First step: pepper spray

Second step: the gun

You aren’t just your name

carved out in stone

above countless bones and worms

I don’t like coffee and I barely like tea

but the woman sitting across from me

I will fall in love with

Step 1: Exit the womb

(you laugh, but skip this step and you will fail miserably)

Love is a large incision in the chest

a pounding heart exposed by the scalpel

What you really mean

When you oppose DEI

A little more of your white privilege melts away each passing day. You sound the alarm, blow your whistles, dial 911.

He sat by patiently

as one by one the hairs

on your chinny chin chin turned gray.

So moving forward, to help the police better communicate their intentions to the public, 

I offer 10 improved mottos to paint on the side of their cars:

The rotting smell of death surrounds me

as I step outside the closing doors

Fuck, I knew I should have chosen the past

We pledge allegiance to the gun

the flag cradled in our arms

The delusionality of labeling “happy” the animals we send to slaughter

feels like proclaiming there were lots of “happy” train passengers in Germany in the first half of the 1940s

Like smoke wasn’t billowing either way

In the quiet game,

you win by not making a sound

How can you carry glitter

in passion rose, silver peacock,

petal pink, and sunrise shimmer

and be homophobic?

Dead, processed, packaged

Once swimming around

Plunging into boiling water

A painful death

Jayland Walker’s killers
Walk the street
Spraying tear gas
Emptying canisters
Like they emptied clips

When peace… is shattered into pieces,

and the shards are but more rubble on the street,

light your lamps

I stopped to water dead plants today

Out of obligation or hope,

I’m still not certain

When I ordered the veggie burger and you asked me,

“If you wanted something that tastes like meat, why don’t you just eat meat?”

Learning your step dad’s path

was no longer climbing stairs,

only falling down them