Washington’s Best Emerging Poets: An Anthology. Z Publishing. 2018.

When the noise grates, I reach for the
Word, in beauty and love
That in this heart survives,

Recoiled
Under the weight of the other
Word, in darkness and vitriol
That will not lift—

Alone I feel with my play,
Campaign of good will
Sliding
Against a multi-piercing prism
Of best intentions
To protect and uphold
Etc etc etc

The word destroys
The word creates
I choose
To err

On the scarcer and scarcer side of brightness
Kindness
In the rhetoric
In the deed
That touches

People’s hands and hearts
Flesh and blood
Shaped not in nostalgia
Map grids
Theories
Empty noise—

But to ache,

Breathe
A path into beauty—

For whom does the word fight?

For the spouter or the receptor?