After
This place was lovely.
Now gashed and torn; inside out.
Rich with potential.
Sallie lived up to the hype–
the rumor at gallop she might,
suspended mid-canter,
backlit by lantern,
glinting silver, leap into flight.
Hope without help
without heart
without heft big or small
transparent
fleeting as a whisper
From the heart
to the hand, the help, ever so small
sparks for reaction –
one enough to light a fire
that spreads to Hope
We’re going to have our first
felon president.
(and fuck you, autocorrect.
I’m not capitalizing
that word
when we’re talking about him.)
We’re going to have our first felon president
but only because he’s white
and rich.
No black man convicted of a crime
will have a chance at that office
for at least a hundred years.
We’re going to have our first felon president
before our first female President.
We’re going to have our first felon president
before our first gay or lesbian President,
before our first trans President,
way before our first Native American President
(because what wisdom could the original
keepers of this land
possibly have to share, right?).
Thirty four convictions (so far).
No one in their right mind
would endorse a candidate
with thirty-four convictions.
the republican party
is not in its right mind.
It is addicted to power
and to imposing the will
and the myopic “morality”
of the few
on the bodies of the many.
Didn’t we leave Europe to escape
this exact type of tyranny?
Why do people who lied
in their confirmation hearings
get to keep their seat on the “supreme” court?
When did freedom of religion become
freedom for christians only?
When did Jesus become a wealthy, white,
racist nationalist,
more a child of Satan
than the son of God?
Why do churches all over this nation
endorse a candidate
so obviously devoid of Jesus’s love?
Not because he worships their god.
(He doesn’t).
Not because he is Christ-like.
(He isn’t.)
But because he hates the same people they hate.
(Jesus never said to hate anyone.)
These christians in name only
think they are going to bring Heaven to earth.
Instead, they are creating a Hell for all of us.
(And I hope they are the first to burn
in its hateful flames.)
We’re going to have our first felon president.
And probably several more as well.
But don’t worry, America.
They’ll make that illegal
before any person of color
gets close to
holding that office
again.
We wouldn’t want any “real” criminals
in the white House.
We’re going to have our fist felon president,
our last president ever,
and our first dictator
and self-appointed emperor
all in one.
We’re going to have our first
LGBTQ+ holocaust.
(Gotta kill off all those pesky queer children,
you know.)
We may well have our second civil war,
our second revolution,
even our
third world war.
But no matter who wins,
America has already lost.
between the wood so elegantly slow
I liked how the water would flow,
built by the beavers so brilliantly so
the damn created a rhythmic type of control,
producing a soft tinkling or babbling hello
I observed the birds flying between the two trees, landing gracefully to rustle the leaves
amplified by the swiftness of the breeze
I heard the buzzing of the honey being created by bees
I heard the jug-o-rum of the bullfrog loud and clear;
funny how it all sounded like a whisper last year
Through the evening fog,
the faint flutter of a French horn
heralds an announcement from
the arc angel, Gabriel. His
music seeps into my soul
as I await his words. “Where
have the prophets gone?” he asks.
I weep. All assassinted, left lying
in the street; their words trickled
into the trenches of the parched earth,
dying from constnt mayhem.
Hold fast to the words of your poets
lest they too should disappear.”
A brilliant star appears in the East,
a sign of prophetic truth.
who lived in a shoe
box of a cramped white house
next door with her two overgrown
adult sons and their duo of dogs.
Her stringy black hair and witch’s warts
greeted my sister and I when we rang
that doorbell, throats clogged
by jumpy hearts, each Halloween.
One year we didn’t say trick or treat
fast enough, so she gave us a silent death
glare and closed the door.
When it reopened a moment later
to a cacophony of barks and a wicked
wheeze of laughter, we nervously coughed
up the magic words, watched her drop
chocolate bars in our buckets, and mumbled
our thank yous before she could change
her mind. Then we whirled and ran like ghosts
howled at our heels toward the weeping
willow in our own front yard, praying
its branches were long enough to sweep
us, like a broom, back to safety.
For Liz and Willa
Oh! My sweet pioneer.
That road stretched out in front of you
gives me the most boring shivers,
induces a mediocre sense of dread.
I’ve driven it.
I’ve seen the way the sky and the land
smoosh together all homogenized.
Makes me uncomfortable the way people shudder
and cringe at a cluster of holes.
Only trypophobia is such an exciting word.
I can’t stand the flat land.
It scares me.
Pen me in to a holler and leave me be.
I crave dramatic demarcation,
green foothills and pink wisps of dogwood
rooted up against white cumulofluff,
atmosphere so clear and glowing blue
you could never make a dress to match it.
We are all alike, didn’t the author say?
But ain’t every sky the same.
