FEATURED POEMS

Current featured poems focus on my response to the current political climate.

I'm tremendously grateful to James Penha at New Verse News, and Bryan Borland at Sibling Rivalry Press for giving these poems a home.

White Men Writing Race

A liberal is someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.

- James Baldwin

There is a wise white woman in

my life, counting dead black people.

They break her pulse, her heart.

That’s real. She etches names

into a journal, copper markers

in her garden. She says, “Feel

like maybe it’s someone else’s

story, and I should stick to dandelions.”

Blowball fruits blown into air,

an untenable lawn. High flying

single seeds. Everything about this

poem tells me, Get out of the way.

First Publication: New Verse News September 23, 2017

Censor Approaching

The thrown switch of the state

approaching silence

on my tongue font size

letters measured by a ruler

Drugged by a phone

flag-gagged on the news-reel

tight threads of fish line

tourniquet my dry pen

Speaking volumes in 140 character

fragments the censor’s tweets

sparse My left hand curly

over erasure

pinkie skin unstained

Tied strapped I scribble

Out of laminate black the desktop grows

a wired chair rocks