poems

 

When Form Reflects Content: On Beauty and Truth

In his elegy “Lenox Hill”, Agha Shahid Ali recounts to his mother on being asked by the universe, “So, how’s the writing?” To this question, he responds, “My mother/ is my poem”. Upon reading this piece, I had never more intensely resonated with a line. Poetry, to me, is the barest, most candid manifestation of […]

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Morning News

When I make breakfast in the morning, I tune in to a YouTube CNN live stream and listen to shiny podiums and hairgel discuss how this breaking news will probably bring about the end of the world, and I slip an extra splenda into my coffee to account for the apocalypse coming after these messages.

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History

Fact: I have five fingers on one hand now but I can remember when your five spider-latched onto mine   to glide over the world with more surface area. Fact: you told me the universe is chronicled in braille but our spider-hands   could decode it without touching. Fact: my vision is foggy still but […]

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Ghazal on a Plane

I find my body lost in flight. My ligaments crumbled and tossed in flight.   Stationed under ventilated breath, I rise; and my buckled waist gathers frost in flight.   Pressure stifles air in this cabin, high, forcing my two lungs criss-crossed in flight.   I gasp storm clouds from pipes underneath; they fill my […]

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Premonition

Last night I dreamt we were hosting a dinner – both of our hands caked with uncooked food and thinning time – I baked bread as the kitchen clock jabbered like an inlaw, and when I reached for the cinammon, the bottle slipped from my hands and fragmentized on the floor.   And when I […]

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Cape Cod Morning – Hopper, 1950

From this angle, it appears a landscape breathes on static glass, oils rouged with expertise careen to match the swaying grass – branches taunt my unscathed knees, pregnant clouds extol my tears –   And I have sat and watched for years. Confined inside a cultured class to study pastelled willow trees and watch the […]

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David’s Poem

I You remember me and my tears rain for the thickets branching under my feet. You remember me and my heaviness presses flowers into paper beneath my shifting weight. Remember my voice and the grove my music wove through to reach you –   Your drums gave heart beat to the forest between us. Percussive […]

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Pyrite

Wriggling between halcyon talons, captured mid-flight, wealth claws at our necks. Observe how the affluence strikes – circling above us to scorn the grime on our skin, retracting its claws to chafe away the filth from our fool’s gold.

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Orange Crayon

If I were placed inside a box of crayons I’d fit between the yellow and the red, a niche for wildfire in my head, an orange scaled to brilliance of dawn – I’d streak across the skies of Vietnam, cast sunset on the mountains up ahead to outline mountaintops with golden thread – ignite their peaks […]

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adrian (ONE ACT PLAY)

SCENE 1 ADRIAN is sitting alone down stage left, playing with a toy truck. MOM is pacing center stage, arguing with her husband, who is not physically present. MOM Okay, I understand. Being different is okay. She’s clearly different. But there’s a difference between being different and being… Don’t put words in my mouth, Michael. […]

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