Be The Change
Earthquake
Wet and moonless, the Japanese maple drips her pigment onto a desolate, metal halide-lit stretch of road, until pink-red rivulets parade ostentatiously toward...
Latest
Be The Change
Mere Survival
It must take a certain manic energy, for an Arctic Tern to travel 25,000 miles a year, over every ocean and near every continent on Earth, as though there were no borders, no checkpoints, no...
poetry
Tooth Fairy
As my wife snuck into our son’s room to swap his tooth for money, I imagined this scene playing out decades ago, Dad, tired from a long day’s work, keeping his fingers crossed that I stay asleep, Mom, tired too, tiptoeing to my bed that...
poetry
Shah Alam Speaks: A Haiku
art is for the rich (the world has gone bananas) artists should be poor
poetry
Going Strong
At seventy-eight and eighty-one, Mom and Dad are still going strong. Halfway between twelve and thirteen, Chance, our Beagle, is still going strong. Civilization...
poetry
Ars Poetica
The first time I was called a poet, I took offense, for poetry is good for nothing: it neither makes love nor wages war, nor pays the bills.
poetry
Honeysuckle
To my tongue, honeysuckle tastes fibrous and bitter, like any common shrub or vine. I only know its sweetness indirectly: hummingbirds guzzling the nectar like a newborn her mother's milk while I sit in the shade and imagine a branch soaked in honey, my head forced back, sugar dripping down my throa
poetry
The Price of Eggs
I dreamt I was a kelp forest swaying in pitch- -black waters. Above me moonlight fluttered like confetti and seagulls roosted on cliff-sides and buoys. An oil tanker drifted by, the workers
America on the Brink
Undecided
I’ve been staring at the wall for hours, wondering why the paint won’t peel off, what’s holding the plaster together.
America on the Brink
America
My son and I spent weeks assembling a Lego car, 3,000 bricks of hard plastic intricately connected to form a whole.
poetry
After Dropping off My Son at Kindergarten: A Villanelle
The adults hurry to their cars as the bell rings, the crossing guard sips his water, takes off his vest: Today the children will read of warriors and kings...
America on the Brink
Signs of Life
When you have run out of courage; when every day is a loaded gun and your hand is not on the trigger; when you have given all you have to give and still disaster looms;