a living monument of love
At least 21 children are dead in Texas, after severe flash flooding that took local and state officials by surprise. Against this backdrop of tragedy, I keep...
heart-thawed / for a new round of reckonings
Trying to be very deliberate about my media consumption, given that I have to be very nearly indiscriminate about the news. To wit, some recent favourites...
love what is mortal
Every yeareverythingI have ever learned in my lifetimeleads back to this: the firesand the black river of losswhose other side is salvation,whose meaningnone...
The world is full of places
On Friday, a funeral. Today, a family reunion / 90th birthday gathering some four generations deep. In all circumstances, gratitude. For the friends who roll...
to melt into the sun
In Trinidad for a funeral, a set of circumstances that has become increasingly familiar over the years. There was a time when I resisted attending funerals....
our names this country’s wood / for the fire
The joke is that I was once heartbroken enough to invent my own apocalypse. The joke is that I stayed alive long enough to witness a few real ones. The...
thinking what i’m doing / is poetry
Kids these days: Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to...
now I start to understand her love
here’s to the kids who live / in us and never leave
Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly overwhelmed by the ways in which the powerful are cruel and vindictive to those with much less, I turn to acts of...
Not everything that is faced can be changed
Word people are upset, because other people are using “deport” to describe what is happening to US citizens. Words mean things, they say, retreating to form...
a single garment of destiny
Conversations these days depend in part on the most recent dispatch by which folks are targeted or threatened or both. Undertones become overtones the more...
Proof that we learn to live with the unthinkable.
An instinct to repair, to mend, to hunker down, to create comfort, to soothe, to allay and alleviate. Not to withdraw, but to congregate. Not to avoid, but...
until history / rewritten resurrected
If you’re the kind of person who would be accurately described by the phrase “Extremely Online” (derogatory), then you’ve seen the memes about millennials...
No wisdom / given to me by anyone.
On my mind / in my bookmarks: archives, and history, and the difference between art and pasticheanalog photo albums as personal history and community archive...
we wanted never / to dream again,
Small victory: after six weeks, CVS Caremark has deigned to allow me to fill the prescription written by my neurologist for the medication that keeps my...
What is that leaping in your chest?
When everything is too much: eat wontons in Flushing, find solace in tea, appreciate the gift of excellent company. Make marks on paper; play with...
Legalized suspicion of my legitimacy
Mahmoud Khalil was inside a university-owned residence Saturday night near Columbia’s Manhattan campus when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement...
to do good sometime / Accounted dangerous folly
A checklist for 2025: check titers / re-up on shots against mumps, measles, rubellatell people the HPV vaccine a) saves lives b) is recommended for folks...
hope's a reptile waiting for the sun.
Latest addition to the walls: a Sarah Matthews print of an MLK Jr. quote from his speech on “The Other America”. (I do also recommend watching the video of...
Remember you are all people and all people / are you
In yet another hotel room after two days of transit; one of those long flights with intermittent-at-best WiFi that has you wondering what is happening in the...