Give me weapons of minute destruction

October 6, 2024

Challenged by [gestures broadly at everything]. Sustained by the echo of small joys: gallons of tea shared with a friend; long walks in beautiful places;...

perhaps we do well to live with uncertainty.

September 29, 2024

I am in Trinidad for reasons, some of which required leaving the office on Wednesday at short notice and managing to score the last seat on the flight that...

This is what we have / we do what we can.

September 22, 2024

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Me, I find myself reaching for music, back into the depths of the archives. Sometimes it is soca (touchless),...

i want to talk about respect. / how even the desperate deserve it.

September 15, 2024

If you study international relations, or humanitarian law (which is the law of war and of armed conflict, which may or many not overlap with human rights...

Wake up, people, examine your minds

September 1, 2024

Songs in the key of Independence It's amazing to you I'm sure / We didn't get Independence before This is the voice of the people / The people in the...

I am treacherous with old magic

August 25, 2024

I had forgotten, or suppressed, the particular kind of knowing discomfort — indeed, a whole-body unease — that accompanies seeing women in highly visible...

when we speak we are afraid / our words will not be heard

August 18, 2024

On Friday night I attended the screening of the remastered version of The Spook Who Sat By The Door, which I’d never seen and with which I was only vaguely...

The ice sheets will melt. / Things will get ugly.

August 11, 2024

Most people don’t get to have it all; most people are fighting for just a fraction of what’s left. The people with the biggest share fight hardest to keep...

the time is always now.

August 4, 2024

I knew this week I’d invoke Baldwin; I didn’t know, as I was thinking about which of his lyrical sentences I’d start with, that the one I would keep going...

love that casts a widening pool of light,

July 28, 2024

When you have moved constantly, over decades — cities, states, countries — putting art on walls falls down the priority list. For a combination of reasons,...

even as each moment is an answer.

July 21, 2024

Sometimes you plan to spend an evening in a botanical garden and sometimes instead you are obliged to stare at red and green numbers flashing across a...

do what has to be done, again and again.

July 14, 2024

You do not usually know when you’re living through something that might later be described as a “turning point”. But sometimes, sometimes you do know. At...

What strengthened me, for you was lethal.

July 7, 2024

At some point we each have to navigate the boundary between informed and overwhelmed; to accept that there is a difference between opinion and judgement. I...

Let your laughter fill me like a bell.

June 30, 2024

I have long believed that you rise up or fall down to the level of your best group text. This is not a novel idea; many a reasonable and unreasonable...

I had long hair and it was political.

June 23, 2024

I do not remember when I first realised how annoying I found the phrase “identity politics”, and whether that preceded or was a consequence of realising how...

He hears the hum of a boy’s dream

June 16, 2024

This week, a photo to accompany a poem. a dream. Attribution No car must splash him. No car drive too near to his shadow. This man carries the world’s most...

She was the spring whence arose that irresistible river

June 9, 2024

Even when I was much younger, I did not much enjoy celebrating my own birthdays. Too much direct attention, too much –existential angst. It is perhaps...

I heard the sea and asked, / "What language is that?"

June 2, 2024

If you, like me, appreciate sentences then you might consider subscribing to the Perfect Sentences newsletter, expertly curated by Ingrid Burrington1. I just...

Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey.

May 26, 2024

What do you think will happen? I cannot always tell if this is a mere question or if this is a prayer. Sometimes it is both. Rarely is it neither. All around...

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

May 19, 2024

A rough week for migraines, so shout out to new medications and the ability to pay for them. A Saturday spent in the company of confetti and excellent...

how most / poems to mothers must / begin

May 12, 2024

Mother, I'm tryingto writea poem to you—which is how mostpoems to mothers mustbegin—or, What I've wantedto say, Mother...but weas children of mothers,even...

can’t be known except / in the words of its making,

May 5, 2024

Every day, a deep breath. A considered response. An eyebrow maintained at an appropriate level. So many ways to be arch. The same playbooks, the same...

Come and see the blood in the streets.

April 28, 2024

This week, two poems. The war continues working, day and night.It inspires tyrantsto deliver long speechesawards medals to generalsand themes to poetsit...

the gods / who have changed the sky to fire

April 14, 2024

And she is also running from the godswho have changed the sky to fireand puddled the earth with skin and blood.She is running--my god--to us,10,000 miles...

You must wake up with sorrow.

April 7, 2024

Feeling better than I have in weeks because steroid inhalers work. Only able to get the steroid inhaler since I’m able to afford the out-of-pocket cost of...

your name / is a gift

March 31, 2024

Found poem, inbox:How to keep your media job / Your coupon expires today / You Still Have a Few Hours to Shop / How to Sleep Outside / TRESSPASSERS — Is it...

Let them not say: they did nothing. / We did not-enough.

March 24, 2024

2024, man. I would say we are once again at the point in the cycle where the outrage grifters misrepresent and misdirect for maximum clout and zero...

my ghost is my plus-one tonight.

March 17, 2024

Once you notice something like segregation, or bigotry, or the casual but relentless othering of certain groups, you never really stop. Sure, you can choose...

folks think / they’re saying nothing / when they’re saying the most.

March 10, 2024

Lots of planes this week, several time zones, not a lot of sleep. At the other end of one leg of it, family. Never straightforward, increasingly worthwhile....

Most mornings I would be more or less insane, /

March 3, 2024

Fragments I find myself returning to: At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all...

Slogging, wobbling, / wavering. Atilt / and out-of-sync

February 25, 2024

I’ve been absolutely walloped by whatever cold / flu / lurgy that is going around the city and have spent a majority of the past three days asleep. What I...

Someday / we will learn how to live.

February 18, 2024

Because I had a migraine and because I was busy, I didn't spend any time in the Kindle app reading any of the various books I'm working my way through. That...

the time shortens between where we are and where we are going

February 11, 2024

For a long time now, I've had all my various bits of search history turned off. Every time I go to YouTube it nags me that my "experience" would be improved...

But let’s get this straight. Let’s call a spade a— / Poor choice of words.

February 4, 2024

This year, like most years recently, I made no resolutions. Instead I chose a word and theme: play. So far that has meant: filling up a small sketchbook and...

It was summer all winter. / It was melting 

January 28, 2024

Three friends in hospital in a week is surely three too many, you think, and then you remember the rest of the world. Breathe in, breathe out, be glad it was...

I’ll bite / the feeding hand until I’m fed / and buried.

January 21, 2024

We have reached the part of the US political cycle where presidential candidates start dropping out, but the books are still banned. We have reached the part...

They don’t appear to understand that . . . / If only they would make an effort

January 14, 2024

Someone I respect gave something up, something meaningful that mattered to them, did so quietly. Someone I have no public opinions about gave something up,...

fa / ll / s) /

January 7, 2024

I have been reading about colour, and about texture, and about shape. There are more elements in the formal canon, but these three (and absence, space,...

Here’s tae us. Promises / made to be broken, made to last.

December 31, 2023

There have been many rituals. In Trinidad, pig foot souse at midnight; scotch and coconut water; the kinds of friends you make once, if you’re lucky. In...

we make / our own magic

December 24, 2023

It’s all so messy – pine needles, tinsel, glass balls shattered, peace on earth Dark waiting: we make our own magic — Two Haiku for Advent by Kelly Belmont...

we all become curious

December 17, 2023

I am often thinking about BuzzFeed, about how it published poets and essayists, about how the reporters and editors there would review and recommend and in...

this deletion is / temporary. 

December 10, 2023

It’s raining in New York, and it’s making the kind of steady, reassuring patter that you tell yourself sounds like night rain back home, that version of home...

We have to cross / the river and my strength fails me.

December 3, 2023

In another job, in another time, when I had to be thinking through a policy around bereavement leave, I was reminded of - indeed, once again confronted by -...

circle without end and without God. /

November 26, 2023

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters and the diameter of its effective range — about seven meters. And in it four dead and eleven wounded. And...

How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul

November 19, 2023

When I was growing up, many of the books that were available to me — what would now be called “Middle Grade” — were books by Enid Blyton. I read them all:...

as in a relay race: / the baton never falls

November 12, 2023

Not the peace of a cease-fire, not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb, but rather as in the heart when the excitement is over and you can talk only...

The grieving have only the unknown.

November 5, 2023

I know I’m stressed about everything going on because I am considering a new hobby that I absolutely do not have time for. So instead I have watched several...

Everything is symbolic in / literature.

October 29, 2023

In Trinidad, for the first time since January 2020. On a work call—this was a “working holiday”, as are they all, aren’t they—and I hear the accent of home,...

Speak this because I exist.

October 22, 2023

There is an exercise I practice, or try to. It begins, what is the most useful thing I can be doing right now? It continues, to whom can I be useful (because...

make way for / those who know little.

October 15, 2023

After every warsomeone has to clean up.Things won’tstraighten themselves up, after all.Someone has to push the rubbleto the side of the road,so the corpse-...