Poetry and Arts

The Day After American Samoa Is Under Water

The evening news helicopters compete for the best camera angle above the water, fighting to find anything worthy of coverage.

The teacher can’t hear the children over all this monsoon racket, all the zillion spoons whacking the rusty roofs, all

For Chino In the middle of that desert that didn’t look like sand and sand only, in the middle

This is for Amal, whose name means hope, who thinks of each tree she’s planted like a child, whose family

To hold the bird and not to crush her, that is the secret. Sand turned too quickly to cement and

We ate labneh and bread in your tents When we had no water we drew it from your well Your

I am 15. It is the summer of 1982. I’m working illegally at the Sonic Drive-In. Weatherford, Oklahoma. I

We’re running out of O2 screaming down the southwest freeway in the rain the nurse-practitioner and me rocking around the

Stuart talked to me in dreams so real I believed in God for those three years. In the first one,

I saw the bastard webslinging over electric Soho, miles above the stoplights and New Yorkers. What I wouldn’t give to

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