Poems

The Relief ShipShe sits twelve miles offshore and waits for clearance from the port,

The Saint and the SlaughterhouseThey dressed her in linen, the child with the golden throat,Praised the tremor in her hands,called the tremble “devotion,” wroteHer name in hymnal margins,a relic before she could bleed,Saint in the making, a body prepared for their spiritual need.Theytaught her to fold her fears in lace, to harmonize the pain,Kissed her

The Protest SongShe burned her draft card on the steps and raised her fist to the sky,and the photographs ran front page and the editorials asked why,and the veterans watching on the television had a complicated face,because the protesters were right about something they had traced. There is a tension in a country between the

The Political AdHe grew up in a town like yours, he knows what you believe, The political ad and the narrative groove.

The Propaganda PosterHe is pointing from the poster with his finger at the viewer, the propaganda poster, the propaganda poster.

The Narcissist’s ChildIn the blue-lit hush of her unchosen dawn,the flash announced her birth to feeds unknown,A nursery built of branded threads,her earliest memory a staged milestone.He cast her name in sponsored light,immortalized each stumble and each small mistake,Her cries rehearsed behind a parent’s lens—every scraped knee a headline,every smile retake.Approval not a comfort but

The Oil FieldBefore the war there was a map and on the map were lines, the oil field, the oil field.

The Myth of ProgressAncient wires hum beneath fresh concrete—modem’swarble is the dawn hymn of the shrine,A televangelist’s smile sells futureswhile pipes rot in real time.Skyscrapers glimmer,gilding shadows that stretch across hunger and cracked floors,A new tower rises, and so do the numbers of forgottenand ignored.Smokestacks exhale against sapphire screens,the city split—one half applauds, the other

The Light Beneath the FloorboardsThe hallway’s quiet, every frame aligned,Nothing spills past the border of dinnertime.Shefeeds the dog in a house gone numb,He finishes whiskey, words unsaid,damage done.Windows hum a broken chord behind white trim,Neighbors wave, perfect lawns,hiding all within.Questions vanish with the clink of plates,No one asks what “safe” negates.She finds a tooth behind

The Mayor of Gasoline DreamsThe mayor grins beneath the spotlights,hands pressed in prayer behind glassy eyes,Flanked by wives who smile for ransom and bannerswhere the dead don’t rise.He peddles hope in a language minted by marketers,each syllable lacquered in gloss,As smog ghosts drift through city blockswhere mothers count what mercy costs.A thousand ribbon-cuttingsfor a thousand