poetry

  The sleeper summer is airing out its torn tendrils, but we think of night sirens, a black sky like a record, the white tooth of Republic Square bare and deserted under pale streetlamp glow. A cascade of bombs peppering … Read More

  I find graffiti again and again on different walls, a leitmotif not a landmark: giraffe-people with swirling eyes, initials added together inside hearts, a rabbit as tall as me, smoking a blunt between neighborhood slogans in broken English. Everywhere … Read More

  You come to a clearing like the knoll before the ancient temple in Bar’am a village emptied of its inhabitants still waiting to return. You reach that grassy open landing and understand finally that all the waiting and longing … Read More

  6. With an eight-stringed harp. In the grave Who can give thanks? I will try with my fingers to pluck the chord to please you. Though I have never been fully turned or tuned to your mercy. Even before … Read More

  Mornings I walk among trees, walk away my wanting, long nights, teeth clenched, waiting; stormy nights, light slashes the sky, my body restless, succumbing finally to my own hands, that familiar gasp. Now night’s leftover wetness falls on my … Read More

  We know only that the curtains fly like sails, the earth keeps spinning, tilts over and back, rains come, leaves shrivel and die, the snow gathers then melts away, and still I smell the cigarette from the car in … Read More

  He’s gone, the voice says. Before I can ask where to, the call disconnects. I find him sleeping peacefully through the ride on old city roads, the crowd’s whisper about what happened toward the end. Flowers and faces morose, … Read More

Tr. from the Galician by Neil Anderson   If I had drunk more milk as a girl the magpies who settle in the brush wouldn’t mock me, the bats wouldn’t eat out my eyes as I fall asleep and the … Read More

Tr. from the Galician by Neil Anderson   They don’t build their nest under the roof tiles anymore. They fly circles around the shed, they come and go with mud on their beaks but they don’t settle, they don’t make … Read More

  the washing-machine repairman asks if I’ve saddled my sons with biblical names on purpose the plumber presses me to admire his sculptures the electrician wonders if I have skills in patent law the driver of the propane truck desires … Read More

  We have been Taught that we Must not Speak. We must Not see each other. We Would want to Speak then. And If we want Love from the Father we must Put out our Eyes. We must Shut tight … Read More

The air in a 30-by-30-by-30-foot room weighs a ton. –Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen   Though they’d watched it fill their sails and felt it lash their cheeks, had heard it whistle and roar and had seen black and … Read More