Here’s a reformatted excerpt from my Twitter poetry project, “The Traveling Bobcat Poetry Show.” I wrote this during the big financial meltdown in 2008. It has been on my mind lately.

I keep thinking my head is going to pop like a grape from stress
but it hasn’t so far, even though I keep watching the news
like a goddamn fool.

What happens when we disconnect too long from the land,
from our own beings? Eventually there is a reckoning.
you slam back down to earth

Somebody tell me when ‘middle class’
started meaning proletariat. That was always true.
Who owns your job? Your bank? Where you get groceries?
Clothes? Your congressman? Your home? Who owns you?

…I sound just like I did in 1988,
there’s a time-traveling riot grrl inside my head
who just made landfall. Didn’t take much to wake her up.

I meant to explain that this morning it smelled like fog
and I thought about fall mountains and car wrecks
that happen when you can’t see
where you are going