To White Men

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment 
(On the occasion of the 2020 Vice-Presidential Debate 
between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence)


I don’t hate you.  My father was one of 
you. He, with his tense jaw and strong
grasp meant for affection but delivered 
in pain. He whose presence commanded

attention when he spoke. Though I had
six more years of education, two degrees
more, I listened patiently when he explained the
themes of Thoreau’s writing. Me, expressionless,

when he persisted in pronouncing it THOR-ee-o. 
Me, silent, waiting until my next class to unload
the corrections on unsuspecting sophomores. 
He, who threw the blinker light of his 

motorcycle against the back wall of the garage
in rage when it broke from the bike he had
instructed me to hold while he retrieved 
his forgotten wallet. Me, 10 years small,

not quite made to kickstand a Kawasaki. Me, 
watching in terror as the center of gravity shifted
away from my spindly arms. Me, watching it fall,
the bike and his anger, with a rush of hot wind.

Me, wanting to say, “you’re the Einstein who 
thought 65 pounds could hold 400 at center,” but 
I would never dare.  Wouldn’t even admit I 
was thinking it for at least two decades. 

He, whose anger was quick and sharp, but 
his raised backhand never landed, only 
threatened. That was enough. He, the one 
who told first-grade me to tell those sixth-grade 

boys that my daddy was as big as King 
Kong and they better leave me alone, but 
he could have just been on time to pick me 
up instead. And 

you, who look so much like him, wearing
your assistant managership like a crown, 
interrupting me when I’m speaking, as if I
was never speaking.  You, who have never 

moved through your world afraid, always 
afraid. You, claiming you see women as
equal because you have no comprehension 
of the depth of your ignorance. You, holding

a toothpick and lecturing a druidic priestess
on forestry.  You, the one not forced 
to smile, the writer of rules not the follower,
the interrupter and talkoverer and ignorer of

anything not you. I don’t hate you. To hate you,
I would have to start with him, and I love 
him.  Like a beaten dog still needing to eat, 
I love him. I don’t have to love you (thank

god), but I am able to not hate you. 
Because of him. 
In spite of yourselves. 

You 
and him.  


© 2020 Deborah E. Moore, All Rights Reserved

Harvest Moon 2020

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment 
I built a fire from the trimmings
of the honeysuckle which threatened
to devour the right corner of
my front yard, by the street,
 
almost chewing my neighbor’s 
mailbox. Most of the limbs were 
dead, and the live ones had a few
days to season, leaves still 
 
attached, ready to crackle the 
blaze to life. I started with the lined
notebook paper holding my notes from
yesterday’s class, now obsolete. I
 
don’t save notes from semester to
semester. When I lecture on topics as
dry as essay format and outlining and
works cited pages, the least I can do
 
is to bring the freshness of new life, thoughts
not yet ready for the woodpile, analogies and
strategies not yet prime for kindling. Then
I tore the lid flaps from a small cardboard
 
box, most recently the delivery vessel for
new pens, 0.7’s, Sharpies. I heard they glide
like Kristi Yamaguchi, so I opened the Amazon 
app on my smartphone, searched them, clicked 
 
“Buy Now,” and that was just Tuesday, and this 
is Thursday, and I have new pens. Then I 
opened and wadded a piece of junk mail
addressed to the previous occupant of 

the house I refer to as “mine,” or
“mine and the bank’s,” all the while 
knowing that this life is a dream
and everything I know of it will fade.
 
I stack the papers and lean the cardboard and
angle the leaved branches, and teepee the larger
pieces of wood that I offer to the Harvest
Moon.  Once the fire has a life of its own,
 
I toss a half-used bundle of white sage into
the hottest part, at least seven or eight smudges 
left in it, but I have two more bundles, 
and who says only the insides need cleansing,
 
besides it always sets off the smoke alarm, 
and it is a Harvest Moon after all, and there
should be an offering.  And the fire grows,
and the smoke seeps into the fabric of my
 
jacket, and from my seat, I can see the fire,
and just above it, the house, and just above
that, the moon.  And I contemplate the prayer
I wish to give to the neon sky, to the only 
 
thing I know that has seen all of it.  And 
I say these words to the closest part I can
see of God, the satellite of each soul and 
season, the grandmother moon of me and 
 
my mother and 
her mother and 
her mother,
“Please, 
 
heal my nation.” 
 


© 2020 Deborah E. Moore, All Rights Reserved

Peace Be Unto You

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment 
There is a Muslim woman on the
walking trail this morning. 
I spot her in the distance,
coming my direction, her

black from head to toe. I
look forward to the chance
for kindness, anticipating a 
warm “good morning,” a smile.

And dare I be so bold as to offer 
“As-salamu alaykum”? Or would
I be appropriating culture to weave
my own humble-brag cloak

of magnanimity? Maybe just “hello.” 
As she gets closer, I begin to calculate
the odds of us meeting on this trail
today.  A trail in a small southern 

town. A town that only desegregated
its high schools in 1970. A town where
one can still see the old slave quarters, and
plantation houses are still occupied. A town 

Trumpier than Trump himself. And here, 
on this walking trail, comes this woman,
bravely hijabbed, shoulders back, not 
curved with the fear that I seem to feel

so often these days, striding with purpose
along a path in a town perhaps far, far
away from her homeland. When we get closer, 
I become sure of this. We smile and say hello.

She makes a comment about my dog,
a friendly comment. A friendly accented
comment.  Pakistani? Afghan? My ear
is not good enough to discern. But not

American. Not USian. Not Southern. 
Her warm rounded vowels, the soft r’s, 
the hard t’s like d’s. I hear almost 
Indian. Pakistani, I feel certain. I have

friends who are Pakistani, and I wonder
how lame it will sound to tell her so, so I
don’t.  I just smile as warmly as I know how.
I try to create a smile that says, “I’m really

glad you’re here. No, really. I’m not just 
saying that. I welcome you, and I honor you,
and I will stand up for your right to be here.”
But the smile is just a smile, and its

sincerity is enough, I suppose. I tell her to
have a nice day, and I hope that I’m not 
the only one who ever tells her that here in
this confederate backwater, but I fear

I could be. And after we pass, I realize that
she handled our encounter with so much
more grace than I. I walk about 50 yards
and turn around to see the woman in

black walking away, shoulders back,
with purpose. And then I think about how
I’m too afraid to even put a Biden sign
in my front yard, and I realize that her smile

was saying to me, “Darlin’, if I belong here,
so do you. You don’t have to hide.” And my
liberal, socialist-democrat, progressive,
lesbian self says out loud, right there on that

path, in the heart of Dixie,
“Wa-Alaykum Salaam.”   

© 2020 Deborah E. Moore, All Rights Reserved

Ectomy

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment 
The medieval physician said it was in 
the spleen, Chinese medicine diagnoses 
liver, this leviathan that comes from 
deep within and threatens 

the life from which it springs. 
It moves to kidneys, gallbladder, 
spreading like an untreated cancer, 
to the pancreas, to the heart, 

to the brain. It’s as prevalent 
as breath, and I am both container and 
contained. It’s an opportunistic species,
this chronic visitor who smells like old fish. 

And it will kill.  Soft things now, and 
everything eventually. I don’t know how 
to treat the condition except to distance 
from the hotbeds, to look for those 

who are not infected and pray they 
inject an antidote of empathy in my 
veins. Or I listen to Deva Premal sing 
Hindu chants, or I read Mary Oliver,

or I walk, walk, walk the roads
and the trails and the meadows
until I have taken root
again in the soft earth of a 

forgiving mother who is so
near the end of her rope that 
any prodigal’s return is offered
the fatted calf of peace, and if I 

sit on a stump long enough and
stare at the water and stay as 
still as the heron in the distance,
I can feel the mending 
in my spleen. 

© 2020 Deb Moore, All Rights Reserved