Because I can’t find the right prose. Because I am heartsick and furious that hate has been stoked, allowed to fester, and gain a stronghold here, and that so many are content to be silent, complicit in the resulting cruelty. And because my great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were victims of such hate and cruelty….

THE COLOR OF….

It is not rose,
much more like snow
that coats each velvet petal,
or dims an apple’s blush,
the pear’s suggestive charm.

Nor is it fire,
for each hypnotic flame
dispels the notion once contained,
no, more like glass, it is,
transparent, hard,
and always set to crack.

It is not grass or stone.
No, more like ice,
much more,
an army of stalagmites rising from the depths,
unyielding and unbound,
crystalline and honed:

the frigid glow of outrage.

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