Published in the literary journal The RavensPerch.

For the three activists abducted and murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in June 1964, during the Civil Rights Movement.

Celebrate this day as solstice,
the beginning of sunshine summer
that brings life to this tourist town
long bright days

lengthening into sunsets,
the smell of suntan oil and frying food
but the sun always sets,

Published in literary journal The RavensPerch.

The man in the seat ahead is impatient.
Not fast enough, he says.
The wrong brand of Scotch.
The flight attendant keeps smiling,
even though she’s been up
eighteen hours, hearing him complain
for the past five.

Published in literary journal The RavensPerch.

My mother (dying of cancer, smoking
until her last breath), angry
about research dollars: those people
don’t deserve it. They brought
this on themselves. She never saw

the irony.

Published in literary journal The RavensPerch.

For Anita Hill, who did her best.

You remember the film where the man played a trick
on the woman’s mind? He hid her keys

over and over until she believed in her own insanity
rather than his cruelty—an easy thing to do.

Published in literary journal ZINDaily.

There was another suicide yesterday
on the beach, by the sea: the dunes behind him, the ocean in front,
on the second day of April.

Published in literary journal ZINDaily.

My aunt died in a cellar under the old City Hall.
I don’t know how she’d come to be there

or what exactly they did to her: there were rumors
but by the time I was born they were almost

all dead, the ones who could have told me.

This poem won the Outermost Poetry Contest judged by Marge Piercy.

The planes flew into Manhattan and the white people asked,

why us?
We thought we were safe.
Living in the luxury of that delusion, we baked Disneyland cakes
and God wore the red, white, and blue; our anger when proven wrong
was so immense it engulfed