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I've moved over to here now: https://specimensdays.substack.com/

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For Abdul Rahim Ahmed Abdul Rahim Awad, Age 0

  Often there is bone-trill in me When birds of prey near. Their wings Displacing air, the sound dopplered & trailing. Yesterday an eagle eight feet Over trail, apparition in heavy Cloud appertaining to pinnacle & peak. Briefly, a bolt of fear, shock Of my smallness. A landscape redolent With varied lives reduces yours Unto pinpoint, unto what I’d thought Of as almost disappearance. But That is the province of man. What is cyclical, Spurred by fecundity & churn, what Bears out the elemental, is beyond us.  Our deaths at each other’s hands A mockery of the world’s need & hunger.  We craft lives in which your name Erases with your small body. In which The elemental cedes to flimsy  Inventories of meaning. Maybe yours Is a name iterative of its import, Abdul. Maybe repeated in its repeating The intransigence of life coupled  With world, with world-awe, meaning Preceding all naming. May it, wordless,  Sing your name this morning. 
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Eulogy

This one, dear reader, is long & sad & about my Pops who died. Been thinking on him lately, so here it is. I think probably I'll keep adding onto this one for as long as I'm alive-- a letter I'll keep writing. I feel like it has a filament of life in it. Anyways. Buckle up.    Eulogy I remember thinking Unsieved, maybe, a glottal Clarity in my throat. Chest Laden, a dizzied breath &  Undone. My father Leaning against the doorframe A brief music for darkness To clutch, winged, absented. Where did you go? I am Still moving, tree to tree, trading One constellation for another. I want A longer breath & so take one but am left Unchanged. The day Expands. Clumped soil, cutlass of river Says bank & cuts & says bank again & all The long while, bare & clear, river carries water & water carries refracted light, fractured light, Shard of disfigured sun. It sings your song These many miles away. Carries its broken Melodies to the Bering Sea. What m...
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Poem for Alaa Abd Al-Neizi

  What could I tell you about War? All the reaching after Metaphors, yoking a bomb strike Into likeness with a splinter. Yours  Is the graver palette. Hail of drone Fire, an earth swallowing its earth.  I will never know you. I will tell You once I thought art should only be About beauty. It is only About loss, though, isn’t it?   Eulogies meant to demarcate deaths Humming prone instead like nurse Logs, all life & vibrancy pushing Through thin skeins of toppled soil.  Tender root in rotted wood. My own children dance in the wind  With a purple umbrella. It lifts. It falls. Inside, I watch Their mouths move, their lips shape Smile & song. They are mammals Skittering across the grass & to watch Them is to converse with the bright sliver of  My own childness. You would have Loved them. They are free. Where Are you celebrated? Where are you? I want to say I’m sorry. The monsters  Are out from under the bed. The monsters  Bullied ...
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