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.
poetry
126 posts
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...
Certitude
Forgetting
Why can I not forget when forgetting is the cure? The warm, wet beach hisses and coos, but her allure Belongs to those who want to rest. I do not want to rest. “Listen to your doctor,” they say. “You are but human! You can’t go on like this!”
poetry
Insanity: A Sonnet
I’m insane, or at least not well, my brain A flooded grave, the coffin cracked by roots From a forest overgrown…she has slain The dead once again, and from me no fruits
America on the Brink
A More Perfect Union
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.
poetry
The Bottom Line
“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.”
poetry
Self-Immolation: Fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame
“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.
America on the Brink
In Whose Custody the Flags?
The flags are at full-staff Though Jackeline is dead Of dehydration And the Guatemalan boy whose name Has not been released Is dead Of the flu—
America on the Brink
What One Gives Up
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