Kimberly O'Connor

writer & teacher

Category: Uncategorized

  • happens/ Almost everywhere in this country every day

    Here’s “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin” by Terrance Hayes.

  • making it easier for us to breathe

    Here’s “A Small Needful Fact,” a poem about Eric Garner, by Ross Gay.

  • When the End Comes

    Readers of this blog might recall that I was posting a poem a day during the first part of the quarantine, and then I stopped because I was writing “a longer piece.” I wasn’t sure what the piece was at first, but now it’s finished, and here it is. I…

  • I can’t breathe

    Yesterday afternoon my daughter and I attended a small, peaceful march in our town, Golden. I have lived in Golden for two years and I adore it; I also feel like in some ways I am meant to live here because I lived here for awhile as a baby and…

  • A whip out of cords

    https://sojo.net/articles/jesus-was-protester

  • the settlement/ a city can pay a mother to stop crying

    Jericho Brown’s Bullet Points (You’ll notice this post’s title is from the end of the poem.) Also, check out this Vox article “The anger behind the protests explained in four charts.” And if you are a white person wondering how you can help, there are about a million resources out…

  • I am so sorry, so, so sorry.

    This poem is from Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen. Read it here. The quotation I chose as a title for this post is from the last section of the poem, when the trauma counselor the speaker has an appointment with viciously orders her to leave when she rings the bell for…

  • If When

    This is a poem I wrote in 2016–four years ago–after Philando Castille was killed by a police officer after being asked to reach for his ID. His girlfriend filmed the aftermath of the shooting and put it on Facebook. Read more–including that the officer who shot him was eventually found…

  • Quarantine Dream

    Here is an original one-line poem for your amusement on a Sunday. (If you want more one-line poems, check out Michael McFee’s The Smallest Talk. The best $6 you’ll spend all year.) Quarantine Dream First we shook hands; then we French kissed.

  • Like a white snail…

    This poem contains what has to be the best simile in all of literature. WITH SINCEREST REGRETS Russell Edson Like a white snail the toilet slides into the living room, demanding to be loved. It is impossible, and we tender our sincerest regrets. In the book of the heart there…