In the spirit of our upcoming elections, here is a piece from 2013. I really hope you read it, because I really mean it. –CC

I am tired with alphabet words
aren’t you?
The C word, the D word, the F word, the H word, the J word,
the K word, the L word, the N word, the Q word, the S word,
etcetera, etcetera
my word!
I apologize if I offended anyone by leaving out their offending word
Here’s the plan:
assemble everyone in the U.S.
Yankee Stadium is too small,
so maybe we rent the Grand Canyon for a day.
(I know people who know people
from the Hualapai Tribal Nation and the Havasupai Tribe
so this is a non-issue, as they say)
We set up microphones and Marshall Amps
all along the bottom of the Inner Gorge
everyone gets a turn to shout out their words
from A to Z
crank the volume up to 10 and get it all out
once and for all
ALL THE HATE WORDS!
let them ring…
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Many years ago my mum did a ceremony with some really young indigenous kids on Cape Barren Island – they wrote down all the things that had been said to them that they didn’t like and burnt them in the campfire, thereby releasing the power those words held over them forever. Your poem reminded me of this.
Brilliant. I would like to invite your mom to be part of the cabinet. 🙂
burning
empty cities
so people can finally live
free
wonderfully put —CC