shielded from torrential downpour I count each privilege
in the rain the mailman with the bad knee runs up our
stairs to deliver corporate marketing I sit in my
comfort watching heavy mist float float off the parked
cars and wonder as the sidewalk’s sea level
rises is this a flash flood? then it lets up when it
resumes intensity I wonder if this is hurricane weather
this is Pittsburgh this is no hurricane though Laura
makes her journey up the Gulf Coast another storm in
a sky of storms I observe seemingly unlimited
(originally published in Poetica, Spring 2024)
privilege
When I Say I Love All Animals I Mean From Inside
Kingsford
drinks from
furry pond
beside the catmansion
and I am ashamed–
little vestibule of living
as are we all this
needy, then,
these walls
the fringe
of
what we say is
is
what
we shoo away
(originally published in The Headlight Review, Spring 2020)
Guacamole
We walked through Giant Eagle hungry
as hell after work wondering what
we could afford to eat. Mom left avocados
just past ripe at our house on her way to
Myrtle Beach and we knew we had to cut
their soft skins tonight or never. Food is no
good in the garbage. Privilege has steeped
itself into me in ways I am not proud of. We
want what we want which sometimes means
we want beyond our means. We use one
checking account to deposit our tips and
want to eat out if we can’t eat chips with dip
at the moment but stop ourselves to remember
we have free food, and at the moment it’s true.
The stomach also wants what the heart wants,
to be fed like an ATM– someone’s unlimited
money.
(originally published in Pomona Valley Review, Summer 2019)
Complicit
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)