Sunday morning.
I’m reading The New York Times
and tear up.
Truth and lies;
black stories and white stories;
pandemic and pandemonium;
peaceful protests and mob violence;
some good people and some bad people;
real news and fake news—
our country collapsing.
And so, it seems, in the world.
I read about a father in Iran
Beheading his 14-year-old daughter
for planning to run away
with her boyfriend.
I ask you,
“Have we all lost our heads?”
William Swarts is the author of Harmonies Unheard, Strickland Plains and Other Poems and Treehouse of the Mind. He won First Prize in the Litchfield Review‘s annual Poetry Contest. He received his B.A. in English Literature from Brown University, his J.D. from University of Pennsylvania and practiced law in New York City and Paris, France.
