Bad news blares from every stamen, every mouth, every
passing car and leaf blower. I am coated in dust. It has
been too long since I left this spot. How do trees do it?
Do they too grow stiff and restless
“When you attack us, you will see our faces. Not our backs, but our faces.” – President Volodymyr Zelensky Beneath a Bougainvillea-laced trellis I read of war and war and war when I am startled by a sound deep and […]
No one is to blame for anything anymore.
Or is it that everyone is to blame for everything?
Maybe the world has gotten too small: so many billions
of us, incomprehensible to ourselves, let alone
one another, crowded together
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
Suppose I grant you the premise of your question.
Should I gather up my limbs at once
and build something immortal with them?
What could I construct to outlast
the drowsy calm of this moment?
Out of the blue our three-year-old
declares he doesn’t like the elephant.
For days he repeats—unbidden, as if recalling
a nightmare—that he doesn’t like the elephant.
Some talk during movies.
Others crack their knuckles,
drink to excess, buy things
they don’t need, make
mountains out of molehills.
It’s all too much, the floor strewn with gifts
we couldn’t possibly deserve. But our son
is happy, going from toy to toy, and so
are we, smiling along with him as he plays
with the train, the trucks, the scooter.
So much death and pain today: slaughtered fowls,
reminders of genocide and oppression, celebration
of abundance denied to billions. Cousin, did you know
400,000 Ethiopians are suffering famine?
At what time the fog took over, I do not know:
I was, if not sleeping, attempting to, tossing
and turning like a Heron’s wing, lost in fog.