My favorite part in Street Roots, or any other homeless paper, so-called, is the poetry section. Poetry by homeless and formerly homeless, amounting to a record of experience. You get the unvarnished truth there. Not great literature, but a record from the heart. Honest to a fault, almost.
The bare bones of the matter, you could say.
Poetry, and personal sketches of what life on the street is like, or was like when the recorder was out there. A place the casual reader will hopefully never be. Just be outraged at the injustice that anyone could be without a place of their own in this rich man's preserve of a country.
But most of all, the poetry. It's like marginal notes on street life. A record on the fly. When, if you've been seriously homeless and you're looking back on it and all your attention is concentrated on one thing and you remember what that was like and write it down. An existential, marginal note. This moment I will never forget. A snapshot, a soulshot, indelible.
It's certainly true of the poetry anthology by women from Seattle’s WHEEL titled “Beloved Community: The Sisterhood of Homeless Women in Poetry.” WHEEL stands for Women's Housing, Equality and Enhancement League. It is homeless and formerly homeless women who support one another and advocate for housing and other social and personal remedies. Non-hierarchical and geared for action.
Some of them are a Women In Black contingent which is the only one internationally that vigils for the homeless who have disappeared.
A list in memoriam begins the anthology. These are women who died, disappeared on the street. The Women In Black vigiled for them. The list is a profound, horrific statement about what it is to be a woman homeless on the street.
In the list, the causes of death begins as follows:
Debbie Cashio, 40: murdered by unknown method, May, 2000 (7th & Jackson)...
The list proceeds with causes: stabbed...stabbed...unknown cause of death...stabbed...stomped to death...run over by a train...shot...strangled...unknown (3 in a row)...suicide...
This book contains poetry of the living who vigil and those, like Cynthia Ozimek, who have died.
Cynthia Lee Ozimek: pneumonia, August, 2005.
When I recently talked with the vigilers on KBOO's “Hole In The Bucket” show, one of them, Anitra Freeman, started to weep as she talked about Cynthia. She started off evenly enough, then she just lost it as she remembered her friend. Cynthia Lee had been a great inspiration for these women. A source of Hope (keep hope alive!) difficult to replace.
She hasn't been replaced, a reader gathers. Rather, her spirit has been carried on.
