Outside the Oval Office
I make poems constantly about oddities and offenses in American political practice, how one president sent bombs, jets, and drones for use by a rogue state and its murderous army, …
Poetry
Self Help Words for the Inauguration
The name is vital. Spell it right. If you err, apologize and correct. Then go on as the matter becomes urgent, to speak poems that soar from memory and emotion, rise…
Jimmy Carter
Forbes Jimmy Carter has died, after one hundred years, after healing river blindness, ensuring fair elections, negotiating the release of prisoners, calling out tyranny, assuring that to love your neighbor…
Nothing New Said or Done
The recital called in the name of war and peace did not finish in peace. A late reader from the world of the Open Mic rose up to question the…
Listen
Listen to the doctor, the pediatrician, the head of the children’s hospital in North Gaza. Listen to him mourn his son. Listen to his cries, his wailing. his son killed…
Nyet
No more refugees. No more border- crossers. No more morning after pills. No more right to decide who will decide if I will bear the greatest child in the greatest nation….
Kintsugi by Anoma: Repairing, Rebuilding and Healing a Shattered World
When a delicate object like a glass vase, ceramic bowl or porcelain cup breaks, we throw it away thinking that it is beyond repair. But in the Japanese art of kintsugi, cracks…
Naming the Dead and Disappeared as an Act of Memorialisation
Naming the names of the dead is an important act of memorialisation; for those they leave behind, it is their names that contain their essence. Palestinians in Gaza are writing the names…
Target
I don’t want to be a pessimist, to darken your day, to add a fresh pack of stones to the load you carry. But I cannot help myself, not now,…
On Burial and Punishment
I note the moral equivalence, one punishment for another although I don’t think we can fix history in a flash. Go back to days before October 7th or 8th. But…
Tamilian in Paris
Weekly The restaurant served idly and dosai around the corner from Notre Dame, before the fire, in a perfect union of India and Europe, while at my table a waitress asked…
Poetry and Photography Reveal the North’s War Trauma
Sarath Chandrajeewa’s first impressions of Jaffna came from his father’s stories about the north where he was stationed as a police officer. His father spoke of the friendliness of Jaffna people, their…
Rebirth and Memory Black July, 40 Years Later
It is painful to read how Sri Lankan government ministers rallied their goondas to fan out in neighborhoods looking for Tamil homes marked on voter lists. It is painful to…
Jaffna Today
How to select keys for the door when you know the gatekeeper all too well, when chance and destiny carry the same code words, when love no longer depends on…
Blood Sport of a Man
at her school, it’s not only the muscular jock that makes rape sound like a shaggy-dog story it’s also the averagely built skinny man who camouflages in feminism flexing his wit,…
