Writer and Ethnomusicologist

“In a literal sense, to vocalize is to utter, to sing, to make voiced. But, when understood metaphorically, vocalization means a kind of excavation of the previously unspoken or unexpressed. An emancipation of the suppressed.” —Guest Editor Introduction to “Extinction,” Sonora Review

“Crawl away like a mermaid back to her watery home, a whale calf inching into the tide. Your mourning is its wave, a composition rich in arch. Ease into its ascent and let it carry you down soft on the fall. Break scattered bones of sea life long dead if you have to, grieve them like the ivory keys that could have played something uniquely you.” — From “No Song for the Half-Breed,” Terrain.org

“Time is an important concept in Deb’s understanding of her experience with end-of-life caregiving. Taking time to wash the body after a person has passed. The time it takes to forget a son’s betrayal, the wasted time of never being able to. Days spent observing and learning a client’s nonverbal ways of saying:  My neck hurts. I want to sit up. I can’t die without telling my daughter I’m sorry. The hours between when death becomes something you begin to hear—a purring rattle in the breath—and when it silences a voice forever. How even in those final moments, life has one last mercy to bestow when a stranger arrives to hold our hand. How even at the last minute, we can forgive ourselves.” — From “One Day You Will Be like Her” — Borderlore