Poetry at 50, in the US, as a woman [white], 2021, during a pandemic, in a glorious & painful spring, a flash poem, in four parts

1. Our flags always fly at half-mast now.Wide and unhealed wounds on high for the world to seeflap dripping loss and pus rains down into the public square. Below themwhite men, whips still in handand a few hard-yoked women, their heads downplodding alongfacing only...

Life 101

i. see her there that wide open tree out my window the one with gray arm branches, no leaves, and peeling bark? holding divine moss in perfectly twisted hands? the one that all the flickers love? I am breaking, she says, just breaking. ii. Here in this valley between...

Refugees

Since the inauguration two weeks ago, I’ve been having nightmares. I was too freaked out to share them, until I read Sherman Alexie’s new poem Autopsy about his dream that his passport was bleeding. Thank you, master poet. For sharing your pain. I woke up...