Hi, it's Maggie. For the next two weeks of episodes, friend of the show, Samia Bashir,

will be sharing poems with you every morning. I'll be back in the host chair on February 18th.

I'm Samia Bashir, and this is The Slowdown.

In the 1980s, despite being the top-ranked rhythmic gymnast in the United States and among the

world's best, Wendy Hilliard, one of my personal heroes, was sidelined in the early Olympic

era of the sport through racially coded re-ranking, a decision she formally challenged and overturned,

exposing the limits of meritocracy in elite

athletics. Much like the powers that be who decided that a young, busty, black girl must not

be allowed to represent the U.S., sometimes the way that we see each other has nothing to do, per se,

with who they are, but with who we are. Sometimes we

challenge each other just by being, because being is complicated. It's difficult, and none of us

can be reduced to each other's outside gaze. Whether that's women in sports, and any kind of women,

cis, trans, intersex, young, old, every kind of race, or in poetry, in food service, in search of intimacy, in a family. Thing is, everyone is a hero to someone, or a beauty, or a problem, or all of the above.

Today's poem acknowledges exactly that, with a brutal, identifiable honesty.

But what this poet insists that we remember is how we are all, also, even if not loved, then so, so very lovable.

Catherine with the lazy eye, short, and not a good poet, by Francine J. Harris.

This morning, I heard you were found in your McDonald's uniform.

I heard it while I was visiting a lake town where empty, woodsy highways turn into

waterside drives.

I'd forgot my toothbrush and was brushing with my finger when a friend who didn't know you

said he heard it like this.

You know, Catherine, short,

...