poetry
What Weighs on Us
What momentary peace in the yard!--The peach tree straining under the weight of its fruit, the sound of water giving itself to gravity. I stir my coff
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Be The Change
The Planet Jeff Bezos Returned To
Jeff Bezos did not leave the planet any better than he found it, though he is rich enough to leave it and return, alive. As I watch the skies, greedy mosquitos stalk me like a herd of tiny buffalo.
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What Happens to Poetry After Two Decades of Climate Change
My early poems aspired to Keats and Blake; were about magic, dreams, and heartbreak. Most rhymed, were trite, and told more than showed; rolled off the tongue, no taste of the acid down below.
Be The Change
What Happens When You Forget to Close Your Bedroom Window
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.
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A Heat Dome Scorches the Heart
I want to smash a violin on the tree it was made from. To soak up the blood of martyrs with my eyes, die a glorious death and live on, weeping, sweating blood. It's 118 in Siberia.
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Status Quo Ante
I had a dream where from an impossible height I took in all the splendor and all the pain we’ve learned to live with.
poetry
After Running Errands, I Think of the World I Want Us to Live In: A Villanelle
What is left after the groceries are put away? Dishes on the drying rack, nothing to clean: all is as it should be, or so they say.
poetry
During a Nor'easter I Seek Shelter from the Tumult: A Haiku
In this white-capped wind / a kite can fly a lifetime / never touching earth
poetry
Funeral Procession
On a drizzly morning walk I stopped to let a hearse go by, its pitch-black paint sweating polish, and as I waited for the procession I thought about who profits from tragedy, the business of loss, and who profits no matter what,
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Blank
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.
America on the Brink
On Reading That Some Physicists Posit We Are Living in a Computer Simulation
If life is a lucid dream or some near-perfect computer simulation, do I risk waking up to a world in which I can’t embrace you?
America on the Brink
A Love Sonnet Written on the Occasion of the Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I want to touch what aches in us, the light we guard to stay alive. My dear, come quick. I hear a knock; I’m afraid. Is it you? I dare to open and let hope come through.