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Sunday, January 16, 2011

I HAD A DREAM

by Roxanne Hoffman

“A mind is terrible thing to waste.” 
The United Negro College Fund motto created in 1972.

African-American
boy’s
childhood
dream:
eager
fingers
grab
handlebars,
integrate
jelly-beans;
knees
limber;
mind
nimble;
Obama
pedals
quickly,
racing
steadily
towards
ultimate
victory;
waste
x’d-out:
youth
zooms!


Author's note: In the words of Dr. King and the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
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Roxanne Hoffman worked on Wall Street, now answers a patient hotline for a New York home healthcare provider. Her words can be found on and off the net in such journals as Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Clockwise Cat, Danse Macabre, The Fib Review, Hospital Drive, Lucid Rhythms, Mobius: The Poetry Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, and Shaking Like A Mountain; the indie flick Love And The Vampire; and the anthologies The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and their Affiliates (Soft Skull Press), Love After 70 (Wising Up Press), and  It All Changed In An Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure (Harper Perennial). She and her husband own the small press, Poets Wear Prada
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