poem Archives - Baltimore Post-Examiner

Rock

As the coal train screeches by,

I think of the dust

from which they died,

their oxygen tanks

only a palliative,

their suffocation

normal and expected,

the inherent risk of a

transitory prosperity.

My kitchen is blessed with fruity scents of Ethiopian Oromia, the welcoming traces of Chinatown Coffee Company, that quick but

U.S. troops liberated death camps

in the decade before my birth.

My parents didn’t use the word fascism.

But I knew what it meant.

Only two years before my birth,

Israel was declared a state.

The presidential scholar drips delicate fingers down his chin. With smooth, white, Ivy-infused certitude, he promises. Our institutions are strong.

This poem is dedicated to those with borderline personality disorder. He was your love, your rock, your life’s delight, And