 |
| Lisa Doctor joins a prayer circle down the street from the Emanuel AME Church early Thursday, June 18, 2015 following a shooting Wednesday night in Charleston, S.C. | David Goldman / AP via Chicago Sun-Times |
Being offensive
wasn’t the intention
in mentioning how simple
it was to visit
the USSR, compared
to entering the USA
today. So, where else
would you rather live?
to which the response
begins with Anywhere
elections aren’t for sale
or the campaigns
a drawn-out circus
because this isn’t
the first time someone
has suggested this
is the greatest of all
nations, defined
now by a wall
and the constant claim
of freedom, which
extends today
to the young man’s
right to go out with
his birthday gun
because nobody
could assume
he’d take it to church
and actually use it there.
David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived for several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. In September, 2015, he will participate as a poet in the Fires of Change exhibition at the Coconino Center for the Arts in Flagstaff (Sponsored by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, the Landscape Conservation Initiative, and the National Endowment for the Arts.)