In today’s news, no thoughts and prayers needed to be sent; no hashtags had to be given out like insufficient band-aids for lacerations. In today’s news no mothers’ cries were heard; no broken storefront glass symphonies fell to ground, through a burning atmosphere of frustration, like trampled stars beneath the anger of protesting feet. … Continue reading
3 Haiku for The End of Spring Break (NaPoWriMo ’21)
(i) Electric chimes fall. Loudness shatters dark stillness. All dreams disappear. (ii) Morning drive: eye contact through cold, closed windows; all of us dragged to work. (iii) Lukewarm, aroma: final sips of coffee as school bell fills the room.
The Truth About Quicksand (NaPoWriMo ’21)
168 hours feels as long and wide as the echoes of vacant school hallways, but that is an untruth. 168 hours appear infinite, like the inferred forever indicated by the arrows at the opposing ends of a number line, but that is another lie. 168 hours is a week built on the quicksand of promises … Continue reading
Vaccine (NaPoWriMo ’21)
The world is full, and sick with faces of varying hues shielded by masks, or hidden behind dams of praying hands put together in futile hopes of holding back the tearful fears of a virus named Us; the variant strains are the various pains with which we infect ourselves; coughs of apathy spread cold fevers … Continue reading
3 Haiku for a Spring Storm (NaPoWriMo ’21)
(i) Sudden gusts. Blossoms torn from trees as branches bend backwards, near breaking. (ii) Looking through raindrops on windows. The real world seen: Bloated. Upside down. (iii) Wrapped around thick grey clouds: two thin rainbows. Two gifts: One for each of us.
The Enslaved who never made it to Spoon River (NaPoWriMo ’21– Prompt 8)
My name is an anchor of forgotten syllables buried within the hollows of stolen bones which sank into the dark, salted deep— leagues beneath the onslaught of Trans-Atlantic tides; I am the cast aside; the collective unwritten words on history’s pages, but you know me; then and now. I rain upon your cities, a stinging … Continue reading
For Mamie Till (NaPoWriMo ’21– Prompt 7)
Because She decided to show America’s hatred on her son’s dead face, don’t show us footage of Black death.
3 Haiku for a Tuesday (NaPoWriMo ’21)
(i) Sore arms; heavy legs drag through the morning; waking up a day older. (ii) First lawn mowing: grass cut into confetti; the smell of green on skin. (iii) Six-year-old fingers sketch rainbow chalk artwork on twilight cracked sidewalks.
Spring (NaPoWriMo ’21: Prompt 5– after Jill Alexander Essbaum’s “Easter”)
Marquee (NaPoWriMo ’21: Prompt 4 courtesy of @SpaceLiminalBot)
At the abandoned threshold of a neighborhood waiting, but not asking, to be saved, walls of weather stained wood too stubborn to succumb to the crumbling entropy of creased concrete and the stagnant shallows of upward staring rain pools that reflect the overcast canvas of a neglected sky and a marquee: letters imperfect in arrangement, … Continue reading
