As Greg Stillson awoke one morning from frightful dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a Trump supporter.

The usual hangover headache of drowsiness and fog, his pre-coffee brain was gone, replaced now with a crystalline certainty about the world. Where previously much had been shrouded in mystery and doubt, now, he felt only a morose calmness. He knew the grand conspiracy of deep state design. He knew vaccines were evil instruments of the Devil. He knew global climate change was a hoax. And most importantly, he knew Donald Trump was sent by God to lead his chosen…

Yesterday, President Joe Biden gave his first State of the Union address, summing up the achievements of his initial hundred days occupying office, and attempting to set the stage for what he hopes to accomplish with the rest of his administration’s first term. He spoke repeatedly about action, calling for Democrats to pass legislation with a sense of urgency, perhaps fearing that their majority seat holdings will not last through the mid-term elections coming in the next two years.

While he called for unity and bi-partisanship, it was abundantly clear that Republicans were not hearing the same speech. Points that…

Fiesta corrida

~after Hemingway

Every day it’s the running of the bulls
and every day it’s a fiesta,
alternating sips of absinthe,
brandy, and beer,
tastes of licorice, caramel, and malt,
our bodies just gaseous
place holders for want
for something else,
something beyond these moments.

Let’s go to Paris,
let’s go to Madrid, to every land
in between, where the world
trundles forward
like a train on a track without end
and the people act unaware
of even being onboard,

where the sky opens itself like the bare back of a bather, where the mountains and the clouds rest…

After the Guilty Verdict

I’m the wrong poet
to speculate on relief
since my experience
doesn’t match the myriad
of those who couldn’t breathe.

I’m just another American
pledging my allegiance
to the optimism of change,
every star knitted to that midnight
feeling now like something fallen,

something once hopeful
that somehow became wishes
lost and unfulfilled,
the country that could have been,
the country we still are

trying to become,
slouching toward a horizon
that continues to feel unreachable.
One act of justice
doesn’t erase two hundred years,

just as one act of murder shouldn’t erase the progress of…

Police and their role in society is a hot-button issue. It seems every day there is a new reason to be outraged about police brutality or a police shooting. Right now in America, I can think of no profession that is under more heat and scrutiny of public hatred than that of the police.

It seems to be by design. The media narrative surrounding police incidents has been getting progressively more targeted and one-sided, seemingly intent on painting the national police force as the enemy of its citizens, and especially the enemy of its minority citizens. These stories have propelled…

I used to never get headaches. I’ve gone basically the entirety of my 42 years on planet Earth without this affliction that affects so many others on a routine basis, and for that I have been lucky. Yes, occasionally I’ve had a headache brought on by the obvious causes: lack of caffeine, hangovers, over-exertion during hot summer days. And when I was younger, I would sometimes get migraines due to my horrible vision.

But these were all fairly rare occurrences, and easily diagnosed and treated. Until recently. Now, I am suffering through headaches on a daily basis. My brain and…

A philosophy professor at Portland State University, Peter Boghossian, went viral this week when he posed an old ethics question to his 124k followers on Twitter. He simply asked, “If the Louvre were burning and you could only save the Mona Lisa, or an old dog, which would you save?”

The tweet utilized the polling option and allowed people to vote on the issue. While not entirely surprising, the results still showed how wildly different people viewed this scenario through their own lenses of morality and estimations of value regarding the preservation of history and the transience of experience. …

~after Jane Austen

When a woman is successful
she’s never in want
of a husband.

Her nerves, like old friends,
hold an elegance
of misfortune.

What is marriage
but a contest of wills, a wager
who can outlive the other?

The societal frills
have blown ragged
as wedding veils

tied to cannibal crosses
like cancer ribbons,
yet teacups are still held

just so, pinky extended.
It’s men
crying to be cut down now,

and one word
silences them forever —
empowerment.

When a woman is successful
she recites her vows
to the hammer,

prayer like flecks of glass caught on…