"lineage" poems
*be ever gentle to thy words
treat them, your tools, well,
cleansing and protecting,
wrapping them in cloths of chamois and moleskin
that they may be well conditioned and
pour forth with a temperament clear and viscous,
reflecting their high honors and a noble lineage,
they are well-intentioned to exist far longer
than your meager temporal life,
upon this ever hasty, ever perpetual, orbit
give them all respect, their fair due,
they are treasure immeasurable,
for which you have been granted guardianship,
custody received from others to be gifted onwards,
yours, but for the duration
so oft we trifle words,
expel them from the country of our body,
without passport and earnestness,
as if they were the cheapest of footnote filler,
day tourists, to be treated as leavings,
refuse for daily discardation,
barely noting their fast comings and faster disappearance,
but leaving not, a mark of distinction
more truffle than trifle,
find them in the dark forest of your life,
use them sparingly, just for soaring,
take them from the roots of your trees,
shave them with a paring knife,
counts them in bites and measure them in grams,
even in grains,
for words are the seasoning of our lives,
agent provacateurs that can modify the moment,
bringing out to the fore
the flavor of the underlying
speak them slow and distinct,
for they arrive slow to you,
a trickling of refugees for your sheltering,
harbor them as full companions,
protected by natural law,
provision them well,
prepared and ever ready for a quick departure,
moor them at the embarcadero,
for the next restless leg of endlessness,
which they themselves will inform you
will last longer than eternity,
long after there are no humans to speak them*
Oct 10, 2015
Oct 10, 2015 at 6:01 PM UTC
We know the world is a crazy place
and that is it easy to give up, throw in the towel.
The idealism of youth gives way to the cynicism of middle age
when we realize that despite our best efforts, change is very difficult.
To be a parent and, in particular, to be a father....why bother?
Some say fatherhood is driven by ego,
the child providing the ultimate selfish representation of oneself.
Others say driven by fear,
the fear of mortality and the unconscious and genetic need
to propagate and maintain our lineage, our species, our world.
While both can be true, I believe the best manifestation of fatherhood
is driven by tikkun olam, a Jewish concept that we all have an obligation
to better the world, to move it to a better state than currently exists.
We do what we can when on this earth to love our family, friends,
and be as righteous as this world will allow.
Our genetic legacy is not nearly as important as
our obligation to pass on what we know, have learned, have experienced,
and enable our children
to carry the mission to an always higher level.
No matter what our belief in the afterlife, and what the future may hold
we are here now in THIS life,
and as long as we move the ball further and further
in the right direction, there can be hope.
Truly being a father, a good father, enables hope. Maybe that is enough.
Jun 19, 2011
Jun 19, 2011 at 7:17 AM UTC
My bed may not be as large
As California or have a blanket
As deep as the ocean.
But it’s comfy and shares
The same view as if we were there.
When I am asleep with you,
Everything becomes ideal.
One of the best feelings the universe
Could bestow.
To discover a slice of heaven beside you.
A spoon finding it’s way
To the big dipper, in the same
Lineage of how I see you.
We stargaze with our eyes closed,
Watching the stars bloom like flowers
In complete comfort.
The urge to explore further,
A simple look, a simple smirk
Head nestled deep in a pillow.
The aspirations of becoming an astronaut
Become that much clearer.
I blast off & everything becomes dark
My reflection staring at yours beneath mine,
Until I see your face spread wide
Across the moon.
Happy and safe,
My voyage is now complete
Oct 19, 2021
Oct 19, 2021 at 2:41 PM UTC
Raised
in this floating
world, forever
deep.
You can’t drain the ocean
Decidedly from down
south of here
You can’t un-trace the roots.
You can’t lie and say,
“This isn’t where I grew up”
You can’t deny the fruits
of what was planted two generations ago
when your grandpatents arrived from the Philippines, seeds in tow
soil for the taking
You can’t confiscate what they claimed
when they planted their flags
into the moon-white sand of a beach in Florida
on a far side of the planet
their forefarthers have never seen
You can’t say those flags weren’t there
when wind came
You can't ***** out that pride
of country,
cut off its native tongue and its acquired taste, or pass up the plate of fried lumpia and rice passed down from the kitchen of your Daddylol
feeding seven kids day in and out with tomatoes he planted,
chickens he raised, Malonggay leaves he grew
with thumbs so green they wrote in the papers about it
He was a farmer
Your grandmother, a nurse
And i was writer
And this is our story
You can’t erase the letters of your name,
your lineage written all over it
like a map
of everywhere we been
You can’t take back the words in Tagalog and Chavacano
your Lola Shirley must have sang your mother to sleep with
You can’t take their dreams
You can't just wake up one day and undo
the ripple effects their moves
created across waters 10,000 miles east of here,
the rolling waves they curled into
or the faraway shores they washed up upon
Bottled messages in hand
Our legends held within
You can’t say centuries from now that they won’t feel it
when their feet hit the sand of their own frontier
beside the waves we stayed making
a history written in deep water
for those who come after you
to sail above and beyond.
Nov 24, 2018
Nov 24, 2018 at 6:51 PM UTC
There she sat upon the wall.
Longing for springtime to come,
she wished to blossom into a beautiful bud,
Although, beautiful was not expected to come about.
Nevertheless, she was to bloom,
into a wallflower-
a flourish that was shunned by the most prized beings-
she desired to cut the vines from which she sprouted,
to be erased from the lineage of her loved ones.
She yearned to fall among the soil and the pasture,
to be trampled on by the glorious.
Because at least there,
lying in the fallow,
she would’ve been touched by the legendary.
Aug 18, 2015
Aug 18, 2015 at 7:10 PM UTC
The Fire-Brush is alive as the wind blows around,
Causing their seeds to be flung abound.
The wind turns red and seeds shred the sky,
My face is filled with ****** specks and I see the air dance with the red and blue of July.
The blush of the tree I sit in shakes,
As the firey skies make the blue trees bark quake,
And the crimson seeds overtake.
The wind then blows pass with all the fire brushes spawn,
Letting the sky clear like a new dawn.
I, swaying in the blue trees red leaves smile,
as I take off all the seeds from me.
I looked up to see the cloudless sky,
And gaze at magnificent red, yellow and blue sunset.
The seeds then glow red in my hand, and I smile,
because now I have a night light waiting for the dawn.
I look down at the brush and see the red gone,
All taken by the wind, all the seeds to be spread on,
All to be thrown across the world for the brush's lineage to give spawn.
Now I wait for the dusk and the moon,
Letting the Fire Brushes seed shine,
As I wait for that faithful dragoon.
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 3:20 PM UTC
The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
And altered is the fashion of the earth.
The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
And unapparelled in the woodland play.
The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.
Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
Comes autumn with his apples scattering;
Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.
But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,
Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams;
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are
And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.
Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has had
The fingers of no heir will ever hold.
When thou descendest once the shades among,
The stern assize and equal judgment o'er,
Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.
Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chain
The love of comrades cannot take away.
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The rich will always be rich,
Computers, clean body, nice clothes,
Proper homes, not shacks.
Elite schools, branded
Motorcycles, jewelry
The poor will always be poor,
A pen, a marvel
Firewood, abandoned train tracks
YMCA funded classes,
Hand-me downs, nakedness
Grandfather, father,
Son. Same lineage, same burden
To pass down
Generation
To
Generation
To
Generation.
A Never-ending cycle
Cruel game of Russian roulette,
Spin the revolver, watch it
Turn, pick it up, iron to temple
--BANG BANG-- you're dead.
The more the rounds, the
More
Lethal
It
Gets
It is a gap that cannot
Be plugged,
A boulder that cannot be put down,
Like Atlas holding the sky,
If released, the sky and earth
Collide, and we die--
All of us.
Everyone.
Dec 2, 2014
Dec 2, 2014 at 7:12 PM UTC
Wake Up Wretched World,
I assert my Indigenous heritage
I self identify
With the ancestors of my continent
Identity afraid to articulate
Culture, unknowingly belonging to me
Cycle of shame now shattered
Product of love, hatred, lust, and desire
europeans plundering my mother Latin America
In chaos and violence, my skin's pigment
Has been engineered through the mestizaje
Of my Indigenous forefathers
How could I not forget my lineage
When the historical legacy of modernization
Has been to massacre the consciousness
Of where my people really come from
Erasing indigenous pride
Making Paisano and Indio
Synonymous with poverty and alienation
Insulting the humbleness
State of hunger you've left us in
Original lineage within me disturbed
So you push me to ambiguity and embarrassment
Not white, not indigenous?
Pure indigenous brothers and sisters silenced
Not an exploitable consumerist market, not in your campaigns
Not benefactors of your philanthropic development tactics
Bodies too costly to abuse, no reason to bring them
Into the neoliberal multinational corporate circuit
Constantly driving them off productive land
Because they choose to assert their identity
Live in collective communes, not owing you nothing
Waiting for them to make barren lands productive
So you can take those lands too
Not capturing an obscure history, these are not colonial times
This is the legacy of the european presence entering mother Latin America
21st century still defiling Indigenous cultures to civilize and modernize
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 10:26 PM UTC
I am no longer a Roman,
Though my nose would differ.
I'm not Viking,
But my descendants have blonde and red hair.
I am a beneficiary of the dark ages,
The scriptoriums and monasteries
That brought the Greeks and Romans to life.
I am not Gael, though my eyes smile
When I hear the harp and pipes.
Neither am I Saxon nor Norman,
Victorious or defeated.
I, we, have metamorphized,
Casted of the moulted casement,
Spread dry wings and lifted,
Carried on fresh winds
To new worlds
To read, write, fish and hunt,
And I have gathered
My lineage,
Framed it in genetics on my wall,
To point at in fond remembrance
Of what I once was.
Nov 30, 2018
Nov 30, 2018 at 10:57 AM UTC
1627
The pedigree of Honey
Does not concern the Bee,
Nor lineage of Ecstasy
Delay the Butterfly
On spangle journeys to the peak
Of some perceiveless thing—
The right of way to Tripoli
A more essential thing.
—
The Pedigree of Honey
Does not concern the Bee—
A Clover, any time, to him,
Is Aristocracy—
6.8k
In the golden times of his age, no one ever sought a way more beautiful,
Because no one taught them that their path,
Was different.
Days,months ,years were all full of unexpected happenings.
Besides we were all born the same way.
He woke up , dashed through life just like his elders.
Laid in the midst of a beautiful middle sun,
He watched his skin dry, with no earning for his hardwork
Besides life is for living
Just a walk home, he rushed his memory through,
A series of his lineage and realised it was a whole
Miserable pattern of dreams shuttered.
Running for a ward or two , he paced to his next neighbour
Just to see if , thoughts could match into a hope.
He lost it all, because neither did they understand his feeling.
He changed direction, and sought for rescue in this unknown land.
Just like heavy pours through a stream, he has never looked
Back, because his dream was his own.
Running at a faster rate, he wishes all the sunrises would remain to replace the dead ones ,that left him poor.
Today, he is on a strange path, which only him can relate to,
Because dreams don't have shadows, you either walk with them or remain together with no one leading.
Oct 18, 2018
Oct 18, 2018 at 2:39 PM UTC
Against the sky is the Pillar of Light
Hands outstretched ready at our open backs
Milky Way our Guardian of the night
Is everything that our world hereby lacks
Tentative to show its face to our eyes
The Red Moon peeks out behind a curtain
For a few minutes it will socialize
Of our humanity it is certain
Along the line our lineage has crossed
Stardust lingers in the blue of our veins
Our existence was very nearly lost
Resilient Stardust helps us remain
So you see that we are made of star stuff
Because being human was not enough
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 11:55 AM UTC
sure, first we had the schism
of the church & state...
"oddly" enough...
we now live in the 2nd tier
of schism -
the segregation of
state & media...
no?
really?
we're not?!
i'm kind of enjoying
this ongoing schismatics -
the segregation of church
from state, at least left us with
the Vatican (i.e. the church-state) -
but this, current...
segregation of state from
the media?
**** me cram my testicles
into a monkey-wrench
and subsequently watch me laugh...
and there i was thinking,
that psychiatrists,
were the new priests of
the secular age...
prescribing the alt. to
the metaphor of cannibalism
in the form of big pharmacological
pills, to replace the wafer for
bread,
or the watered down wine /
grape juice of the...
so how does that party trick goes?
is that the wine turned into blood?
symbolically:
turned water into wine:
flag-wise...
white,
cardinal...
and then burgundy of
cardinal red teasing the bishopric
coloring of purple?
i'm not here to undermine
the faith...
i'm here for the self-deprecating
humo(u)r...
you don't even require
atheism to get a laugh
out of the conundrum -
you, simply need...
the deviation from the catholic
rites...
an apostasy -
but sure as **** it's there...
secularism has allowed
journalism a monastic status...
first came the schism of
church from state -
which remained intact in
the church-state of the Vatican...
so... FAIL...
secondly had to come
the schism of the state from
the media...
i'm watching a schism
take place...
apparently...
the comparative concern
of church's divorce from
the state was easy,
having imploded into the Vatican...
but the divorce of
the media from the state?
apparently... not so easy...
the media is already locking-down
on obstructing the schism -
arguing from an entertainment
perspective...
a century or so later,
and still, the persistent,
media symbolism -
of crafting caricatures of
a state...
as the state embodied in
nothing more than subordination
to its will...
media is the new church...
and if the separation of the state
from the church took so long...
how much time, do you "think",
it will it take, for the state
to segregate itself, from the media
baronage?
i suspect - as much time as it
took to segregate itself from
the church's cardinal-lineage.
Aug 3, 2018
Aug 3, 2018 at 11:34 PM UTC
.
**•••• ••••••••• ••••
•our wrin- kled hides only co- nceal the
anguish•that resonates with conviction amongst
my herd•this humanly greed that might cause us
to perish•what's valuable to you, we find incredu-
lously absurd•embedded in our trunks lay mill-
enias of lineage... • hidden in our eyes bec-
koned the change in history •in our
•• beating hearts is ••
the longing to
turn the im-
possible
page•of
hapless
chapt-
ers w-
rit-ten
with the
points**
of
bloodstained
ivory•
.
Nov 15, 2015
Nov 15, 2015 at 10:27 AM UTC
In the beginning was Scream
Who begat Blood
Who begat Eye
Who begat Fear
Who begat Wing
Who begat Bone
Who begat Granite
Who begat Violet
Who begat Guitar
Who begat Sweat
Who begat Adam
Who begat Mary
Who begat God
Who begat Nothing
Who begat Never
Never Never Never
Who begat Crow
Screaming for Blood
Grubs, crusts
Anything
Trembling featherless elbows in the nest's filth
4.3k
I contemplate these crossings illuminated by clouds
between a shape of thought and its veils
we didn't invent a screen-reality
it was already there, in the scriptorium of mind
I contemplate this geography known only by fingertips
unworded broken lines in tense bodies
I wonder about the lineage of tears, of hopes
how we grow old in this ardour, in the burning of bridges
I nod, I frown at the glaze of time
I move to the center of seeing like a novice
I gaze at the poliphony of being
at our Janus faced trade with flames
I say to myself it's good to decenter the "I" in this poem
however, there is no purity of words
height after height and depth after depth
we betray a simple evidence: we belong to the same air
will we regret our rush towards the malaise of thought,
will we be rowing over the theft of light?
an invisible will is building up, an antifragile declamation,
the soul's defamation
Sep 23, 2025
Sep 23, 2025 at 3:11 PM UTC
A bedspread on which bold, red and blue
esoteric, Tantric, motifs embrace
copulating triangles, the ideogram of cosmos
batik printed in vermilion on it's center
is spread, right there on the play-field of cupid
where the confluence is to happen,
a transmitting point of fecund energies to infinity,
a point on the spring board to transcendence
Beloved, here in the holy fire, receive in ecstasy,
the sacrificial offering I bring from the
incessant Ganga of my lineage,
Shakti and Shiva come in for divine union,
together here on the mark beyond time and space.
right in the center is "THE BINDU" the mystical point
both culmination and beginning of the 'beyond'
passage from here to timelessness of cosmos, we invoke.
Here Shakti is holy fire leaping up for Shiva's offering,
sublimated they fuse, may that be the seed for karmas lumenant.
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 6:21 AM UTC
Broke the straw across her back,
so she snapped, never turning back
Bruised her arm by joking accident
with all the malice of death’s intent.
No natural love or paternal instinct
to catch
the tears she’s choked
with your hands on her throat.
Touch her again and the demons will get you
tell her to end herself before you do;
and the death you deserve will befall you
slow, alone and barren.
Better to have left long ago or
confronted your own lineage-issued father and
let yourself be disowned
than be the ******* you are.
Leave her be
middle child,
second accident
of the disappointing gender.
How dare you lay a finger on an innocent child?
You’ll never be absolved in anyone’s eyes.
Raised by fools, you’ve ruined your gift.
The daughter you never wanted
may never say it,
but will grow up to spite you.
Suffer like she does.
She’s been soaking it up now
for a while
but the blood flow continues
from deep wells of wounds.
She can’t take this load anymore
the people she carries
don’t love her and she’s
parched but still going.
Surviving on a lump in her throat
as she’s dragged through sandstorms and beatings.
Feb 22, 2012
Feb 22, 2012 at 5:31 PM UTC
No one is perfect
Or expected to be
Unless you happen to share a gene or two with this sort
And as if their generation was completely right
(the pattern of perceived perfection is a long lineage)
They pass their judgment
One generation to the next
The gossip makes its way across state lines
The tale of manipulation and corruption
Bred within our borders
Finds its place with mythical tales
Of mobsters and cat burglars
On cops
You work your magic
Sweet-talking people out of money
Not even Satan’s speech was so smooth
Talent for memorizing numbers
Credit card
Pin
But not your grandmother’s
Stuns all
If she knew of your antics
Pallbearers would have a heavy load
But fear not
Keeping secrets from the old and feeble
Is our talent
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 1:30 PM UTC
~for the one who will know it was written for her~
muddy verb and adjective,
muddling and muddled
have you ever seen a pas de deux/deluxe,
one dancer, proscriptive,
and her partner, prescriptive?
the stage, of course,
exactly the width of your head,
from ear to shining ear
this couple o’muses dance en concert,
though their very natures are anti-logarithmic,
the value of their exponential activity is a
descriptive nomenclature
I am overly abstruse this Saturday morn,
mushing mathematics and ballet, verbal word games
as is my wont wanted,
everyone sleeping while I rise at 6am,
doing ablutions, seeking absolution,
pulling weeds from our respective gardens,
answering old friends I have yet to meet,
to whom I answer,
“still here, though long time no see,”
which is of course hysterical funny, inherently contradictory,
as the brain grasps well my
Red and Dead Sea brain cells, a splitting motif
muddling and muddled,
proscribed from getting on transport,
to deliver to you the proper healing prescriptive,
as if I had in my possess to diagnosis and correctly assess
even though one of my many passport names,
a requirement, to visit,
this inter-netting ether, that both combines and separates,
permits me safe passage,
over the historical lineage of borderlines of land and sea,
to deliver this message,
to you
woman
*I am here, waiting patiently, though long time
no see
like ever,
absentia, dementia,
both self-censure:
here, then, my cadenza,
dedicated solely soulfully for you,
as the sabbath sun rises over the East River,
saying, laughing unto me,
“still here, though long time no see,”
for though I cannot look upon her,
my sun, my sun, my son,
yet she, as well,
is everywhere-inside of me,
warmly illuminating
my muddled mind*
Mar 23, 2019
Mar 23, 2019 at 7:57 AM UTC
We set out from our homes
With aspirations bright
A bag pack of skills
And a sceptre of perfection
A potion of blessings
To keep company
We are complete.
Through the low nights
And during the blazing noons,
Through the hard needles of showers,
Until we reach the land of flowers,
We unravel
Secrets of the deep and the dark
We gain and yet sometimes loose
We fathom
Through the layers wise
And make our axioms
On a quiet night however,
When we plunge in retrospection
A star shines bright
Connecting and completing the picture
We are but one glowing dot from the many
And the canvass completes
With the treasure of family lineage
All encompassing and strengthening
A synecdoche of life.
Jan 10, 2013
Jan 10, 2013 at 7:44 AM UTC
a passing balloon piece,
his, within in a message,
makes the imagery explode
with numerous contractions,
even confusions, and requires an
explaining explication and a fresh
application of sealant
men see the words ~ think war or football,
women think of the lyric, phrase in a sad
love ballad that means recall, and a
moistening tear drop that liquifies but doesn’t drop
but that word, pulverized, has an enormity
attached, that conjures destruction total,
s battlefield’s aftermath, tree stumps cut
down, synchronized with bodies in parts,
sole souls departing
without reasoning/justification
the lineage upon her face,
pulverized by sorrow and
no expectations for the morrow,
gaveled into existence,
by losses and carried
for a length of a term ill defined,
as “life”
with no hint of irony, for it’s not life
when it’s spent reminiscing remembering
the dismemberment of what was a
joy taken instantly and perpetually inexplicabe
the tragedies multicolored in black,
a solid stolid state that nary a meter,
talking centi’s here, pinch of breeze
and /or hurricane alters status quo,
both of us have long known that, but
we nonetheless pick up grains, single
alphabet scrambled pieces to put the
whole together again, but it’s a cause
hopeless cause we be
are
pulverized inside so
the chorded chore is
a double whammy
and still
and yet
we say
but,
for we cannot stop our fingers
from their appointed rounds
and we think in term not of hope
but a thought out louded,
the eternal question,
what if
we do not try?
Sep 30, 2024
Sep 30, 2024 at 10:18 AM UTC
I am the first born millennial grown in the digital garden from transplantation.
The data stream flows along with my bloodlines,
Divided, interspersed, like a lava lamp of my own identification.
A bloodline that once worked the fields, and now works the fields of existence,
A bloodline that made its pilgrimage to new land in order to satiate the body,
has now grown to satiate inquiries within the self.
I reflect upon those occasions where I have been told:
“why do you care about the state of affairs for them, you are not of them, you do not act like them
so
you can’t be one of them”
and I clench my tongue, forgive them father, they know not of what they speak”
“Perdonalos padre, no saben nada de que dicen”
The climate of academia is both inviting and yet marking, I feel connected to both intertwined
bloodlines, and markedly separate in a way neither will ever know
“mijo, él esta ****** no dice nada que él no entiende”
But I understand, my name, my appearance, my lineage, they all mark a separation of that cultural
heritage, a combination, a divider,
that lava lamp burns hot from the up down theatrics of where identity will lie
I am the new millennial
Expect us.
Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 3:01 AM UTC
Georgiana Seymour,
Duchess of Somerset
crowned _'Queen of Beauty'_
at the 1839 Eglinton
Tournament, the first known
beauty pageant;
W
European festivals dating to the medieval era
provide the most direct lineage for beauty pageants.
For example, English May Day celebrations always
involved the selection of a May Queen.
In the United States, the May Day tradition
of selecting a woman to serve as a symbol
of bounty and community ideals continued,
as young beautiful women participated
in public celebrations; such as the beauty pageant
held during the Eglinton Tournament of 1839,
organized by Archibald Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton,
as part of a re-enactment of a medieval joust
that was held in Scotland; the pageant was won
by Georgiana Seymour, Duchess of Somerset,
wife of Edward Seymour, 12th Duke of Somerset,
and sister of Caroline Norton;
Georgiana proclaimed _"Queen of Beauty"_;
Entrepreneur Phineas Taylor Barnum staged
the first modern American pageant in 1854,
his beauty contest closed down after public protest;
However beauty contests became popular
in the 1880s; In 1888 the title of _'beauty queen'_
was awarded to an 18-year-old Creole contestant
at a pageant in Spa, Belgium. All participants
had to supply a photograph & a short description
of themselves to be eligible to enter; a final selection
of 21 judged by a formal panel.
Such events were not regarded as respectable;
But beauty contests came to be considered more
respectable with the first modern _"Miss America"_
contest held in 1921;
Still the oldest pageant in operation,
the Miss America pageant was organized
in 1921 by a local businessman as a means
to entice tourists to Atlantic City, New Jersey;
The pageant hosted the winners of local
newspaper beauty contests in the
_Inter-City Beauty Contest_ & was attended
by over one hundred thousand people;
_Sixteen-year-old Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C.
was crowned Miss America 1921, having won both the
popularity and beauty contests, and was awarded $100_
Sep 1, 2018
Sep 1, 2018 at 10:04 AM UTC