Yesterday, my poem “God I need your face in mine” was featured at Pandemic Publications, and a few weeks ago “Fear Music” appeared in the latest issue of Inflectionist Review. And over at Yemassee, my essay “Ten Days To Hold You” is a Monthly Spotlight.

Additionally, I received the news that my essay “Down and Up in Dar es Salaam”, which was published last year in Witness Magazine, has been listed as “Notable Travel Writing” in the collection Notable Travel Writing of 2020. It’s always gratifying when someone out there in Editor Land finds one of my little misadventures “notable”!

Eek – it’s been a couple years since I posted anything here. To rectify that, I would like to point your attention to two new essays of mine that were published by Terrain.org over the last few weeks – the first, “Teach Me How To Fight” about gentrification and segregation in Brooklyn as my daughter experienced it when she was two years old (I also have a piece in the newest issue of Rattle called “Arrest This Poem” that features very similar language, just with line breaks; it should be online sometime in the spring.)

The second essay, as part of their “Letter To America” series, is about my time growing up in Michael Bloomberg’s New York. I hope that going live the day before Super Tuesday will allow me to take credit when his campaign fizzles out at the polls tomorrow.

You can view some other new work by clicking the “Poems” or “Prose” tabs above; I do update those pages more frequently than every two years.

My poem “Bless Me Editor” from Rattle’s previous print issue went up on their website today, including a somewhat manic audio recording. I think it’s a wild ride through my psyche, and I hope you enjoy it!

Another music video from my latest trip to Dar es Salaam. This one is a collaboration with my friends Man Dili and Melali Juma in the mchiriku style endemic to Dar and its surrounding areas. It’s called “Harakati” (meaning “Movement” or “Activism”). I hope you enjoy!

I just got back from Dar es Salaam, and have the music video for my latest Swahili hip-hop collaboration ready for your enjoyment, featuring Sloter from the old-school duo LWP and introducing Kemy. Thanks to Mubbyzow for producing and Shakka for directing.

This website mostly serves as an archive of my publications for the handful of people out there who might stumble across a poem of mine and be curious enough to google me. As such, my posts here are rote, sporadic, and often unenthusiastic links to those publications that happen to appear online. But last week, along with dozens of activists from the direct action group Rise and Resist, I participated in a pro-immigration civil disobedience action that I thought I would share. In the lobby of Trump Tower, we dropped three banners stating, respectively, “NO BAN” “NO WALL” and “NO RAIDS”. Trump Security proceeded to shut down the public atrium of Trump Tower for a couple hours while the NYPD went about arresting all 25 of us who remained (with our voices very hoarse from chanting). I feel very gratified to have put my body on the line and done my small part to take a public stand against this administration on the very day our president dropped the so-called “mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan (which I did not find out about until I was released from the ninth precinct around 10pm). You can read more about the action (and see footage of me getting dragged out of the lobby with a very unbecoming grin on my face) here.

My latest villanelle “Love in the Time of Trump” is up at The Rise Up Review. Enjoy!

My essay “Safari Lager and Swahili Hip-Hop” (excerpted from my unpublished travel memoir) is the weekly selection at The Forge Literary Magazine. They were also kind enough to interview me.

I passed through Dar es Salaam last month and filmed the music video for my latest Swahili hip-hop collaboration. Hope you enjoy.

I recently returned to New York from Dar es Salaam. While I was there, I made a Swahili hip-hop music video with some of my friends. This is what it looks like.