poetry
The Broom
He was dying and I didn’t know it. He was dying and the tests were inconclusive. He was dying and I changed his diet. He was dying and he couldn’t tell me.
poetry
138 posts
poetry
Ode to the Not-Here
Love, before loss, is an ode to here: the softness of shampooed fur, the quickening of a thousand nerve endings in each fingertip each time you pet him, the scratch of paws running to greet you.
Be The Change
Leaves of Grass
I abhor the grass, the leaves that turn to blades under the whetstone of heat, the worms, blind and desperate and slippery, that wriggle forth in the wet, the sucking of mud on bare feet...
Be The Change
What AI Still Can't Do
Write a poem that drops me to my knees. Strike me square in the face with a fist of birdsong. Torture me to orgasm with silk.
Be The Change
Picnic, America, 2025
Wrapped in moss like a layer of new skin over a third-degree burn, the hills invite us for a picnic. Rain has washed out the stains..
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...
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