And the Earth Opened Its Mouth
At the end of June my earth trembles
also at the end of August, and also after Sukkot, and also before Passover and afterward.
Every movement of the dials on the face of…
Poetry
Photo by Geert Pieters / Unsplash.comTranströmer The tea almost gone from our cups Ulla took off her glasses Said she met Tomas Tranströmer in his house in Sweden Schubert was playing The moment he…
Background photo by Sean McArthur / Unsplash.comLook — Santa Monica, so much like Italy. Old friend, remember when you and I lived down here? See all those fish shops? Here, come this way. A huge oran…
Photo by Fía Yang on UnsplashUne pointe de sel sur ma confession On vient me voir On me demande la mer Les algues et les poissons Je ne suis pas doué comme Jésus Pour l’autodérision Je reste là …
Photo by Hunter W on UnsplashFamiliar, Tartane, though I’ve never been here before. Whole coast, Atlantic, stops believing in sun, or maybe that’s me, bouldered by winter. Presqu’île de la Caravell…
Photo by Bowonpat - stock.adobe.comIf a love song is made of water, the water you hold in your hands right now is a lyric, a song inside the rusty tap released, coil of silvered music unraveling, shiv…
Liza Martin, Homelessness Home (2023), oil on canvas, 11 x 13 cmI’ve Been Border-Crossing All My Life after Anisa Rahim’s “A Russian Hacked My Pinterest Account” I’m not talking about the s…
Voyagerixon - stock.adobe.comIf you mix rainwater with tears laughter with sun tornado and the wind with rising indignation. If you cry for the children, barefoot open-handed, whose approaching faces…
Photo by Feng Weixiang (2012)Prophet When crows fly over the villages Panic erupts like a flash flood Soon after, as Nanmusa has prophesied A plague spreads along the valley Some life soon evaporated …
The mind skitters, its one rudder Being its own voice. The great Fascist poet taught me free verse. Trying to concentrate on “The forgiving Of an unforgivable crime” in a lecture By Emmanuel Levinas,…
Illustration by Karenna BrownConversation with a Postman I get used to loneliness, she says. Autumn is utterly close; politics distant. The cat’s a refined soul, but pisses all over the flowers. The g…
Painting by Karenna Brown The day moon sits like a crooked smile just above the horizon, spins in a sky as blue as Mary’s robe and travels to Afghanistan to buy lapis lazuli like the masters of the R…
I’m terrified of my migrant parents, always with their eyes set on flight. Is that how you solve everything, Papá? Are you going to once more do what he tells you, Mamá? I’m more terrified by…
Landscape at the Third Stage of Grief by Alexandra Lytton Regalado I This year my knees are having a hard kneel. This candle’s fire has two hard eyes. The…
At the said-to-be bottomless pond at the sand pit, the raft we discovered was a heavy barn door, maybe ten feet by twelve, halfway in, halfway out of the water where others had left it, probably…
Photo by Paul Domenick / Flickr This shadowed morning you write thought and read the garden You readjust the graded papers in your briefcase and wait for the enemies of knowledge to arr…
Photo by Persis Karim Shadow and Light was instigated by San Francisco Bay Area poet and activist Beau Beausoleil as part of a recent ancillary project of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here (to…
Oregon Trail Ruts State Historic Site. On my right metatarsus you can see the swale caused by wet wagon wheels coming out of the Big Blue River, heaving their sodden burdens over the top of my ar…
In your living room was a bone-colored piano. In boredom we pressed a key. We even sang. Do you remember? You know, just so something fills your rented apartment in Buda, and recovers its mo…
Only I never came back I was not going to be long —W. S. Merwin 1 I live where Lady Gaga files her taxes where the police do as they please where this paleface multitud…
Tonight she asks for enchiladas, and my sister suggests pizza. I think they must want to die. I’m ashamed to feel this. I roll the shade of blame down the living room wall, screening their lives f…
The girls who were talking in the corner not long ago are just now starting to get up (grabbing jackets from the coatrack) taking up their umbrellas again and a forgotten wallet that the tallest…
Anna 1 “Now I know how faces disappear, how terror nests under eyelids,” wrote Anna, Anna Akhmatova. Can you understand such suffering? While I read her, I lie stiff on the bed. She, Anna, has…
“I Have Nothing but Exhaustion the Size of a Forest” after Sirkka Turkka I have nothing but exhaustion the size of my daughter’s pupils, when she brings her face close to my mouth, ex…
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash The Bread of Letters I Who will blame the trees when they loose their leaves? who will accuse the sea of abandoning shells on the sand? I, mothe…