They’ve separated 2,000 children.
No, they’ve discarded them
Like cans of Coca-Cola,
2,000 children who reached our shore
Like sea foam, salty, crying salt,
A column of families marching for asylum,
No Comment
Ode to the Attorney General
May 24, 2018
The squirrels were dancing in the trees
On a cataract of leaves
Occluding the moon,
And fields of tobacco slept
Like unlit dreams.
An Ode to Immigrants Braving ICE
May 19, 2018
A cold river divides us:
Cold currents, cold fish, cold limbs,
A carnival of shattered ice
They traverse, barefoot,
With bleeding feet, frostbitten blood,
To risk a safari of lethal ice.
The Diagnosis
May 9, 2018
If I baptized ghosts
And knew that they were ghosts;
If I consorted with hallucinations
And accepted the pain of false association;
If I planted a Willow
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
March 24, 2018
SNAP
Goes the can of beans,
The soda-can-dreams
That fizz and hiss
On their way to oblivion.
America After One Year & 51 Days
March 13, 2018
America is the land
That without irony
Sells both the cigarette
And the nicotine patch.
It was late and the insomniac moon
Played cold music in my ears,
A seashell hum foot-tapping
To the beat of toss-turning dreams.
The Night Hangs Low: Resist
November 29, 2017
The night hangs low and shatters treetops
Like a brain bludgeoned against a wall,
Bone obliterated, thought incinerated,
Oozing toward the denuded earth,
And I resist.
Sleepless, restless, hopeless—yes.
Still I resist.
The Vietnam War
November 23, 2017
In Vietnam we set the jungle on fire,
The leaves and branches melting like wax,
Candles blown out by blind war
Snuffing out the celebration of life.
I Saw the Rose Bloom in Thorns
October 15, 2017
I saw the rose bloom in thorns, her petals pierced
And bloody, her scent metallic, her countenance,
Once sanguine, sanguine no more, but pained,
Burned by the sun, depressed by the darkness
That since that horrid November had blotted
Out the moon until even the owls ceased to hoot.