I don’t know how to help.
I have been in my house,
mouth shut, for months
and months and
when I speak, it is the wrong
thing, so I apologize
for everything. Mostly I am sorry
I didn’t burn the station
first.
(originally published in Subterranean Blue Poetry, Fall 2020)
Burn it all down: big cities, small
towns. Fire trucks blaring a foghorn
rocking the moon. Minced leaves,
mannequins at Liberty Avenue
storefronts, prone to flame. I am
content to walk the ashes aimless
as the night, but to settle down,
forgetting the tinder of the world–
I lay for tenderness to cover
me, a soft blanket of smoke.
(originally published in Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Winter 2023)
of walking down the street at night, red
and blue sirens wailing past, and people
being shot in front of me, their bodies
dragged across the sidewalk
out of view.
Maybe because I’ve binged
The Handmaid’s Tale
or work too much (stress
the swan song we stay singing).
Whatever the cause,
I live
in America, America,
America.
(originally published in Good Cop / Bad Cop: An Anthology (FlowerSong Press), Summer 2021)
I’m privileged to sit in my home on a sunny day
with just a headache
in late May two thousand twenty. God I feel
plenty guilty. My friends
are linking hands in the street and I am scared
of all that’s viral. Oh what has lingered
in the air since, yes, America.
I have wept with internet videos
in my shadowed home,
never gassed
standing up for what is right.
You say protests are only one part of the revolution. We can’t
just go out there and put ourselves and others in danger.
How does that help the cause?
I am donating fucking money
waiting
for unemployment to salvage
fruit. I can’t say no
to a food bank donation. To
the Freedom Fund. Reclaim the Block.
Justice for Ahmaud, Breonna… If I am not
downtown with my people
burning businesses of bigots
take all my worthless fucking money
and light the biggest fire
possible
(originally published in FlowerSong Press, Summer 2020)
Planes have stopped searching the sky for answers
as the crowd gathers into the terminal, fists up.
For once, we are made of metal– wings to give
the silenced flight. We mobilize on the ground
with footsteps of thunder, voices of titanium.
In rising, we promise to fly, scan the landscape
for green landings. Drop the ladders down,
worry about the pressure– not the altitude.
(originally published in Urtica Lit Blog, Summer 2019)
I have been trying to cough up the bald eagle
lodged in my heart, but only feathers have landed
wet on this dirt. I love this country, but this is too white
for me to say. Too long have I been silent in privilege
while our nation’s darkest forces– white-winged
and fire-breathing– cast their manifest, the harming
kind of loudness. There is no one in my life who
admits agreement with white supremacy, but I also
know there must be– and if silence is complicity,
I must be no longer. So I cough out the beak, the flag,
the gun whose silent bullets I have already fired.
I am so sorry for the silence–
everyone I haven’t known I have hurt.
(originally published in Rise Up Review, Winter 2018)