Plenty of folks in town had died at all ages and all times of day or night, some gruesome, some passive, and every one of them referred to afterward as having been ‘too good’ or ‘too young’, or on rare occasions both.

GI Joe

1945 

The trucks parade down Constitution Avenue. I have practiced the steely glint in my eye, holding my beak parallel to the horizon regardless of the rumbling engine. On my right rises the august sandstone of the Smithsonian, an institution one might take pride in, except I know the basements are filled with the feathers of vanished birds.

Ksjhe was trying to sleep but the smoke from the fires was everywhere. He went to his computer and tried to appease it by typing fire, fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire into the box. I see you. I see you fire. I smell you fire. I will keep you away by calling your name. You do not need to come any closer because I know who you are.

She’s standing in line at the registration table when she sees him, two writers ahead. Sun-spritzed brown hair, strong hands. A hint of crow’s feet indicating he’s maybe fortysomething. No wedding ring. When he leans over the table to sign a form, she admires his pen, a Montblanc, shiny black with its signature bloom of snow at the top.

In bed with my laptop on Saturday morning, January 21st, 2017, I searched for the livestream of the Women’s March on Washington and clicked open a video window, mindlessly, the way I would flick on a light.

I see myself walking on hard-packed snow, from the fields and towards the river.

In the fall of 1965, my family moved into a small, gray-shingled house in Providence, Rhode Island, whose main distinguishing feature was a bright yellow front door.

A rural road somewhere in the American South or Midwest in a not-too-distant future.

From BLACK, sound of a SIREN, then cop cherries flash.

A teenage girl in a field hockey uniform appears in pinspot. Her name is SLONE.

A digital rendition of Hamlet’s soliloquy “To be or not to be” performed as a contemporary group text chat. 

When an African-American woman submits an unusual piece of original art to a show whose theme is ‘The End of Society as We Know It’ debate ensues between the white arts administrator and the artist.  They navigate a treacherous maze of verbal sparring, populated with racial barbsand personal threats.  The play is a satire on race relations and the role of art in society.

i.

Sit in the nothing. Talk to nothing. Do nothing. See what nothing offers, probably nothing.

A boy asked his mother one night how  it is to survive in a 

country where survival is a furnace & his body like a metal goes

 a meditation on the 

    passing of Thich Nhat Hanh

my fists   concuss    the easter        egg

   juice    beet  lips       of                christ

You were in a wheelbarrow that day

when the wind overturned

trees, trashcans,

and I was being born.

On the modular couch, the fingers splays

against the curve of a collarbone, television

hands clutching bitter hand                               miserable callouses

Not on purpose. She makes the house payment one week and makes the same mortgage payment the next week.

There is a country where my voice

must hold its daily reckoning

and question this allegiance to

A whale appears in the bay

ahead of schedule

and far from the Pacific.