The Hymns We Used to Sing
We were civilized as we walked.
The food we’d … Read more
Ukraine
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
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
This little slab of horror
This terrible reason to pray
I keep stuffing my prayers
back through the glass
but the war won’t go away.
About the Poem
On a Saturday in April 2022, I … Read more
As Tanks Press Toward Kyiv
(and you gather with family in a restaurant in Philly)
You want to know why
it persists, this curse of the human,
pyromania at the heart’s core,
the dream and … Read more
On Escaping Mariupol
No, they say, it’s not true—
we haven’t been heroes.
The soldiers who stood
our ground have been
shot, their backs to the sea.
Our mission was this: to … Read more
The Direction of Home
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
For the Sake of My Children
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
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
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
The Stratigraphy of War
Blowing soot twists in scrollwork,
over cratered roads,
around splintered edges of a staggering barn.
A windmill rends metal on metal,
screeching above the tenor hum
keening in fence … Read more