Adult

Not Now

we challenged you to write about our people who were unjust victims, he said

she knew her dislike of the pleasure of holding onto victimhood

and the image of her … Read more

Our Thoughts and Prayers

The Tec-9 is fast and light, proved itself
at Columbine.
        (our thoughts and prayers are )
The Glock’s another make will do you well:
Red Lake 10, 27 Sandy Hook, … Read more

Blue Angels

Image by Lois Perch Villemaire

Annapolis, MD commissioning week
it’s a tradition of the US Naval Academy
the Blue Angels entertain, show off skills,
an hour of stunt flying along … Read more

United We Fall

The bodies are piling up
again
as past becomes present
again.
A different time,
a different place,
different victims
and survivors

united
by innocence,
by grief
by failure,
failure
to … Read more

Modern Buffalo

the shooter was mapping out the aisles for weeks
too many buffaloes
we watch how they run
on the hooves of previous days, last
week my friend’s daughter graduated from … Read more

Thirty Pieces

Thirty Pieces
the man in midnight colored cassock murmurs
God’s work is done
thirty pieces jingling
he offers a thousand hosannas
to the prophet
a little foul-mouthed and avaricious, but … 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

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

The Generous Stranger

 (For Irpin, Ukraine)

Carried on the back of a generous stranger,
an old woman takes only what she can
hold in her bare hands as they cross
a shaking plank … 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

Where Are They Now

 

In 1967 I hitch-hiked to Belgrade.

My friend and I would take an overnight train

to stay with our Albanian friends

in what is now Kosovo.

Until then we … Read more