In 2020, I, too, walk through life with hand sanitizer, spraying it on everything. Under the horrified microscope, life blows kisses, sticks out its tongue. The neighbors’ kids stick their noses to the fence. So does mine. Don’t lick the fence, Nathan. Lizzie. Josh. I, too, am desperate for a tenuous separation of destiny from…
With Dickinson, Woolf & Duras I am alive—because I am not in a Room— Emily’s fingertips felt the Morning Glory & Virginia stood straight between four walls worrying about the daffodils & the fig trees. A dying fly bouncing on the windowpane, buzzing, struggling—Marguerite wrote— unknown sky it’s over Is a…
Translated by Kaveh Akbar and Arman Salem صبه كه خانه را ترک مى كنم، جوانم ،و شب پير به خانه باز مى گردم با اندوهاى هزار ساله ،چهار ديوارى خانه ام آرام و صبور پذيراى پيرمردى است كه سحرگاهان .جوان برمى خيزد In morning When I leave my house, I am young …
I lay down next to my child as she sleeps. Three years ago, she was a ceramicist molding the elasticity of my skin— (A foot! A trail inside the sand of me.) Now, she is more than half the length of my body as I lay next to her— She rolls over toward me, heavy…
To the Memory of Lee “Scratch” Perry 20 March 1936 – 29 August 2021 Source of echo madman of prophecies buffering nonsense in absence of anything solid as cloud flung from the womb pale pallid asteroid belt of nanny goat conjuror of the ill-spoken ad-libbing in shadow a race in a curve as…
Translated by Boris Dralyuk Why sit like a guest but not wipe your feet? Every town’s built on bones, not just St. Pete. One should build homes on stone, not on a bog. True enough, but for now the work is a slog. My life’s on the scales— the losses won’t cease….
My life, you were a door I was given to walk through. Dawdling in lintel and loosestrife as much as permitted. Your own glass knob, I spoke you: a sentence, however often rewritten, ending always with the same slightly rusty-hinged preposition. Sometimes, for mercy, hidden.
Was it my parents’ sour grapes that have set my teeth on edge? Or is this bitterness in my mouth from seeds I’ve sown myself? The woman I left weeping in an East Village restaurant. Or maybe the one I had to wrestle back from a seaside cliff, an empty fifth of Maker’s…
Translated by Grace Mahoney in a country where everyone’s name is fear: it’s good that you don’t see a thing and don’t hear a thing. Say to anyone not a thing. Slip nothing in your bra. Keep nothing in your pocket. In both ears, nothing. In two eyes, nothing. Blind feet. No looking back….
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