"The night of Nov. 9... was the fulfillment of a dream." German Chancellor Angela Merkel

today concrete stretches into sky,

twenty-six feet high. drab slabs

cut into four hundred and thirty-six

miles of country. dominos to block

the sun. an accordion of cement,

strung like a clothes line, wheezing

Last week I was disinvited from my second Jewish conference in two months for poems I'd written in solidarity with Palestinians, poems that make an unapologetic call for justice. Subsequently I, and the poet I was to read with at the conference, wrote a response to being censored. People from...

Co-authored by Josh Healey.

This weekend, J Street, a new Jewish "Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace" PAC and Washington-based organization is holding its first national conference. The two of us, along with another artist, were to perform and read poems at several sessions during the conference. Specifically, we were invited to lead a...

The morning after disappointment must be setting in. They four headed horsemen of a Chicago apocalypse failed to turn the South Side over to stadium contractors and decimate Bronzeville (for now). In the literal wake of Derrion Albert, and as the polity begins to wonder where these Chica-go-getters were as...

this is a eulogy for Jeff Maldonado Jr., murdered the day after his 19th birthday on his way for a slice of pizza with his barber in Pilsen. the young man who shot Jeff was seeking revenge in the wrong place. the white van he choose that afternoon was not...

today two Black girls will call the white house home
and a Black woman has risen the first lady
and tonight will sleep next to her Black husband
in the master bedroom in the white house.
she will wake to plan the future
of all...

The winter is now our reality. The long commute, the grey slush and trudge through unplowed streets. The digging out of cars with ice picks, spaces claimed with lawn chairs like flags on the moon. Forty-five minutes on a two-story L platform, as the wind whips and the heating lamp...

The night after Hurricane Ike, the Cubs/Astros game moved to Milwaukee. Panels blown off the dome roof in Houston. Carlos Zambrano, the hotheaded 27-year-old Venezuelan, at times genius Cubs pitcher, was on the mound. After the Cubs lost in the playoffs last season, I saw Zambrano the next day driving...

May the twenty-seven students who lost their lives last academic year eat their grandmother's cooking in the after life, go to prom in the next world, their lives and deaths not be forgotten in vain.

May the bullets intended for the chests of children this year veer into Lake...

Poet of the People

there's gonna be a lot of slow signin and flower bringin
Notorious BIG

The Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish died last week in a Texas hospital of complications from open-heart surgery. There are several tributes and obituaries running on line...