a poem paying Paris her due — One Hundred Days of Gratitude. Forty. Oui, right. Right outside of Paris there’s a place that’s not quite, euh on the same level of living. A place with a less euh, sophisticated style and a less mmm perfect face. A place, called “how do you say… Everywhere Else” Bring the…

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…

a poem about potential for triumph and/or death — Still a boyish bubbled thirty-three Alex woke up pretty late, completely and pretty still, doing pretty great underneath mother Macedonia’s Vergina Sun and brightburning sky undisturbed, not that much world at stake. not that much on his golden plate — armor, around here — somewhere he swears, someday — he’ll own all of everything. At least that’s what Mom said. If he could just manage to escape his grand canopy bed. Just 33, he’d be Emperor, God, Alexander the Great Alex the already dead.

A poem praising the unsung Romani rebellion of Auschwitz — CW: Holocaust, Genocide, Ethnic Slurs When the surviving Roma realized, that their grey demons had decided the Porajmos, (the destruction) (the devouring) their final time, had come, that their blood (their families’) (their children’s) would run down a well-maintained Zyklon shower drain — . . . When the “other” prisoners…

a poem about dismantling a monument to my sadness There it is and I’m still sorry it’s there, on the highest hill owning everything it sees of me, Sad, not just because it’s been there since we let ourselves remember, at least. The most. …

a poem about our nights — At night, and during the day but at night. We tell ourselves we don’t miss her. We’re just lonely. The proof is in just how far she’s gone, since she moved on and on. So instead of her we say we need curves’ caresses. Instead of that soft voice in the night, another woman’s whisper sounds alright We know it’s true. We know. It’s true. Look at all of you. Just sometimes still, almost asleep, it almost sounds

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…