No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. Celebrating Diversity Since 2015
To be born in a paradise of green
Rich crops in fields protected by scarecrows
Amidst trees, flowers and endless hedgerows
Below hilltops that overlook the scene
Stretching far across an idyllic dream.
Is to know, that urban longing follows
To escape from rural woodland hollows
Towards the big city’s magnetic gleam.
Normally, getting out of bed in the morning feels like oppression. Sleep beckons, I go and earn wages, and the news is filled with political lies and reports of casualties from bombings. Men make me feel objectified and my clothes don’t fit right, but yesterday, something strange happened.
The most venerable and old world thing your family can be in New York City is Dutch. They were the founders of the city and one third of the city flag is orange, in honor of the House of Orange.
Jimmy Carter looked green
as he delivered his last state
of the union. Of course, everyone
did on the old Magnavox for ten
Death surrounds me – a massacre of grandparents, fathers and mothers, friends, childhood playmates, aunts, uncles and cousins and pets. They die in car accidents, of heart failure, of cancer, of bad luck and worse luck.
The lot next to his house looked like a dinosaur dig when Eli got home from school that afternoon. Men in yellow uniforms scoured the strata of ash, pulling out copper ribs and ceramic skulls of toilet bowls. A fire truck was parked on his front lawn, muddy water draining into the street. When he first saw the trucks, he thought they must have caught another gang of teenagers sneaking into the abandoned house. Then he smelled the smoke. He saw the sun glaring chartreuse through the clouds and remembered what firemen were really for.