Society

World Cup Winner (noun)

“The worst injury is feeling you don’t belong so much
to you —”
– Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

Lift trophy, receive:
kiss. Synonym for power
lorded over women’s … Read more

Rights

Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A Response to Article 282 Extremism Criminal Code of the Russian Federation

(after a translation by ChatGPT)

I am Igor Girkin. I am in … Read more

What Peter Nero Said

We shall play ‘Tea for Two’ – my right hand will be playing ‘Tea for Two’ while my left hand will play Tchaikovsky’s Fifth.

Maybe Nero was right about our … Read more

Melt

The summer solstice is still within counting striking distance, but both the dice and the mice have given up. There’s no point in trying for a cool pair of eights. … Read more

Jеnin

Image by Raneen Sawafta/Reuters

Jenin, a place of chaos and cries,
Of shattеrеd windows and broken skies.
As bombs explode and bullets fly,
Innocеnt livеs arе forced to die.

The … Read more

Up Early

No sooner have the finches
arrived at the feeders
than morning news breaks out of
the television screen
and an accounting begins of the overnight
shootings from Mesa (three dead,… Read more

Space

A grapefruit-sized meteorite
crashed through the ceiling of a bedroom
in a New Jersey home, and people are barely
talking about the circumstances of the intrusion.

Maybe there are too … Read more

Explosion

How to describe history’s grotesque
face, still half-hidden under a mask
of deceit. In some countries, hide
and seek is not a game.
In some homes, the bodies curled inside … Read more

The Crowning

The afternoon moves at the stop-start-stop
again pace of the mail van
with its messages from long-lost friends
and freshly minted bills to answer
by the next hundred-degree day
which, … Read more

Don’t Take my World

Today I walked familiar streets,
stood where avenues cross,
where people meet.
I smiled at a lady with a toddler in hand,
bought a pretzel at the corner stand,
saw … Read more

A Week of Shootings

The black kid who rang the wrong doorbell
expecting his siblings is recovering at home.

The white teenage cheerleaders fled
after one climbed in a mistaken car.
One was treated … Read more

On Lies Many Shapes

My 4th-grade math teacher would categorize lies by shape and weight. Headaches on test days were triangles (angles acute and obtuse). Bruised knees and hallway trips were trapezoids (competing sides, … Read more

Terror

terror in innocent daycare eyes
terror in insolent teenage lies
terror in all our daily plans
terror in all Americans
terror in parks where children play
terror by night
terror … Read more

Got Your Goat

The 4-H program, Shasta County Fair
has reaped a world of trouble we just read.
A little girl asked them her goat to spare
but no, authorities wanted it dead.… Read more