Insomnia
No moon. Not even a lamb to leap the gates. No shepherd with his staff curled at the top. Thy rod and thy staff no comfort. The sheep all sleeping in the fields of Cavan. The great-grand folks asleep … Read More
The Maid’s Story
I’m a maid in this hotel, but in my country, like most women, I helped prepare the dead for burial, and I know bodies have their own light that they exhaust in living. Sometimes I think I can see … Read More
A Prayer for Bana
“When this is over I will go home and sleep forever” —Ammar Al-Selmo We pray for peace as our city turns to salt … Read More
Grandmother
Everything surprises me: that she called for me, that I am here. What we failed at in life is done. Now she lets me grab her shoulder, hold her body while she shrieks and climbs out.
Getting the Melons to Market
The hot summer long —we loaded truck beds with watermelons, our rough hands soothed by the cool green rivers in their skins, then stood guard, armed with bamboo poles, as the cargo, made its way … Read More
Deliverance
Fear made us little children: If they catch you, they’ll cut off your nose and ears. If you’re a girl, they’ll rape you. So out of the cave’s bombed mouth, I crawled to the feet of a huge American, … Read More
Procession
mistranslation after Rilke When song arrived like an ungainly bird, the light inert, the light wide open shut, the rats brought forth their milky music before returning to the … Read More
the center
Many things are love, and failure is one. And metal, and salt, and uranium fields pulsing in the noondark. … Read More
Fable of the Alternative Fact
for Alan Soldofky A slick slug comes to glisten in the ear. It slides where once a wary owl would perch To scan what seemed an overlay of earth– Figural owl in a figural ear. Flown or fallen, … Read More