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
29 posts
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.
America on the Brink
Helium
The last thing he saw was the joy in her eyes. Back home the flowers have wilted and the balloon, twisting slowly in the now-stale air, sinks lower and lower to the ground.
America on the Brink
Manumission
I so want to be optimistic and airy, to write of our generous spirit, to wax poetic about moon landings and beach landings, entrepreneurship, sliced bread, the assembly line, the World Wide Web. It feels un-American
America on the Brink
Self-Made Man
I hire the police that protect my home from the hordes that would tax me: I need nothing from the State, and so give nothing to the State.
America on the Brink
On Doing Good in America
“How does one with no boots pull himself up by his bootstraps?” “Why teach someone to fish then deny them access to the lake?”
America on the Brink
Daydreaming on a Saturday Afternoon in May During a Pandemic
I just read that the virus is mutating, anti-vaxxers are joining other unsavory elements to protest public health measures, the president doesn’t see the need for mass testing but is now getting tested daily...
America on the Brink
Will We Stand for This?
I want to rest on the shore until the urchins break skin and the salt seeps in.
America on the Brink
Waiting in Line to Donate Blood After A Mass Shooting
This is where we come together, not before but after: The blood already drained, we refill it; we never lack for blood to give.
America on the Brink
Reichstag
It doesn't matter who lit the flame that burned the Reichstag down, only that it burned and so few considered what cremation means to those who long for proper burial.
America on the Brink
The Machinery of the State
A relentless South Texas wind poses impossible questions, / flaps the smirking flags until they are upturned, / mists the mown grass with evil's sputum...
America on the Brink
The Frantic Invisible Night
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...