2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

Visit Red Emma’s bookstore & coffee shop when you are
in Baltimore,
before you go to the inner harbor.
Read Alice through the Looking Glass and get a copy of The
Annotated Mother Goose.
When you’re sad, say you’re sad.
When it’s pleasant, feel the surface of your skin.
Say “I am happy.”
Say “I am Walt Whitman in Brooklyn.”
Say I am not happy, I am not sad;
I am not great or terrible or anywhere in between. I am definitely
not a Buddhist or a visitor with a basket of baked goods.
Go to bed early. Resist watching sitcoms and suspense dramas.
Go outside at night and look up.
There are stars and planets and a moon up there.
There you can connect with Zeus and Cassiopeia and
Roland Barthes.
Drive down La Bajada hill at 3:00 a.m. with two small children,
Park on the side of the road. Look up at the sky and see
Haley’s comet.
Remember my birthday.
Remember your grandmother who marched with her mother
at age three,
singing “Ohio’s going dry.”
Remember your grandfather, the gambler, who disappeared and died
in Las Vegas,
alone, making a million.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of sky.
Orange is also a good hair color.
Santa Fe Literary Review 93