Janine Pommy Vega is the author of twelve books and chapbooks since 1968. Her work has appeared in The Village Voice, Baltimore Sun, and Mademoiselle magazine. Her new book, TRACKING THE SERPENT: Journeys to Four Continents, a collection of essays on the Amazon, the Andes and Himalayas, is due out from City Light Books in June 1997.

Ms. Vega has worked for twenty years in arts in education programs in New York State, teaching grades K through 12 in English and Spanish with Alternative Literary Programs, Teachers & Writers, The Writer's Voice, The New York City Ballet, and Poets in The Schools; and teaching inmates in correctional facilities through Incisions/Arts.
Which Side Are You On?

Where does my anger come from
	at the laziness, the prosaic? 
How many times will you enter a room
	and leave it vacant: in and out, 
in and out, visiting a temple of possibility
and never leave a gift on the altar?

Come down to the river of your own soul, we are
	excavating 
here, the yellow helmets you see are so many 
suns on the horizon, going down and coming up 
in no particular time sequence or order.
When one flower opens, Kabir says, 
		ordinarily
dozens open. I'm digressing.

Every time you visit yourself without
	respect, you lose. Without love, 
Also. 
Read the coins you've thrown down into the dirt,
they spell integrity. You recall those
early moments in 
your young life when you sang. And we were
	witnesses-- if not then, now. We can 
	     see you 
outside the ordinary, grab onto a miracle and 
understand it was no more you than the
     wind.

Oh, so that's it, finally: 
No more you or me than that mountain
	there. And no mountain either.

		Which side are you on?
Eastern Correctional Facility, Napanock, NY, June 6,1996