Perie Longo
photo by Rick Carter

Poetry Therapy

Marriage & Family Therapy

Workshops

Teaching

Poems

The Writing Group

A Widow Discovers Her Tires Are Bald When the “Check Engine” Light Comes On

Thirst: Kuwait Poetry Workshop

What I Forgot to Write

Fishing With My Father

What We Live For...

Peanut Butter

Art Helps...

Playing Crash

"Ish"

Dedication (Douglas Family Preserve)

"What Do Women Want?"

Biography

Links

Marriage & Family Therapist | Registered Poetry Therapist | Poet

Baggage Claim, WordTech Editions 2014 ($18), The Privacy of Wind ($10) and With Nothing Behind But Sky: A journey through grief ($12) can be ordered directly from Perie.
To order, contact her at perie(at)west(dot)net, visit Amazon.com, or phone her at 805-687-1619.

Thirst: Kuwait Poetry Workshop

Humans are not our enemies.
—Thich Nhat Hanh

Out of the silence of writing she
flies to the front of the lecture hall,
like a raven, black swirled around her head,
draped over body, a veil
fastened over mouth ear to ear,

her eyes mirror and shadow,
beauty and anguish at once.
In her hand a small scrap of paper
like a sail, her words a wind that propels her.

She wants to read her poem
released when I spoke
of how poetry can be a road to peace,
how Rumi wrote to greet every feeling
as guest to the house of the heart.

The veil that covers her mouth puffs in and out
with each breath, a tent opening
in the desert between us

as she speaks about being hidden,
not heard, how she aches
with loss, relatives felled
for war’s intolerable gain.

When I ask what can I do
she tears the veil from her mouth:
Say more. I have such thirst.

East and west moving one direction,
sand becomes water we drink and drink.

 

(in The Paterson Literary Review, Issue 36, 2008-2009)