UAB Digital Commons (Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham)

McMillan-Holifield, Michelle

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 11 Article 13 
2011 
Love Affair 
Michelle McMillan-Holifield 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
McMillan-Holifield, Michelle (2011) "Love Affair," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 11, Article 
13. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol11/iss2011/13 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
32 PMS. .
Michelle McMillan-Holifield
Love Affair
He loves her. He loves
her mellow lull
across the lake, the hook
of her jaw dipping
into the slum of dark current. 
The moon glints on the surface
and flickers light-glory around her
like a water-halo. She lifts, 
and settles down again. With her,
a subtle tidal wave of grace, almost ballet
swirls outward on the water
in a sinuous rippling of tendrils. 
She dips and bows below the sea moss. 
A move so languid, it might be slumber. 
It might also be her manner: simple, 
complete, generous, gliding away 
from the shore, eventually disappearing 
beneath the downy plane.
He believes in her. He believes 
in the long curves 
and straights of her body, 
in the space where her back 
33PMS. .
bends and arches slowly 
in the froth-fringed frolic.
She is more than mystery. She is mist 
and she is history. 
Who knows when she might resurface.
She may never in his lifetime. 
He may sit stout-hearted
until the earth around the loch
is worn smooth from his visits,
until the topography of the land 
contours around the path 
he makes day after day 
to lay eyes upon her, 
until maps of continents 
bear his footprints 
and history is written around his heart. 


English

Love Affair

Michelson, Brittany

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 11 Article 29 
2011 
Connecting the Dots 
Brittany Michelson 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Michelson, Brittany (2011) "Connecting the Dots," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 11, Article 
29. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol11/iss2011/29 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
65PMS. .
Brittany Michelson
Connecting the Dots
In adult discourse the phrase “connect the dots” can be used as a metaphor to 
illustrate an ability (or inability) to associate one idea with another, to find the 
“big picture” or salient feature in a mass of data. (Wikipedia)
Growing up, I lived in two worlds. One was full of wonder and curios-
ity. The other was filled with a constant chatter or inner dialogue that 
ping-ponged back and forth in my mind. Not too long, not too slow, not 
too harsh, not direct, stuck, repeated, focused. It was out of the corner of 
my eye, quick, short, indirect. This dialogue was automatic, habitual, and 
necessary. I would do it when the sun reflected off shiny surfaces like 
windows, mirrors and metal, to ensure the light would not cause damage 
to my sight. 
I would also do it when I was close to chemicals or cleaning agents. 
I worried about germs. I worried I could catch cancer from the next-
door neighbor. 
I felt I was wired differently. It’s as if I inhabited a secret space, and 
somehow, it felt shameful.
One could argue that phases or episodes of worry are natural for kids. 
It’s common to think that illnesses such as cancer are contagious, or dis-
ease can be transferred through germs on public door handles. For me, 
however, a noticeable pattern played out past childhood. 
We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are. –Anais Nin
I am standing hands free in the middle of a boiling subway car as it bar-
rels through a dark tunnel. People grab metal poles in the center or plas-
tic handles that hang like rows of teeth from the ceiling. It is August in 
Manhattan—my first visit to the city—and the subway exhales sweat and 
dirty feet.
Germs, infection, disease. 
A chunky teenager strangles a sandwich with bare hands. A small boy 
chews on his thumb as if it’s a piece of beef jerky. A man leans against  
66 PMS. .
Miche l s on
the window, his lip touching scratched glass. It smells like mildew and 
armpits.
Germs lead to infection, leads to disease. 
My sister stands at a nearby pole. All five of her fingers—not three, 
not four, but five—curl around it. I count eleven people around that pole, 
and one man with a wide-open mouth stands dangerously close to my 
sister, his yellow tooth just inches from her shiny white ones. Spit could 
hit her face. 
I have a scratch like a comma on the back of my hand. It’s small and 
closed, but sneaky germs can slide in. 
Disease is transferred through cuts.
I pretend I’m playing a balancing game, so I don’t have to touch 
the pole. I am twelve and can get away with such things. Mom sits on 
a bench, hands folded on her lap. I am trapped in here with saliva and 
sweat and bad breath. With other people’s scratches and cuts. 
The subway halts. I hold my arms out like a surfer and my fingers 
graze the fabric of a random jacket. I recoil them like they’ve been stung. 
“What?” my sister hollers as we follow the crowd out of the subway 
station. 
“Are we turning right or left on thirty second?” Mom’s words punc-
ture my eardrum. 
Everything is amplified. Not too loud, not too long, not too close, not 
too harsh.
In the middle of a sidewalk full of rushing bodies, I stand still. My 
hands feel strange against my ears. They have been exposed to thou-
sands, no millions, of germs. 
Public door handles are criminals. 
“Come on, let’s keep moving!” Mom calls. 
“Let’s stop by the market to grab a few things for dinner!” my sister 
yells. 
I stay distanced, protecting my ears from their harsh voices. 
Not too long, not too loud, not too close, not high-pitched, not repeated. 
Something pulls at my stomach and chest—something I’m feeling a 
lot more of lately. My body is pinched and twisted. I must say it to move 
past it. In a therapist’s office, when I am sixteen, I will learn the word for 
this feeling: anxiety.
In my mid-twenties, I began to question if being on anti-anxiety medi-
cation had stunted my personal growth. Was it a quick fix in the  
67
poemmemoirstory
PMS. .
convenient form of a pill? Since I’d taken medication on and off since I 
was sixteen, had it prevented me from accessing my authentic self? Deep 
down, a voice was telling me to try being medication-free. Like the insis-
tent three-year-old that lives somewhere inside us all, I wanted to do it by 
myself. I was asserting independence and didn’t want to rely on a pill for 
freedom from my mind. 
In July 2007, I stopped Paxil, the anti-anxiety medication I was 
then taking. I was twenty-five and had just finished my second year of 
teaching high school. I’d resigned from my job to take a position teach-
ing English as a Second Language in Ecuador and would then apply 
to graduate school. I was in a relaxed and adventurous phase of life. I 
was also newly dating someone and was concerned about the numbing 
sexual effects of the drug. One morning, I didn’t take the little pink pill at 
breakfast. The next morning, and then the next, I conveniently forgot. I 
was on summer vacation.
Quitting Paxil cold turkey unleashed a slew of reactions: panic 
attacks, dizziness, disorientation, brain zaps (electric shock-like sensa-
tions, which feel like a fizzy substance dissolving in the head), nausea, 
numb fingers and toes, terrible headaches, and acute insomnia. When I 
did fall sleep, I was pursued by nightmares. There was the reoccurring 
one of my dog running on a chaotic freeway, then getting hit by a truck 
and bleeding, while I ran in slow motion, unable to save her. 
To describe the anxious state of mind, the holistic therapist I’d started 
working with used the visual of two curled hands pulling at each other 
in opposite directions. Emotion represents one fist; logic represents the 
other. These two forces fight against each other. Like Chinese handcuffs, 
your fingers get stuck the harder you pull. To get out of the trap, you 
must let go a little.
In December 2007, I went to Los Angeles to stay with my sister and get 
the help that wasn’t available in my small town in Arizona. I had received 
a variety of opinions on how to “cure” anxiety, but my agitation had only 
escalated.
I pull the light cord in the bathroom and look hard in the mirror. A 
wild animal stares back—absence, flight. 
A mirror can’t lie.
Therapists, psychiatrist, family—they don’t know what they’re talking 
about. They think it’s all in my head, but they’ve got no idea of what’s at 
stake.
68 PMS. .
Miche l s on
I survey the physical evidence—touch the thin shadow of hair with 
hand. Pale face, pupils huge and black. Eyes heavy and out of focus.
The electromagnetic radioactive heat from the cell phone has seeped 
into my brain. Barely eating, not sleeping, and being under acute stress 
for over four months, has given me cancer. 
It’s in these bones.
It’s in this head, tumors pressing on optic nerve. 
I strip my clothes off and stand naked in front of the mirror. My 
body is an old lady’s—skin yellowish, toenails dirty. I am much too thin. 
The insidious smell won’t go away. It emanates in wafts, clinging to my 
clothes, towel, and toothbrush. The smell of poison everywhere—in 
small traces—a sour, fetid smell of death.
I fill the bathtub to the rim and slip in. The pipes in this house are 
old, like everything now—old and gray. I turn the cold water off and let 
only the hot run until heat waves rise and the bathtub is smoking. I stick 
my foot under scalding water. I sink down until my whole body is sub-
merged, now my face—all except mouth and nostrils. Fall asleep under 
water. 
There is a discharge leaking out of me, expanding and discoloring the 
clear water—a chemical. I scan my whole body—toenails, thin legs, sag-
ging knees, shrunken breasts—then drain the bath and watch the water 
swirl away, sucking toxic discharge down the drain. Toxins flow out to 
the ocean with sewage and dead skin. 
I’m arthritic stepping out of the tub. I dress in the same clothes I’ve 
been wearing for days. Smell of poison in towel. 
There are more things that frighten us than injure us, and we suffer 
more in imagination than in reality. –Seneca 
We are tethered to reality. It’s in our natures. So what happens when 
the reality we swear by is altered so profoundly that it no longer con-
sciously exists? If our thoughts do not make us up, what do we cling to? 
Without our own minds, what can we claim as our own? 
When under the influence of severe anxiety, the mind feels like it 
doesn’t belong to the body, as if it’s a separate entity. Reality becomes 
threatening to the point where it feels we’re no longer living in the 
real world, so the mind makes up stories to which our very existence 
becomes bound.
69
poemmemoirstory
PMS. .
When I hit the deepest chord of anxiety, the loss of myself was a sort 
of death. It was an internal disintegration—the kind that takes you all 
the way through, instead of around, the darkness. At the point when my 
thoughts had become overtly paranoid, a psychiatrist insisted that I be on 
a combination of medications to balance my chemicals and stabilize my 
mind. Since I’d already experienced the withdrawal effects of Paxil, and 
had tried to fight anxiety without medication for some months, I felt that 
I was back to square one. But I had no choice. Anxiety had gone too far. 
Never did I have any idea that my mind could be so powerful. I’d 
heard of people having delusions from street drugs like crystal meth and 
acid, or from illnesses like schizophrenia, manic depression, Alzheimer’s, 
or dementia. I also knew a guy who’d been up for days and nights on end 
guarding post in the army and became delirious. But I didn’t fit into any 
of those categories. 
I now know that my breakdown was a synergy of events that com-
bined to form this collapse. Prolonged anxiety, weeks of sleep depriva-
tion, and a combination of two antidepressants, a sleep aid, and a tran-
quilizer culminated in a singular episode of psychotic depression. 
Psychotic depression stems from a biochemical process. When the 
system undergoes severe stress, it causes the depletion of the chemicals 
serotonin and noradrenalin, which results in changes in the brain tissues. 
The mind begins to function irregularly, as the powerful organ of the 
brain is in distress. This is why, when I’d looked in the mirror, I had seen 
walking death. I’d been convinced that the pale, sickly girl staring back at 
me was dying. 
Anxiety creates a lens, changing one’s view of the world. It sometimes 
feels as if the whole of reality has shifted, as if the very cells in your body 
have rearranged. Though it alters your internal landscape, it does not 
alter reality.
You feel you have transformed physically and mentally. Your brain 
runs its own court case: every possible angle is presented, every side 
argued. But the only one on trial is you. You are both the judge and the 
condemned. You find yourself guilty for caring too much. You hold your-
self hostage for being human. 
I’ve often wondered about the why of my anxiety: Is it chemical, physio-
logical, or situational? Does it stem from family history? Does it connect 
with my maternal grandfather’s manic depression? Or does it come from 
70 PMS. .
Miche l s on
experience—from somewhere in childhood? Perhaps the holistic thera-
pist was right when he said there is wisdom in anxiety and that it comes 
from somewhere deeper, from somewhere beyond consciousness. 
In his memoir Darkness Visible, William Styron says, “I shall never 
learn what ‘caused’ my depression, as no one will ever learn about their 
own. To be able to do so will likely forever prove to be an impossibility, 
so complex are the intermingled factors of abnormal chemistry, behavior 
and genetics.” 
I’ve been told I have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), general-
ized anxiety disorder (GAD), GAD with OCD tendencies, the O in the 
OCD equation. The brief handwashing phase when I was sixteen isn’t 
enough to categorize me as full OCD. How is my mind classified? Would 
I find peace or freedom if the right letters of the alphabet were applied to 
my experience?
I have a condition. It doesn’t need to have a title or a specific label. 
The name is not important unless it helps me determine a definition in 
order to understand my path. My path has always seemed less linear. I 
am simply a person who deals with anxiety, sometimes acute, sometimes 
subtle. The labels are facets under the same umbrella. They are attempts 
to make sense of something that’s as old as the human mind. 
In An Unquiet Mind, a memoir on manic depression, Kay Redfield 
Jamison asks herself whether, if given the choice, she would choose to 
have manic depression. Without medication her answer is no. But with 
lithium having saved her life, she says that strangely enough, she would 
choose to have it. Minus the “death infringed, dark depressions” she’s 
endured she believes she’s “felt more things, more deeply” as a result of 
her illness. Even when delusional, she has found “new corners in her 
heart and mind.”
Similarly, I wouldn’t choose to completely do away with anxiety. The 
thought of living with the absence of anxiety’s relentless and unceasing 
hum is appealing, but if it were to be completely wiped out, I would be 
missing something that, in a large sense, is valuable and necessary for 
my life as a creative person. I believe that anxiety is often responsible for 
the energy that motivates my artistic expression. It incites productive 
streaks and jumpstarts new projects in order to place the restless energy 
somewhere. Consider bareback riding. Without a saddle, you feel every 
71
poemmemoirstory
PMS. .
tension and release of the horse’s movement. Riding a horse with a saddle 
provides security and control, but is less thrilling a ride. The anxiety that 
allows for creativity is like riding an unsaddled horse. There’s a certain 
freedom in the danger. 
It is within our struggle that we are most alive. It is within our separate-
ness we are unified. –Brian Gianelli, musician
Perhaps the reason for my anxiety breakdown was due to my on again 
off again relationship with anti-depressants, family genes, or the transi-
tion from adolescence to adulthood amidst a brain wired with imbal-
anced chemicals. Or perhaps I’ll never know.
Anxiety is both separate from me and is in me. I’ve resolved to the 
fact that I needn’t pursue an answer for my particular experience. After 
years of fighting against it, I’m finally able to identify the feeling without 
attaching an automatic thought. Instead of blaming a specific detail, or 
a story, I simply note that I feel anxious. I’m learning to accept this feel-
ing without letting it define me, which allows me to view it as an exist-
ing force that has brought tenacity, drive, motivation, productivity, and 
empathy. I’ve also discovered ways to cope that do not include medica-
tion. I find solace in yoga, hiking, and deep breathing, as well as the 
skills I learned when I was in therapy (this includes being an observer of 
thought, rather than a reactor, and being able to identify when emotion 
is taking the place of logic).
I used to see my anxiety as a weakness, as something that was wrong 
with me, something I couldn’t control or handle, but perhaps it is a gift—
something that has taken me to places I wouldn’t otherwise visit. I know 
now that it’s not a flaw in character. There’s no weakness to combat.
Essayist Joan Didion says you have to pick the places you don’t walk 
away from. Sometimes it is not a choice. Anxiety requires me to stay and 
examine, prod and knead all possibility from the yolk. It has asked me 
to remain inside the cocoon for longer. Anxiety is the subject matter I’ve 
studied the closest, the animal I’ve most thoroughly dissected, and the 
lover I’ve always slept with. 
At twenty-eight-years old, I know anxiety well enough to know it will 
continue to knock on my door from time to time, arriving early for a 
72 PMS. .
Miche l s on
dinner it’s not invited to, like a neighbor that shows up empty-handed, 
bringing only his annoying, familiar self. But because I have learned to 
accept its fleeting presence, I am, to a large degree, liberated.
It’s about self-respect. I look back at that little girl averting her eyes and 
measuring the angle of the sun. I see her using the fabric of her shirt to 
open a public door, and balancing in the middle of a shaky subway train, 
determined not to touch the pole. There she is again, asking so seriously 
if she can catch cancer at the next-door neighbor’s house. I see her cover-
ing her ears with her hands, then washing those hands that are already 
scrubbed clean. I see myself as that little girl again, and I feel tenderness 
for her and for all little girls who worry about the sun’s rays and disease 
and germs. 
I flash forward and see a young woman at twenty-five years old, pray-
ing to a God she hadn’t prayed to in years, sunglasses hiding dilated eyes, 
the face of a stranger and the body of cancer reflected in the mirror. I see 
the conviction in those eyes, the fear in slumped posture, and an absence 
across her being. I may not love that part of her yet, but I feel compas-
sion instead of shame. I accept her and then I set her free. 
In her book On Faith, Sharon Salzberg talks about trusting one’s own 
deepest experience. I identify with anxiety more than any other dynamic, 
aspect, or inherent quality of being. It is something that has been with 
me since my earliest memories, and has shaped the way I view and 
respond to the world. So here are my choices: to fight it or to embrace it. 
I choose to embrace and trust my deepest experience, knowing that I can 
live and thrive despite an intense and complicated brain. 
The anxious mind is a maze with no exit, the game of tag with no freeze, 
a dog chasing its tail. 
You fight your mind like the betta fish fights his own reflection. 
You seek to make a puzzle out of pieces that don’t fit, an outline out 
of unrelated ideas, to force a square peg into a round hole. It’s a search 
for anything to grab onto, like the only fork in the middle of hundreds 
of knives, and you think if only you have that fork, everything will be all 
right—that your hunger will diminish.
I’m no longer searching for that elusive fork in the drawer. I’ve con-
nected the dots.


Connecting the Dots

Adams, Lavonne J

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 12 Article 8 
2013 
Dead Cottonwood Tree 
Lavonne J. Adams 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Adams, Lavonne J. (2013) "Dead Cottonwood Tree," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 12, 
Article 8. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol12/iss2013/8 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
19PMS. .
Lavonne J. Adams
Dead Cottonwood Tree
after Georgia O’Keefe, 1943
Doused in early morning light,
what remains of this cottonwood
seems more regal than its lime-green
counterpart, as if death has stripped it
bare of pretension. This is nature sculpted
by the unfathomable, a scene
hovering somewhere between summer
and fall, the sagebrush blooming
in buttery yellow clusters.
It will be hours before arid heat
scours the siltstone, months before
clouds drop their cold tongues of snow,
years before this tree will weather away.
A broken branch weighs less than bone,
the wood surprisingly porous,
yet the trunk has the splendor
of uncarved marble, the solitary bough
like an arm angled upward
where a hawk or a falcon might land.


Dead Cottonwood Tree

Wedmore, Suellen

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 12 Article 16 
2013 
Great White Trillium 
Suellen Wedmore 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Wedmore, Suellen (2013) "Great White Trillium," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 12, Article 16. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol12/iss2013/16 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
27PMS. .
Suellen Wedmore
Great White Trillium
—Trillium grandiflorium
Winter-weary, I suppose,
& scornful
of that ancient & ill-advised
pomegranate compromise,
(Persephone,
come home!) I struggle
upward & with a silent nod
of my three-
pointed star, embrace April;
Call me wakerobin,
wood lily:
I understand you
humans in mid-
summer
when, a tired traveler
like yourself, I proffer
sweet-
crusted seed to hungry ants
who portage a morsel
of myself
into tomorrow’s meadow.


Great White Trillium

Wade, Elizabeth

Thirty-Fifth

Staff, PoemMemoirStory

PMS 15 (Complete Issue)

Bartlett, Heather

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 15 Article 5 
2016 
When I was a Boy 
Heather Bartlett 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Bartlett, Heather (2016) "When I was a Boy," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 15, Article 5. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol15/iss2016/5 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
10 PMS. .
Heather Bartlett
When I Was a Boy
, but what about 
     the bones we collected 
& buried,
the bowl of broken
     pencils under the bed—
this was how we prayed
     with the snap 
of yellow & lead.


When I was a Boy

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 15 Article 6 
2016 
When Margan Freeman Reads T.S. Eliot 
Michelle McMillan-Holifield 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
McMillan-Holifield, Michelle (2016) "When Margan Freeman Reads T.S. Eliot," PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine): Vol. 15, Article 6. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol15/iss2016/6 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
11PMS. .
Michelle McMillan-Holifield
When Morgan Freeman Reads T.S. Eliot
Midnight shakes the memory / As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
—T.S. Eliot
Freeman reading poetry shakes 
the skeletal bone yard 
of the soul. He shawls 
along the neck, lays bare 
the moon-bit body 
of Eliot’s windy night. 
His vocals drum and churn
coax Eliot from dim 
recitations, regurgitations 
of stiff words on pages. 
Eliot, ferocious 
with blues, ripe 
with soul slides 
electric fingers over a dobro. 
One by one, strings snap 
like bones. 


When Margan Freeman Reads T.S. Eliot

Secord, Laura

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 15 Article 8 
2016 
Taking One for Angela 
Laura Secord 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Secord, Laura (2016) "Taking One for Angela," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 15, Article 8. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol15/iss2016/8 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
13PMS. .
Laura Secord
Taking One for Angela 
She was shining on the stage at the 16th Street 
Baptist, that legendary church. Her wild 
dreads were touched with gold. She told
a story of her girlhood in the segregated 60’s. 
She spoke fluent French, so she liked to play
a visitor from Paris in the department stores. 
With a broken English flair and perfect François,
she charmed the tight white matrons into opening 
the dressing room doors, and bringing 
her the best designer’s fashions. 
I waited in the signing queue, thinking how 
I’d tell Angela Davis of my teenage bond with her—
Remembering how it began at the dinner table 
while we watched Hogan’s Heroes. 
Dad came to the table, his plate 
loaded with food—
              This show’s been on so long
              that they’re running out of war.
I had a ready answer—
              They ought to make a show about Vietnam, 
              it could go on forever…
The fight began. It was 1971, and ideology rocked 
our house as it rocked the outside world. Inside, the 17- 
year-old anti-war teen and her conservative father. 
Out there Kent State, Hard Hat Riot, March 
on Washington, Vietnam teach-ins every Friday
in the courtyard at San Carlos High School.
14 PMS. .
Mother cleared the table, 
humming amidst our screams.
Much later in the kitchen, 
she told me to apologize, 
Your father loves you, just give him
a hug and tell him you are sorry.
I said the words—
Let’s make up, I love you, I’m sorry for this fight.
My head ached from yelling. 
We were close, my arms around his neck.
I’m hard on you, he said, 
because I don’t want you to end up 
like Angela Davis.
Angela was all over the news, speaking out against 
the war and the crime of American prisons. 
She was the FBI’s most wanted, afro-tall, 
a radical and eloquent professor.
I had to answer.
              I would be proud 
              to be like Angela Davis.
His fist slammed my eye.
I leapt away.
My black/blue/red/yellow 
bruise was a badge for Angela.
And here I stand to tell her,
my hand embraced in hers—
               I took a black eye for you
                            when I was seventeen.


Taking One for Angela

Jones, Ashley

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 15 Article 12 
2016 
List of Famous Alabama Slaves 
Ashley Jones 
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Recommended Citation 
Jones, Ashley (2016) "List of Famous Alabama Slaves," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 15, 
Article 12. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol15/iss2016/12 
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20 PMS. .
Ashley Jones
List of Famous Alabama Slaves
Jennie, who begat
Jake, who begat
Charity, Lizze, and Rev,
who begat 
Esther, who begat
Daniel,
who begat
Dave, Georgia,
George, Emma,
Oliver, and Maugan,
who begat Alonza,
who bought his own farm,
which begat tomatoes
and carrots
and collard greens
and watermelons
and corn
and green beans
and blackberries
and a single perfect peach,
but absolutely
never
any 
cotton.


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