a poem about betraying your country and being loyal only to love — Inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night Come, my beautiful comrade, compassionate compatriot and only friend. It’s time for the fire again. Come, let’s burn our stupid blue passports Let’s burn that beautiful flag they wave in front of our eyes, so we can’t see who dies. Let’s burn down that…

We should remember Sophie Scholl — If I could be like anything — (in shape and form and functioning) I should be like The White Roses. Knowing surely there would be a day, they’d all be picked and plucked and pulled away. Still stubbornly growing. (bigger, bolder, braver, ever outward toward the sun) Petals undone. Seeds…

Uvalde should break us. Make us tear hair. Make us scream in the street. A kid shot and killed A child filled full of bullets A daughter lost all her blood A son slaughtered screaming A niece erased from the earth A nephew pumped with lead and holes A 9-year-old…

a poem about enjoying life before you know where it lands — One Hundred Days of Gratitude. Fifty. As uncomfortable as it is — at least we don’t have proof that the cat is dead and alone in a box. Frozen there in frozen air, even if after, they crash and crumple into hard ice and soft snow as bulbs flash and…

a poem about something some writers have in common — One Hundred Days of Gratitude. Forty-eight. Nine or ten or maybe a baby thirteen a brother breaks glass a sister starts to scream just couldn’t bear the burden of being locked outside only able to look in front door glass a little too thin so knuckles still covered in a constellation of little sliver scars…

A poem New Yorker you would never understand — One Hundred Days of Gratitude. Forty-six. South Texas summer South Texas sweat South Texas god how am I not done yet? salt vs eyes sun vs skin man vs his own machine (again) the entirety of plant evolution vs trying to keep the grass green and the yard raked and edges clean…