A Poem by Cassandra Dallett

Without Grace

I sit
in the redwoods
on the deck
wondering why would I . . .
feel bad for leaving you
Why does it matter so much to me
that you still need me?
Every other moment
I think I'll stay
Love you when your massive muscles sag
when your head shines bald
I will cradle you when you fail
be the back bone a motherless man is missing
and every third moment--
I think I'll flee
do all the things
you would not want me to
be stingy
and private
an old lady
alone
an apartment
full of books
collecting dust

Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA.  Cassandra writes of a counter culture childhood in Vermont and her ongoing adolescence in the San Francisco Bay Are.  A reluctant poet she believed poetry better left to the hippies and beats of her parent's generation.  While taking classes at Berkeley Community College she stumbled, or rather dragged her feet, into poetry.  When her father died in late 2006, wanting to keep his stories alive she wrote her first poem, Talk Story, a poem about a father who never shut up it won Poem of the Month at the Beat Museum of San Francisco.  Cassandra reads out often and in addition to several chapbooks.  She has been published online and in print magazines such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, The Bicycle Review, Chiron Review, River Babble and Up the River.  A full-length book of poetry, Wet Recklessness, was released from Manic D Press in May of 2014.