A relentless South Texas wind poses impossible questions,
flaps the smirking flags until they are upturned,
mists the mown grass with evil’s sputum,…
They’ve separated 5,500 children.
No, they’ve discarded them
like cans of Coca-Cola,
5,500 children who reached our shore
like sea foam, salty, crying salt…
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.
“Would you break the law then pay a fine
If it helped the bottom line?”
“Yes,” says the CEO, “this job is mine
So long as I grow the bottom line.”
“The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack.” – Shakespeare
The power of fire is not that it burns
but that it distracts:
We save what burns because it burns.
My heart has grown docile, less inclined
to thrash about, to strain at the leash.
Maybe that’s the way it goes: We come
into the world like lava, we burn and blaze
and flow, and then cool into something solid
One of the most pernicious attitudes about the nature of political leadership is that running a city, state, or even the whole nation is akin to being the CEO of a company, an attitude shared not only by free market-obsessed […]
One day she arrived
like a scab dragged across a ballad
of iodine,
a sequin of stars
stitched to a dormant volcano’s lapel
Dogs know how to live and die with grace.
I don’t.
In my hands are wet grapes fit to burst
and beyond my reach…
We have pitched an innocent man against the
thousand blades of grass.
Once a week the battle is waged;
each green sword glints with dew.