Inheritance

Night bends. Bends.Its green facepresses against the window. Above my beda black sun hangs,its teeth in a glass. My backagainst the crackin the plaster. At nightit opens to a road,black trees,the roofs of distant houses. By morningit has come inside. The horizon liesalong the far wall. A chair.A cup gone cold.

garyzajc.com

Inheritance

Night bends. Bends.Its green facepresses against the window. Above my beda black sun hangs,its teeth in a glass. My backagainst the crackin the plaster. At nightit opens to a road,black trees,the roofs of distant houses. By morningit has come inside. The horizon liesalong the far wall. A chair.A cup gone cold.

garyzajc.com

Reid Hoffman Gives $10 Million To Texas Senate Candidate James Talarico’s Campaign

Hoffman previously donated $1.5 million to Talarico.

forbes.com

A General and Rare Memorial

It's been four winters since I drove north alone.Each morning I walk out into the heavy freeze,surprised the snow holds me,that I don't just disappear into the ground.There are winters here so deepthe salt in my blood feels a thousand years old. Old-bone seeds sleep hard in my body,far beyond the swallows and the night sky,

garyzajc.com

SINGULÁRITAS

SINGULÁRITAS (sin-goo-LAH-ree-tahs) n.  The state that exists in the days immediately following high school graduation, when you stand suspended at the event horizon between childhood and adulthood. You are a particle before the wave function collapses, existing in quantum superposition, all possible futures layered atop one another like translucent sheets of becoming. Behind you, eighteen years compress into infinite density, a singularity of accumulated moments.

garyzajc.com

On the Excessive Conscience of Our Age, and the Modest Cure for It

A confession addressed to an exhausted nation nearing two hundred and fifty. Permit me, my compatriots, to pour you another bourbon before you object. We have the look tonight of a great and weary nation that still believes the world suffers from too little kindness: that if we only cared a great deal more, and policed a great deal less, and apologized at sufficient length for the sins of our grandfathers, we might at last be redeemed.

garyzajc.com

To Be the Wine (When All Is Poison)

When the draftthey pour is bittera poison meant to end youin a dark and desperate turnbecome the wine. When an indifferent worldIs deaf to your prayerwhisper to the earthI am. And to the relentlessrushing waterdeclareI flow.

garyzajc.com

Little Did I Know

A reflective poem on aging, loss, and the unexpected clarity that comes with growing older, where beauty and impermanence become impossible to ignore.

garyzajc.com

Evidence

This essay explores the heavy realities of separation, the danger of being reduced to a single story , and the profound importance of writing letters to the children we love—even when those envelopes can never be sent.

garyzajc.com

67 (Close But No Cigar)

For my grandson, BodhiMay you spend every penny and every time. I was born a day late and a dollar in debt,A few sandwiches short and I ain't finished yet.Mama just shook her head, kissed me and cried"Fine feathers, poor bird." Then she stepped back inside. Thin gruel for schooling, small beer for a brain,Wouldn't wash and wouldn't do, they said it plain.Wouldn't pass the test, wouldn't come up to scratch.Maybe so, but come nightfall I struck every match. 

garyzajc.com

Mothers Day

You are young here, younger than I ever knew you...

garyzajc.com

Thousands attend protests in Selma and Montgomery for voting rights | Alabama Reflector

Speakers at the All Roads Lead to the South events urge people to mobilize to oppose redistricting efforts by Legislatures in the south.

alabamareflector.com

for the Great Writ and the robed body and every name the machine swallowed whole

The American criminal justice system continues to operate as a giant machine of punishment that disproportionately consumes the lives of people of color. <h2>"Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt's land. Tell old Pharaoh: let my people go." — traditional spiritual I. I SAW THE BEST MINDS OF A BLACK NATION I saw the best minds of a Black nation processed through county and borough…

garyzajc.com

for the Great Writ and the robed body and every name the machine swallowed whole

The American criminal justice system continues to operate as a giant machine of punishment that disproportionately consumes the lives of people of color. <h2>"Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt's land. Tell old Pharaoh: let my people go." — traditional spiritual I. I SAW THE BEST MINDS OF A BLACK NATION I saw the best minds of a Black nation processed through county and borough…

garyzajc.com

Common Place

For Crystal The brain keeps a mapof the body. Your left thumbon the same streetas mine. Homunculus neighbors, though we’venever met. The senses,our first citizenship—the common country of light, vibration,balance, heat. Eventhe blind man’s visual cortex,that empty ballroom, keeps the lights on,keeps waiting. We all livein the theaterof I, stitching…

garyzajc.com

Common Place

For Crystal The brain keeps a mapof the body. Your left thumbon the same streetas mine. Homunculus neighbors, though we’venever met. The senses,our first citizenship—the common country of light, vibration,balance, heat. Eventhe blind man’s visual cortex,that empty ballroom, keeps the lights on,keeps waiting. We all livein the theaterof I, stitching…

garyzajc.com

🚨 USA v. McGrane

Learn more.

democracydocket.com

Cease-Fire Blues

A lament for the warless, a dirge for the disarmed.

garyzajc.com

THE ARCHITECTURE OF SILENCE: A PAINTING IN FRAGMENTS (For My Friend John)

I. INVENTORY / INVENT-ory / IN-vent <pre>I have painted           silence</pre><pre> you would not<br /> know it<br /> by looking</pre><pre>every surface crowd ed<br />every mouth open<br />every demon at his work</pre>but underneath—</p><pre>                                                      the<br /> thing</pre><pre>the noise is built on top of</pre><pre>I know that shape</pre><pre style="padding-left: 160px;"> I have sat in it<br /> with John</pre><pre>two men not speaking</pre><pre> the table <br /> between us<br /> full</pre><pre>of bread of wine of the hour<br />going where hours go</pre><pre> when they are not<br /><br /> wasted</pre><p>                                                                                     not the silence of<br />     nothing to say</p><pre>the silence of</pre><pre> everything<br /> already<br /> said</pre> <h2>II.

garyzajc.com

I Do Not Like It, Sam-I-Am

They say the self is plain to see. Perhaps — but not by me.

garyzajc.com

Lessons in Gravity

In the morningher mother stood at the stove.Her father folded the newspaperbeside his tea. The girl left with her bagbefore the bread cooled. Her mother called her namefrom the doorway. A fig tree leaned toward the street. The school stood between two pointsalready marked on a screen. A girl came in latewith her bag in both hands.

garyzajc.com

A Republic of Ruin

The collapse of a nation is indistinguishable from the collapse of a heart.

garyzajc.com