“Woke” Words Purged
“These Words Are Disappearing in the NewTrump Administration,” New York Times, March 7, 2025* Underscored words survived the purge.
diverse litany of...
You’ve forgotten the names of your homemade saintswho crowd in the dark behind your thin lids.In the veil you’ve drawn betweenHere and Not Here, they...
SURVIVAL MECHANISMFor a land-grab moment,I am eight years old,A celebrant in heaven.Hand in hand withMy daughters.Glory, elation, youth.Tantrums of joyElucidated by theirChyron thoughts,“I like...
CucumbersHey God.Thanks for Tomatoes red as the engine of life.See, dicing them dulls the labored days,bringing me as close to meditation as I’ve ever been.And...
City Blocks(After ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae)In city blocks the missiles, bombs explode,families slaughtered in homes, on the road,in basement boltholes civilians still...
A Simple MachineThe noose that was used to hang John Brown is allegedly in the permanent collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Frayed and wild...
Cloth & Sun
Chaos greets me at the door—
broken things swirl,
dust motes through worn curtains,
a breath before the next bruise.
You coil like an old cobra,
fangs...
Loop
Goddamn those whippoorwills, we wanted
to shoot them, our history teacher said.
-
He’d lived in the woodsiest neck of our district
since childhood. Of course we’d heard them
-
too: In...
Tondo: Closing the CircleAfter Sam Gilliam’s Something is Going On!—2021
In a muddle of abstractiona face emerges—owl, cat, human—no certainty.Should I turn the canvas,straighten its...
