“That was one of things that surprised me so much when I was writing the poems.”

It made me want to change the kinds of poems I was writing, but I’m terrible at writing overtly political poems.

I wanted to be like Spock because he was unflappable.

I never thought I would type that I learned how to emote in poems from watching Star Trek but there it is.

Bones was a grouch but he was sympathetic. The show worked like a boy band in that way… it had characters who embodied different psychic or emotional positions and that allowed me to see a great range of things

I had to find a way to be more honest about what happened. And it wasn’t fun to write, even though the poems aren’t 100% autobiographical.

They are 100% the product of the circumstances that led me home.

By that I mean, honest and not trying to amplify some mythological version of myself.

I mean getting people to think about what language actually means before they use it is a good thing.

There is no way I would have written these poems had I not come back.

I wanted to be like Kirk because he had magnetism and the ladies loved him.

But it’s become very clear the past nine years that some Americans truly resent thinking before they speak.

It will alter the way you hear poetry forever. And not in a good way.

This poem began as an emulation of Siqueiros’s compositional style and, in the process, became an ekphrastic aubade about my old neighborhood.

So while I loved not being hungry and having new gear, etc. I missed the sounds of my neighbors and the kind of generosity people who are struggling together often show.

Echo of a Scream (1937).’ I got spun out by the way he creates tension and movement through the interlocking details in the painting.

Bigotry doesn’t care about state or regional lines. It’s all over the place.