Poetry

The Cellists

For a few months, I lived in a place that was cold. When I stood at the front door, in the foreground I saw a lawn covered with snow, in the middle ground a house being built, and in the background mountains that were white and craggy, like clean teeth. The house being built was…

Origin Story 

I I learn how to breathe underwater— spring vacation, 1978. Aunt Nayyer takes me to the Caspian  where the stray herrings die by the sable shore.  She raises her arms in prayer for all the bounty  we haul home and feast for dinner.  Each fish the size of my hand. All brine and grit. Carcasses…

Poetry

When the air is this soft, when insects and  birds are the soundtrack, when your skin is  dried salt from the sea, and your clothes are  strung out on a line in a yard whose  path to the road is familiar and  empty and open to an ocean you hear but can’t see, whose wash…