The table is set

An imaginary feast prepared

Bottles
emptied into glasses
until gardens go to heads

It’s midnight
when dreamers are lashed from sleep
alone   [Read more…]

Snowmen
scratch through windows
with stick fingers
pluck ornaments from eyes

Break into houses
with broken promises
shovel coal down throats
they can’t swallow
  [Read more…]

I was here
before anyone called me San Diego

Before Cabrillo
named me San Miguel
and declared me a Spanish possession

Before the Kumeyaay and Yuman
found sustenance
along my mountains and shores   [Read more…]

December
and the desert rattles trees
blows open doors
shut

Bends the knees of flags
toward foaming ocean

Fans palms
into flame   [Read more…]

Black Friday crow parks
on top a new SUV

Sliding glass doors slide

A 3000 dollar suit
squawks outside
. flaps sleeves at air   [Read more…]

I don’t remember
the happy couple
pressed together
between two pages of Midwestern prairie

Never heard the words
love wrote inside high school dance cards   [Read more…]

Natural selection
has sealed its indictment
under sheets of melting ice

Rats
quibble over spoiled venison
in headlights   [Read more…]

Before object permanence
awakened memory
the cardboard box
gathered dust in a cupboard
inside our family home

Blunt scissors
were the only tool required
to cut through through
layers of masking tape
and unify parallel universes   [Read more…]

Before
we throw
the white elephant
out of our white house
we should ask ourselves
why we’ve listened to white trash
for so long?

Did we use the white noise
to whiteout
black eyes?   [Read more…]

The emperor
golfs
while Puerto Rico drowns

Behind democracy’s locked door
senators write off tyranny with silence
in order to inflate the pockets
of power brokers
by breaking the working poor   [Read more…]

What do I say to the daughter
I’m leaving underwater?
“Forgive me,
For failing to stop the flood?”

I could tell her how
numbers were valued over words
and poetry lost
ears to mouths
mixing metaphors with facts
for larger figures   [Read more…]

Steel reinforcements
prop up columns
to keep the Forum from falling again

The colosseum
remains a circus
where mobs of plebeians
stab each other with selfie sticks
or throw unfortunate outsiders to lions
dressed in the uniforms of bus drivers
and tour guides   [Read more…]