The angel kissed my alphabet, it tingled like a cobweb in starlight. A few letters detached themselves and drifted in shadows, a loneliness they carry like infinitesimal coffins on their heads. She kisses my alphabet and a door opens: blackbirds roosting on far ridges. A windowpeeper under an umbrella watches a funeral service. Blinkered horses…
SUNDAY The sky was overcast and the weather cold outside. Sylvia called her mother early in the morning before Mass. The mother talked to an older son, David, and later left with the youngest. The two of them took the bus to Pasadena, catching the 92 on Florence and Holmes Aves. in front of the…
Since I don't know who will be reading this or even if it will be read, I must invent someone on the other end of eternity, a distant cousin laboring under the same faint stars I labored under all those unnumbered years ago. I make you like me in everything I can — a man…
Scarecrow, they called me, in my old gingham, poked up on a pole to tilt and waltz with whatever fickle wind happened by. My blood, bone and heart: old stable straw ticking with crickets, locusts, every harvest-hungry insect. For years I watched this garden someone else planted. Limbs all akimbo, pure as a saint, I…
On the river at Mu-chou, west of the water gate, They raised the oars, hoisted the sail, and we released our embrace. Today, at the sky's shore, I sit deep into the night, Heart-broken and haunted by the memory of leaving Ah Yin.
trans. Bulgarian Jascha Kessler and Alexander Shurbanov It was in the Fall of '56 that I stood where I stand still: they're drilling 20-year old marines in diving. Dolphins leap with the sheer joy of it, keeping time in the sea with them. As for me, I stumble on in grief at the mere thought…
trans. Persian Elizabeth Gray Her curls dishevelled, sweating, laughing, and drunk, her shirt torn, singing ghazals, flask in hand, her eyes quarrelsome, her lips crying “Alas!”, last night at midnight she came and sat by my pillow. She bent her head to my ear and said plaintively, “O my ancient lover, are you sleeping?” The…
All withers in the autumn air: wine quickly wears off: Bleak and dismal, it's always like feelings felt at parting. At dusk, I lean on a pillar: I don't go home; My heart breaks at the patter of wind and rain on the green lotus.
Standing between good and evil, between the two frozen poles, at last between man and man, and, looking hard, I simply cannot understand how in the world life can make both ends meet.
No products in the cart.