When the moon rose she rose, an effigy hung by her yellow hair, a long-necked bird trumpeting doom. Old Hag! We tossed her to the dogs and still she would not die. She mapped our lives. Slit Eyes! How she could stare. And far in the distance of our sleep something wanted to strangle itself….
During my father’s walk, he went underground to pin down rails, pushed his back against cement walls when trains slammed by. The day’s hammering done, he headed for the circle of gray light. His father first went down into the tunnels and in his dotage bragged of breaking the 1911 strike by staring the men…
Dear Mother dear, Now this here’s an Edda, which in Icelandic means “greatgrandmother.” Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál: well, Aristotle’s Poetix it ain’t, not by a googolplex of parsecs, no ma’am; nor is the Gylfaginning any Iliad or Exodus. But our nothern temper (born of winter nights on the iced bridge, bred and borne on the vast namelessness…
Lovers passed us like movie stars. I am trembling but the terror of what I want to do is what beckons me to commit the crime. And every poster in town reveals my craven design. I look for you. There is only vertigo and bile in my throat. Fear: to crawl like a baby lost…
come in light variable and with calm good weather most of the time on the floor of my house silence a round a pond the bush a hush hilldog Bark and horseprint calm cold like a crescent moon a hunter rode alone through snow possessed of supernatural powers composed of rags and tatters Forest closed…
for ms The shadows move on the wall. Rabbits and plums fill the space and the space fills her. It is too easy, he said, you must become the space. Take it inside you, the bootblack sky at night, the bony ocean rising at morning until there is nothing else. I will open the door,…
Table manners are so emotional: These knives reflect the teeth they imitate, Returning us to an uncultured state. The duke across from me is very tall, But not so tall as Dottie (my blind date). Table manners are so emotional These knives reflect the teeth they imitate. The seamstress next to me is very small…
When we were friends my words were colocynth seeds. Our lips were smothered with flies. — Translated by N. Aruri and Carl Senna
EDITORIAL BOARD Directors DeWitt Henry Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editor Fanny Howe Editorial Staff David Gullette Philip Schultz Jane Shore Ellen Wilbur Contributing Editors James Randall Art Director David Omar White CONTRIBUTORS NASEER ARURI (who supplied the literal translation of Mahmoud Darwish's poetry) is Visiting Professor at the University of Kuwait and Chairman of the Political…
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