit The Loft Literary Center.

3. Celebration After Migration

We flew for a long time, the hummingbirds looping in the clear blue sky from time to time so I could keep up, until finally we arrived.

The lake was filled with ospreys. They looped in the clear blue sky, high above the sparkling surface, then dove directly down to catch fish in the water, and just as quickly, soared back up again to take the fish back to their nests high in the loblolly pines.

As we got closer, I realized we had come here for: it was as if the light dance from the swamp had transformed itself into a day dance of twinkling green and ruby colored feathers, humming and joyfully playing near the edge of a lake.

“Ready to meet our cousins?” asked Jasper, and I landed on a mimosa tree, its fluffy flowers bearing a scent as heavy with blood orange sweetness as my vision was light with the hummingbird merriment I saw before me.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“This is why we travel so far over water,” said Ruby. “Every summer, we gather here with our cousins to celebrate our migration.”

Between the lake’s edge and a great wooden house, there were dozens of red feeders, and swarming all around them with glee were hundreds of hummingbirds-- drinking, resting, preening, zooming, and dancing in the air that smelled of white osprey and silver fish and blue lake water.

“Oh, look!” cried Jasper. “There she is!”

An elderly lady, who was dressed in a long white dress and carried a pitcher, walked down from the wooden house toward the hummingbird dance. As she filled one feeder after another with a clear, syrupy liquid, the hummingbirds chirped cheer and thanksgiving wishes to her.

She talked to them quietly as they circled about her. One even landed in her fluffy white hair and she laughed, unafraid, as if she expected this.

“She is one of the helpers,” said Ruby.

“Helpers?” I asked.

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Part Five: SERENITY

1. The Whirring Hummingbird Song

I heard them before I saw them. A whirring song with a metallic quality, almost like the train when it was whizzing by the nest at my old home, woke me the next morning.

They danced in the air in front of me as they chirped their greetings.

“I’m Ruby!” sang one with a white belly and a bright, iridescent back that flashed in black and blue and green.

“And I’m Jasper!” called the other who had tiny feathers sparkling like a red jewel upon his neck.

“Come play with us!” they said simultaneously while making looping figure-eights in the swampy morning air.

I had never seen birds so small or lively. They seemed to defy the impulse toward forward thrusting motion of all the birds I’d known. Instead they had figured out how to toy with gravity like a child tossing a ball simply to see where it would go.

“I’m Barney!” I called. “Are you my new teachers?”

As I said the word “new,” it occurred to me that my teachers Horace the Hawk and Olivia the Owl had been old -- although I hadn’t noticed it at the time. They had taught me lessons that were serious. How could these two, so full of joy and vim, teach me something equally as important that would help me on my quest?

They seemed to be thinking the same thing, for they sighed.

“Oh, Barney,” hummed Jasper. “Most teachers are so boring!”

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7. The Light Dance of the Fireflies

That night Olivia the Owl and I gathered with all the other creatures of the swamp, some I’d never seen before, like boar and alligator and deer. I thought of the deer in owl’s story. It occurred to me that every creature in the swamp had a story, and I was sad, knowing I would leave soon and wouldn’t be able

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Writing Poetry Under Traumatic Fascism

with Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.
​Saturday, July 25 10 AM-1 PM ET
​Hosted online by The Loft Literary Center

Writing Poetry Under Traumatic Fascism is a three-hour class led by Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D., an award-winning poet and scholar of trauma. This class will introduce students to an innovative method of using poetry as a way of witnessing to and healing from traumatic fascism.

During the class meeting, we will read poems from the anthology, ICE OUT: Minnesota Writers Rising Up, published in February 2026 after the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

Everyone is welcome, and this will be a supportive, caring, and non-competitive experience where students—from those just beginning their writing and healing journeys to those with expertise in writing, teaching, publishing, or the mental health professions—can explore the healing power of poetry in the face of traumatic fascism.

Learn More

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6. The Sea Stories Allow Us to See

Olivia the Owl was done with her story. She fluffed up her feathers, took a deep breath, and then closed her large owl eyes and slept.

I couldn’t sleep.

So while Olivia slept in the cavity, I ventured down to the riverbank. I saw painted turtles resting on rocks in the river, warming themselves in the soft morning sunlight, and then I heard someone calling my name.

“Barney!”

“Sam!” I said, as he landed next to me. “Good to see you!”

“You, too,” he said. “I heard you have a new teacher.”

“Yes. Olivia the Owl is teaching me about stories.”

“What are stories?” Sam asked.

I thought for a moment. “They’re a way of understanding what has happened, what is happening, and what’s going to happen.”

“That’s a lot of happenings!” Sam smiled. I loved his happy nature, and that gave me an idea.

“Would you like to hear a story?” I asked.

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We left at dawn.

Earlier in the week, I’d taught lessons from Marilou Awiakta’s book, Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom, in my 5-week Book Camp for women and nonbinary writers.

The lessons the eastern Cherokee writer teaches in this book - about the ways the first settlers learned about the separation of powers and branches of government - were still resonating in me.

I’d written about it in my “Still Here” column in the Post & Courier’s Free Times. You can read the article here.

It was July 3rd.

We arrived in Memphis by mid-afternoon and went straight to our favorite vegan BBQ place, Imagine Cafe.

The next day we drove from Memphis to Oklahoma City easy peasy.

And then we watched Smoke Signals, my favorite movie in the whole world, which, many years ago, inspired me to write this poem that appears in my book, Earth Joy Writing.

The next day was a Sunday. We went immediately to our favorite bookstore in town, Literati. And then had brunch. Very traditional.

On Monday, Susanne and I woke before dawn to get a run in at Hefner Lake.

I needed more water so we headed to Turner Falls for time with waterfalls and singing streams where damsel flies landed on our arms and hands and knees.

The liquid theme was not yet complete, however, as we then headed to Skydance Brewing, a Native-owned brewery that is pure yum. America lost in the World Cup. There is poetry in this, too.

Tuesday we headed out to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve to honor the last remaining remnant of what used to comprise over 170 million acres of land in America. Only 4% is left.

We got back to OKC in time to pick up Annmarie from the airport.

Next up: fry bread tacos. Vegan.

Wednesday was a rest day. We re-watched Killers of the Flower Moon and then met our friends Nathan and Brian at Ma Der, a James Beard award-winning Laotian restaurant.

After dinner we walked around The Plaza District.

You wouldn’t guess, would you, that this is the middle of a city, the middle of Oklahoma, the middle of our country?

Well, Oklahoma is not what you think. And neither are you.

Yesterday we went to the First Americans Museum.

Before you look at the next photos, pause for a moment and ask yourself if you are who you think you are in the light of this history.

Speaking of origin stories and where we come from, I had the immense pleasure of reuniting with my best friend from Herndon Intermediate School, a time in my life which was for me, a complete nerd who couldn’t wait to enroll in an all-female Catholic high school, complete misery. Except for Alane.

We all come from somewhere. Those places have histories of pain. They also have love. That is the message in Selu, as Awiakta writes:

I tell this story of American democracy because in the patterns of pain and blood, there is also hope.

5. The Origin of Story

“Long, long ago, before you were born, before even your mother and father were born, this world was very different. It was cooler, for one thing. The leaves fell easily from their branches in the autumn and snow covered the land for many moons.

There were humans here then, too, but not as many. They lived by river and spent their warm days fishing and gathering berries and green plants, which they would lay out in the sun to dry so they could eat them during the winter months.

They knew the names of birds.

Not in the way humans do now, as they call us by groups. They knew each one of us as an individual. They knew what I have been teaching you. They knew the mystery.

They did not call it mystery. It was not a secret, not hidden and waiting to be discovered as it is now. It was common knowledge. It was simply how things were.

The river they lived upon, the water they drank, the fish they ate, each berry, each grass, each bird and creature, these were precious to them.

And like birds, they sang songs of thanksgiving for everything. For the morning sun lighting up the riverbank. For the food they gathered and ate. For the woods and the shade. For the night and the stars under which they lay down together to sleep.

During this time, there was a boy named Quoiyera. His best friend was a turtle. The humans today call them by the name of a box because of the way they shut so suddenly when they are afraid.

But this was before the time of boxes, so that was not the turtle’s name. His name was Lito.

Quoiyera and Lito did everything together. They played in the woods and spoke to each other. When Quoiyera’s mother asked him to gather berries, Lito led the way, for his nose was very close to the ground and he could smell sweetness from far away.

They even slept together under the stars. And if the moon was very bright and Quoiyera was not sleepy, Lito told him stories, as I am doing with you right now.

No one knows where stories come from. But every creature has the ability to understand them.

One night, in the summer like this, the moon was shining upon the river and the frogs were singing of love. Quoiyera was very happy but he could not sleep. So he asked Lito to tell him a story.

And the story Lito told was this:

One day, a boy was walking far from the river. He had gone further than his mother had told him he could go. And he was alone.

He was at that age when boys and girls want to jump over creeks because of the energy popping up in them.

So the boy followed the creeks further and further into the woods until he heard a sound.

It was talking.

He crouched down and got very quiet. He told his heart to slow down, as his mother had taught him to do in the presence of an unknown creature.

These creatures that were talking spoke a language the boy had never heard. He thought they might be human, but they were smaller than his people, and their hairs were gold, and they smelled awful. He could smell them from very far away.

It was then that he realized a deer was also hiding with him near the creek.

‘What are those creatures?’ he asked the deer.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘But they have something that frightens me.’

She glanced back at her baby fawn curled up in the grasses.

‘We haven’t been able to eat very much lately,’ the deer said. ‘They are camping on our meadow.’

The boy was afraid and wanted to run back to his mother, but just then he saw a buck on the other side of the meadow, watching the strange creatures, and standing as still as a tree.

‘Oh, I hope he doesn’t…’ the deer started to say, but just then the buck jumped through the center of the circle of new creatures, scaring them.

And the boy saw a stick in the hands of one of the creatures, and the stick threw fire, and the buck stopped and then fell. Blood poured from his side.

The boy lost all his fear and started running back along the creek toward his mother, the sound of the fire stick drumming in his head.

It was night by the time he reached them. Everyone was sleeping except for one boy and his turtle.

Lito stopped telling the story and looked up. He and Quoiyera could hear the sound of fast footsteps coming toward them.

‘Lito!’ cried Quoiyera. ‘What is this story you have been telling me? It is a very bad story! I do not like it at all!’

They could hear a boy waking his mother. They heard the word ‘fire stick’ come out of his mouth.

‘Lito,’ said Quoiyera angrily. ‘That was not a story you were telling me. It is the truth!’

‘Dear friend,’ said Lito. ‘All stories are truth. It is simply that one must be awake enough to be able to hear them.’

By now, many adults had woken and were circling around the boy as he told his story again and again.

And what Lito said was true. Many of them did not believe the boy. They said he was lying. They admonished him for going so far away. They threatened to punish him. They told stories of other times he had disobeyed his mother. They refused to hear the truth of what he was saying.

‘Lito,’ whispered Quoiyera, ‘what is going to happen now?’

‘That,’ said Lito, ‘is up to you.’

Quoiyera watched as the boy started to cry from not being believed, and then Quoiyera stood up from his sleeping place and walked over to the circle that had gathered.

‘His story is the truth,’ Quoiyera said to the adults.

The eyes of the boy’s mother grew very large. Quoiyera could see the fear for her son burning like a night fire in them.

‘How do you know this?’ asked one of the fathers.

Quoiyera hesitated. Should he tell the truth? Should he say that Lito the turtle told him the story? They would laugh at him. Already Quoiyera was beginning to understand that a separation between humans and animals was coming. The fear in the people was already too great, he decided. They would not believe the words of a turtle.

So he lied.

‘I dreamt it,’ he said.

And just then, one of my owl ancestors hooted.

‘Loss is coming,’ he called.

And the people believed what Quoiyera had told them. And they believed the boy.

And in this way, the lie of a story began to hold within it the truth, while true stories turned to lies.”

This week, my wife and I and our friend, Rhy, head to Oklahoma for our annual pilgrimage to the Woody Poets Festival that takes place every July in Oklahoma City, Okemah, and Tulsa.

As the nation gears up for a 4th of July celebration that feels, to the majority of Americans, like a funeral, I thought it might be helpful to remind ourselves of the incredible power of poetry and poets, songs and singers, and the ways in which…

To that end, I’m sharing all the poems I’ve read at the Woody Poets Festivals over the past four years, starting with 2022, when Covid was just barely receding, I was dealing with long Covid, very sick and scared, and yet determined to enter the world again.

2022

Laura and L. D. Nelson, an African American mother and son, were lynched on May 25, 1911, near Okemah, Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, by a group of 40 white men, including Charley Guthrie, father of the folk singer Woody Guthrie.

This poem was inspired by my friendship with the historian Dr. Melissa Stuckey, Associate Professor and Director of Public History at the University of South Carolina, who asked my wife and me to find the gravesite when we first visited the area in the summer of 2018.

Finding Laura and L.D.

When a friend asks you to burn sage for Laura and L.D.,
You tell her you already have sage and cedar in the car.

When she tells you where the lynching happened,
You research burial places nearby while your wife drives.

And you go there. You go, two women,
And find the Creek Church a few miles down

From the bridge where she and her son
Were lynched after setting her baby girl

Down on the ground by the bridge.
Down on the ground in the cemetery

A crow feather sings in silent greeting, saying,
Go to the unmarked stones near the back.

You light the sage and cedar and lack
The words to say what is happening

But the wind knows the story and tells it
In heavy tones from the south as you turn.

The ember, still burning, falls from your hand and burns it,
And as you kneel to retrieve it,

You notice a white feather who tells you
That the sage wants to stay.

Stay, sage, you say,
Waiting for the smoke to climb.

Stay, feathers. Stay, cedar. Stay, sage.
But release Laura and L.D. now. It’s time.

A recording of my reading the poem at the site of the lynching can be viewed here.

Leaving Oklahoma

Here on the edge of seeing backwards
Through history and green trees,
I step out into the sagebrush and desert
To see who I see myself wanting to be.

The sweet land rises before me
As I leave the prairie of promise behind
And learn to live with the uncertain presence
Of what is here now, what only love can find.

There are two ways to travel in this world,
And we teeter between forward and back.
But there is another world right in front of us
In the reach and touch of what lives without lack.

Chickens Come Home to Roost

Hearing clucks with southern cicada fuss,
I wonder what to say about 5000 miles
In 15 days, and it’s not collusion or
Corruption but about the mess that
Has been going on since the inception
Of us. White people, I’m talking to you.
This land is beautiful. I can see why
Our people came here to do what we do.
But that insurrection was not the first.
Jefferson and Jackson played the Ridge
And Ross, and still everybody lost.
De Soto and Cortés came earlier but
That’s not in most history books either.
Take your child to the desert and she will
Learn about water. We crossed it.
Learn about earth. We keep on mining it.
And poverty is about more than money.
It’s time to rise above the speculation
Of guns and oil and casinos and lottery.
We are all chickens who bite on the lips.
Come home without reservations.
Roost on the kindness of what is not yet
Destroyed. Preserve what is there in
The stories. There is enough. Plenty.

[Published in Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts, in collaboration with the Black Earth Institute, ​Taking Liberties: Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2025): 172 ]

2023

The Year of Lists

We wrote lists of groceries and things
we needed for the house and skin,
lists of chores to complete, reminders
of calls to make and things to take in,
lists of medicines and their times,
symptoms and their intensity,
lists of memories we almost forgot
that came back to us in the night.

We wrote lists until we didn’t, when
everything went online, even shopping
happened without handwriting,
the toilet paper and the lotion lying
next to the apples and rice on the porch,
the medicines coming in the mail,
the chores suddenly pared down to
dusting and the endless dishes.

We wrote lists in our head then,
restaurants we missed, people
we’d kissed who were now dead,
until the lists got so long that we had
to erase daily what had gone wrong,
we had to press our palms against
the screen and call this love and work,
blending friendship and collegiality.

We wrote lists again after some time,
released like inmates from our own
homes, and once more picking up
dog food seemed like a necessary
chore to do, and we wondered how
many of our neighbors who were
still alive had been sick, and we prayed
at every sniffle and allergy and flu.

We wrote lists of what mattered when,
after a whiskey or two, late at night,
we were no longer alone: breath,
trust, touch, laughter, breath again—
and our tears came down then
like a list of all we could not say,
like what was here one day and
gone the next. Gone, gone away.

Let Us Let Go

Let us let go of stuff, the art we kept out of
fear or status, the junk, post-it notes and
reminders to self that are on an app now,
the books we read once and didn’t love,
or never read and never want to, the presents
and cards that meant something at the time,
the things your mother gave you to keep
because she no longer wanted them,
but you don’t really either, the notes from
classes you don’t need because you’ve taught
them so many times you can do it in your
sleep, the envelopes you thought you’d use,
the free bookmarks: how many bookmarks
can you really use at once anyway?

And keep these:
photos, how little they were, how young you
were, how classy they were, how afraid you
were, how happy they were, how
inexperienced about everything you were.

The journals, arranged by year, peek
inside just long enough to remember the
seasons: depression, dissertation,
motherhood, striving, love, learning,
and eventually leaving
each one behind.

Let us let go of the year even as we embrace
what is no longer here: the dead who still care,
the work that is done, the dreams we had and
woke from, the selves we were on the way to
becoming a completely new one.

Flower, Fly, Catch

i. flower

I was an orange lotus bed, a bed
for bodies to rest and be blessed,
make love and make life. There was beauty in
the shining light of my closed petals, the veins
ran through with liquid that was warm and
sighed.

But I was not open. I was tight. As lovely as
that flower was, it was frozen. Afraid, still,
made so by what might happen again
that had once long ago happened and I’d
worked so hard to relieve and release and
relax and it was all hard, hard work, great
trying, and never really letting go or letting in
or letting be.

It was an internal mountain I forged all by
myself, daily, and I told myself I didn’t need a
sherpa, I was fine all by myself.

ii. fly

I could fly. I’d learned to whizz by with my
wings in glittering iridescence, I could go
forward and backward and make loops and
figure eights, and the shapes of my flight drew
all kinds of astonishing things.

Until I fell. And flat on my back, my tail
feathers en masse and my beak overturned, I
lay there, wondering why this had happened
and the pain was so great, and I could not
even move, and all of the trying was useless.

iii. catch

It was one of my own petals, I realized, that
caught me.

All of the poems from 2023 are in my most recent poetry book, Swimming in Gilead.

2024

My Dog Is a Poet

He sits on the back porch with me
on the first warm day, not yet spring,
and watches carpenter bees careen
over the wood I painted aqua green
last year, now peeling, and he says to me,
with his nose twitching, like a poet’s
fingers do, that the more those workers
move, the less distance they fly through,
but they never give up and they never land, 
not like flies who, so erroneously named, 
choose the fascism of sitting over flying 
so they can lick their feet on the windowpane, 
as if by their own spit they could find 
a way through. This, my yellow dog named
Lenny Bruce says, a poet would never do.

A Lucky Woman

I have slept with a goalie, a choir
boy, an environmental engineer,
a business dude, a professor, a do-
gooder (actually, there were two
of these, and neither did me any
good), a motorcycle rider, a guitar
player, a poet, a singer, and only
one doctor: he met me at a party
when I was an undergrad at UVa.

I’d been up for days without sleep
finishing my thesis, and he took me 
home to the little house where I lived
alone, paid for with my own labor,
and licked me between my legs
until I shouted louder than I ever
had and slept hard for 24 hours. 

When I went to the 7-11 after waking
to get cigarettes, there he was by the
fridge with his wife, buying milk, 
and she smiled at me as he
said, This is who I told you about,
and she was not bitchy, she seemed
genuinely happy to meet me, and
it has taken me almost 40 years
to realize she knew what she was
getting into, marrying a doctor,
whose money for that milk came
from touching women’s bodies
with great skill, and even still, she
considered herself a lucky woman.

Back to the Flies

Last year, around this time,
summer in Oklahoma, dry
as a widow’s eyes, my wife
got bored (or tried to be
polite and vacated her seat)
to peruse the historical cases
in the center of that street,
and back in the back, on
the right (rightly) flew a
Nazi flag, and she felt a
heave, but bending over
to read the reason for what
was on display, what was
illegal in the country of her
birth where these soldiers
had their way, was skin,
human skin, how can I say
this when the words make
me vomit, the skin had been
made into a lampshade and
displayed (like it is here)
at the country home of some
commander that the GI Joes
commandeered and cut
to pieces and brought back
here (right here, I say) and
the flies land on that glass,
licking their feet, desiring
to get in, barbarians at the
gate, cannibals lying in wait,
for a bite of that little treat.

Here is a video of me reading “Back to the Flies,” accompanied by the legendary composer David Amram at the Okfuskee County Historical Society in front of the cabin where Woody Guthrie was born.

2025

Moss

Did you know there are tiny white flowers
that appear like leprechaun faces on
the green stalks at the end of moss?
I never did, either, coming up as I did,
three generations after those who
left the land they called green and
home to board a boat and never
go back again. Moss rhymes with loss.

We say we are America, as if
there’s only one, not north or south
or central, and from here we can
forget what caused the hunger
and dog-eyed rabid fear that brought
our forefathers here, and we claim
ownership now and look away
from the pain of faces fresh arriving.

What our ancestors knew, all of us
who bear the name of blue and white
and red and blame, is that it is work
that gets us from loss to gain, across
oceans deserts forests mountains plains,
the commute is the same – life/death,
fire/frost, flower/seed, crazy/sane –
we bloom when we are loved and 
we win when we end the game.

Rock

They came, the Irish with names
like O’Sullivan and Rutledge, Barnwell
and Lynches, to the Carolina Colony
as early as the late seventeenth 
century, these families who would
turn away from hope and claim
a home from Waccamaw and Combahee
and Congaree and call themselves
patriots. Why not? Everything was
free in this new country, land and
labor, no need for deed or beleaguered
favor, and the men multiplied
like mushrooms in the fertile ground,
springing up the likes of John Calhoun
and Andrew Jackson, who along with
the Rutledge brothers and Pierce Butler,
all signed the Constitution. A later wave
of poorer cousins came fifty years after,
indentured to the river named for the
native Congaree who were by 1820
disappeared, and these, in turn for
digging the Columbia Canal, to create
a passage past the rocky shoals
to carry cotton and rice and tobacco
to and from the upstate to the port
of Charleston below, were promised
freedom at the end of their time of
unpaid servitude. Independence
came by another name for these
ancestors, though, as many fell
upon the mud while digging through
the rock and blood, and because
there was not yet a Catholic cemetery—
those earlier Lords Proprietors
and Constitution signers having
been of Protestant pedigree—
these Irish were buried there
beneath Spanish moss and loblolly,
right next to the rock that had promised
to set them free. May God have mercy
on our lack of memory. Oh, Mary. Oh, Mary.
 

Green

I come from a swamp so wet and green
it sheltered Native and African people
from horrors in history still unseen.

I come from, before that, Motor City,
with highways as wide as cotton fields and
a grandfather who was Henry Ford’s secretary.

I come from, further back, an emerald isle
where England and the Catholic Church filed 
a third through hunger lines into boats for leaving.

I come here, now, to this dry and windy state
where others, Black and Native, did escape
from eastern quakes that still do ache.

I come here, by truck, on the same paths
those forced from their homes and crying
took, believing in the promise of the book.

I come here, by luck, with my wife of a decade,
as we, too, suffer under this nation’s bloody birth, 
but we want you to know that we are not afraid.

This year, I’ll be reading at the Rodeo Cinema in Oklahoma City at 6:00 PM on Friday, July 11, and poems I’ll be reading are titled, “Head,” “Thong,” and “When the Pope Became My Friend, Or, How I Stopped Being an Immigrant in My Own Body.”

In addition to all my poet friends from all over the country that I’ll be seeing there, my best friend from middle school, Alane, will be at the reading that night! (Squeee, Cass happy dance, etc.)

I’d love to see you at any of the readings on Friday in Oklahoma City, Saturday in Okemah, and Sunday in Tulsa. Follow these links for all the info and the full bios for all the poets.

Friday in OKC

Saturday in Okemah

Sunday in Tulsa

I’ll also be posting photos and videos from the road and the readings here on Substack, so follow, subscribe, and stay tuned!

3. The Robin Who Was Afraid of Worms

“Robin said that before this time,” the owl began.

“How long ago?”

“Long. That is all you need to know.”

“Okay.”

“Back in the time before—“

“Before what?”

“This. That is all before is.”

“Okay.”

“Can I continue?” Olivia asked.

“Yes. Sorry.”

“Back then, there was a robin who was afraid of worms. He thought they were slimy. He didn’t like the way they smelled.”

“But they’re so ground yummy! And most robins love them!” I said.

“I know. So, he decided he did not need worms. And for a long time, he made do without them. But then, one day, he came to be eyed by a hawk.”

Read more

Part Four: MYSTERY

1. Everything Dies

Owl called long and low as the moon rose like a mother’s face in the east.

“That’s her signal,” said Horace. “It’s time for you to go.”

I was suddenly afraid. “By myself?” I asked, blinking in the dark.

“She’s not far,” said hawk. “Actually, we share the same territory, but I hunt in the day and she takes the night. You simply follow her voice and you’ll find her.”

I looked into hawk’s soft eyes, the color of the river nearby, brown and yellow in the moonlight.

“I want to thank you for your lessons, Horace,” I said. “You have been a wonderful teacher.”

“You are welcome,” he said. “Now go.”

Owl hooted again as she waited on the branch of an old longleaf pine tree. I landed nearby. I could feel my heart beating from the effort of flying in the night and also from my fear. She was larger even than hawk, and she said nothing as she watched me, her yellow eyes blinking.

Then she whispered, “Come closer.”

I did, tentatively. I landed on the same branch, tilted my head, and looked at her.

“Closer.”

I stepped once, twice.

“Closer.”

I was almost touching her.

As I moved toward her, she lifted a wing and placed it under my feet.

“Come.”

I was not sure what she meant, but I started to move until I was touching her, and she scooped me up onto her back.

“Hold on,” she whispered and swooped soundlessly down from the pine and before arcing back up in the direction of the moon.

Read more

Hearing the message of freedom.

And passing it on.

Poetry has this power, too.

Despite everything, this is still something you have the power to do.

poeTRYhealing is a three-hour class led by Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D., an award-winning poet and scholar of trauma that will introduce students to a diverse group of poets who use poetry as a way to heal from individual and collective trauma.

During the class meeting, we will read selections from Audre Lorde, Anne Sexton, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ocean Vuong, Yusef Komunyakaa, Joy Harjo, and Ellen Bass.

Each poem will be read for the emotional healing power it presents, and specific elements of what makes a poem effective as a form of witness and recovery will be explored.

An essential part of our gathering will be to give ample time during the class for students to respond to the poetry by writing journal entries or poems of their own based on carefully crafted writing prompts. All writing will be kept private to ensure a safe and nurturing environment for all.

poeTRYhealing

healing from individual and collective trauma through poetry

​with Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.

Saturday, June 27 10 AM-1 PM ET

​Hosted online by The Loft Literary Center

FIND OUT MORE

6. The Song of Horace the Hawk

“Follow me,” Horace said, and we flew in a direction we had not gone before, away from the river and toward a nearby road, gliding low enough to see the people below.

We came to a yard where a woman was crying. next to a mailbox. We circled above her.

“She just received a letter that made her very sad,” Horace told me. “She thinks it is bad news. But it is a new path. Soon she will find she is carrying a young one in her belly, and this baby will bring her greater joy than she has ever had.”

I started to think on this, but Horace soared away, so I had to pump quickly to keep up with him.

“That man,” said the hawk, gesturing to a man stepping out of his truck in a driveway. “He is angry because he cannot go anywhere. His truck is not working. But later today, a boy will ride his bike down this road and the boy will make it home safely instead of being hit by the man in the truck who would have spent the day drinking firewater in a bar.”

And then we were off again, and we came to the side of a highway and landed on a power line. The cars made me slightly dizzy as they rushed by.

“So many people,” hawk said. “They do not know how everything is connected. They use power for their own ends. They have forgotten what the source of true power is.”

Read more

I See the World

by Cassie Premo Steele

I see the world as a baby,
green in spring, all birds
singing, waking long
before sunrise in the dark,
already needing us, to
care for her -- to start.

I see the world as a child,
busy and playing, rivers
winding their way
from mountains down
to sea, laughing, wanting
us also to be -- this flowing.

I see the world as a woman,
filled with tasks and routines, 
always trying, working 
hard, providing what her 
family and the whole 
world needs -- her heart.

I see the world as an elder,
frail and slow but wise,
knowing truth comes from 
seeing through others' eyes, 
refusing to look away or 
go blind -- even to her own lies.

I see the world as an ancestor,
both here and not here,
having released all fear,
knowing she needs to grow
away from us but still wanting
to keep her spirit near -- enough.

I am sharing my new poem and this new art by my friend Amy Alley, a South Carolina artist with Native heritage with whom I’ve collaborated in the past, because she is creating $25 prints of this brand new art and donating 100% of the proceeds to help those in Western North Carolina affected by recent flooding.

You can email Amy at amialley@hotmail.com to order your prints.

What, you say? Recent flooding in Western North Carolina? I thought flooding was affecting Missouri, Alabama, and Texas now?

Yes, that’s true.

And there are also wildfires in California?

Yes, and in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.

What?!?

Yes.

It can be overwhelming to think about climate collapse while it’s happening. There is a reason for this. Keep reading to find out what it is.

But just because you’re overwhelmed doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.

What can you do?

Here are 3 ways to help the world right now.

1. Email Amy at amialley@hotmail.com to order some prints or note cards.

2. Read my poem again.

   Then write by hand in response to the prompt below.

   Writing by hand has been found by researchers to create the same long, slow, calm brainwaves as meditation, and journaling can be an effective form of ameliorating chronic physical conditions like arthritis and asthma, as well as emotional states such as anxiety.

   It doesn’t take a lot of time.

   In fact, I suggest you set the timer on your phone (and then put the phone down!) and write for 2 minutes.

   I see the world as I am, which is…

3. Enroll in my poeTRYhealing class hosted by The Loft Literary Center.

Remember when I said it’s overwhelming to think about climate collapse while it’s happening?

This is true for all trauma.

Car accidents, sexual assaults, police violence, fascist takeovers, genocide, war, climate catastrophe.

One of the things I’ve learned as a scholar, teacher, healer, and mentor to people over the past thirty years since I published my book, We Heal From Memory, is that witnessing to a trauma is very difficult when it is not yet over.

And so much is not yet over.

So what do we do?

Poetry.

Poetry allows us to witness to trauma before there is a story. Before, even, we have the feelings. During that place of numb - shock - what the - shut down - I can’t - so I run away - busy - busy - buy - buy - distract - but deep down I know I need help.

This is what poeTRYhealing is.

Saturday, June 27

7 AM -10 AM PT / 9 AM- Noon CT / 10 AM - 1 PM ET / 4 PM - 7 PM CEST

Hosted by The Loft Literary Center

Price: Regular $55.50 Friend $49.95

poeTRYhealing is a three-hour class led by Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D., an award-winning poet and scholar of trauma that will introduce students to a diverse group of poets who use poetry as a way to heal from individual and collective trauma.

During the class meeting, we will read selections from Gloria Anzaldúa, Ellen Bass, Joy Harjo, Yusef Komunyakaa, Audre Lorde, Anne Sexton, and Ocean Vuong.

Each poem will be read for the emotional healing power it presents, and specific elements of what makes a poem effective as a form of witness and recovery will be explored.

An essential part of our gathering will be to give ample time during the class for students to respond to the poetry by writing journal entries or poems of their own based on carefully crafted writing prompts.

All writing will be kept private to ensure a safe and nurturing environment for all.

Everyone is welcome, and this will be a supportive, caring, and non-competitive experience where students—from those just beginning their writing journeys to those with expertise in writing, teaching, publishing, or the mental health professions—can explore the healing power of poetry.

enroll now