And the bluest ink isn't really sky

My poems "Dis Genite et Geniture Deos" and "Cosmopolitan Bias" are now available in the latest issue of The Cascadia Subduction Zone. That's one Carthaginian and one Jewish poem for viewers keeping score at home; unsurprisingly both are political. The former came out of this summer's concern trolling over Shakespeare in the Park's Julius Caesar and takes its title from Aeneid 9.641–42, the god Apollo commending the adolescent Ascanius on his first brave deeds in war: Macte nova virtute, puer: sic itur ad astra, / dis genite et geniture deos. "Progeny of gods and progenitor of gods to come" is all very well, but I'm just saying it may not be the best idea in the long run not to notice that the goddess of your family's mythology bears a striking typological resemblance to the goddess of your ancient enemy. (All of my Dido poems come out unimpressed. The other one, under the title of "The Hero's Journey," can be found in the publisher's sample from Ghost Signs.) The latter was directly sparked by Stephen Miller's nativist "well, actually"-ing of Emma Lazarus and the Statue of Liberty, with input from my family history—and Miller's family history—and the photographs of Henryk Ross. I can't make Miller's own relatives haunt him, but I can hope. You can wait six months and read the issue for free or kick three to five bucks to the magazine now, in which case you also get to read a new poem by Rose Lemberg and a variety of excellent nonfiction. I think both of my poems may be curses, but I also think that I can live with that.