I remember coffee-flavored ice cream at the Royal Scoop,
how it made me long to be old enough to drink espresso
like Dad. I remember stepping off the plane into the sweet
humid air, the tissue-paper feel of the Lei around my neck,
In 2008 I was a graduate student with almost no understanding of the financial system–I couldn’t even explain the difference between an interest rate and an APR!–working to launch what would become Capital Good Fund: a nonprofit lender. One day […]
We are all mourners now, our clothes
funeral shrouds we tear off our backs
when the time comes (and it will come);
in one pocket we carry brushes for tidying
the graves we stumble on in schools, churches,
nightclubs, concerts, grocery stores, streetcorners…
long before the stamps commemorating peace,
before factories resumed churning out grenades,
some made off with blueprints for conquest,
taped them to the walls of their dreams
If you’re looking for glamor, doing the most good for people and the planet may not be the place to find it.
Tonight I’ll dream that a colony of ants has dragged
me out to sea, where I discover my belongings and I
have become so much flotsam and jetsam.
Changing the language we use when speaking about injustice does not, in and of itself, overturn the injustice.
In Xinjiang, 7,000-miles
away, a morning sun, reflecting off the
glasses of early risers, the windshields
of commuters, is so bright as to redact
last night’s graffiti: Down with Xi.
I’ve been hearing Save the Rainforest
since I was small enough to sleep
in the safety of my parent’s bed
or snuggled with stuffed animals—
pandas, giraffes, monkeys, frogs;
When children by gunfire die,
when the dreamer and the warden clash,
when statues betray the sculptor, we proclaim
This is not who we are.