Ukraine

Take heart

Ukraine! Your flag of cerulean blue
and sun-gold says sky’s the place
where the improbable reigns: clouds
and things with wings. Who’d have
imagined such a fertile
thirst as sky?… Read more

The Polish Border

Your baby
looks like our baby bundled into her pink snowsuit.
Yours is zipped into a snowsuit with flowers.
You hold her up to the Red Cross worker.
The international … Read more

The Hunger Of War

Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-piece-of-paper-with-an-anti-war-message-11302918/

They’re piling up
or splayed out
on streets
body after body
civilians
unarmed
or ill-advisedly
armed
in haste
and heroism
their meat is needed
to feed the hunger.… Read more

The Direction of Home

 

Photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

The snow remembers once it was fruit,
steps taken in the direction of home,

stems poked out, embedded ice homed
in a … Read more

Picture Window

 

March wind shudders
against the glass, shattering
sun and shadows of leaves
into moving mosaics on the wood floor.
Outside, the morning breaks,
almost too bright to bear.
It’s Monday. … Read more

J’accuse

after Émile Zola

To the world at large,

I am an American Jew whose grandmother escaped to this country
fleeing the pogroms fomented and fostered by Putin’s forebearers from
what … Read more

For the Sake of My Children

 

Painting “For the Sake of My Children” by Lana Matskiv

Ripped from our land,
veins and arteries exposed.
My man must remain,
defend the homeland.

There’s a hole in … Read more

Endurance in March 2022

 

endurance
    jaw-dropping

frigid… stunned
    crushed

escaping

against
    all… odds

remarkably

international treaty
    disturbed

man’s will
    to survive

About the Poem

I don’t know if it’s an accepted poetic form to … Read more

Performance Art

 

Artwork: istockphoto by Getty Images in public domain

He’s the last man standing.
Whether comedian
or statesman
performance is all
for the last man standing.
Standing in the rubble … Read more

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

 

Image: A woman is visible through the condensation on a window of an evacuation train at Kyiv central train station. by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images

A blast, shattered… Read more

SEASON OF LENT DURING WARTIME

 

Ukrainian churches are shelters
for the traumatized during Lent 2022.
As neighborhoods are bombed
to rubble, clergy welcome
households to precarious safety,
saviors fulfilling more than liturgical roles.

Fasting … Read more