Archives: Poems
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Rally in Georgia: 2003
In my town square 250 gather in a Southern chill to chant that war is not the answer. They speak out to the statues and the few brave wrens. In the state capitol troops mass for the rebel flag, for the old dead and grassed over battlefields.
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Blackout Days in Albany
The last time war made me this afraid I was drinking Earl Grey tea in Mary’s kitchen from Belleek cups with matching saucers. Giving up Peets coffee and network news for the duration. Living one town over from Berkeley in an overgrown rental, cracked window out to a shuttered street where the old ones played…
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Median
Along the Appalachian foothills highway sallow leaves drift. On the median, banks of yellow flowers late in the season. Today flags and bunting will drape the chain link fences and cracked windows. The red Jesus Heals fliers will litter the downtown streets, like everyday, like the smell of ash in alleys. Somehow I believe the…
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On King George Street: Jerusalem, March 2002
The plants we cannot protect will be hurt the most, the Master Gardener warned. Saucer magnolias, Japanese magnolias. Their buds brown mush, blooms stillborn. Too high up to cover with black plastic, too exposed. The first to feel the icy blast, the late March freeze that comes up despite the calendar and leaves before dawn.…