Poetry

Happy arrives with the moon on its shoulder. Glamorous. You can tell it has crossed the line by the way it moves, eyes glittering like wet roads in headlights, dangerous and out of control, attention all over the place. It loves the language and talks to strangers, asks your name, looks in your face and…

         Someone is putting the world back together                                                       —Aaron Smith   Here’s what’s different: Bruce, who is now Sheila won’t join a gym because she’s still transitioning and can’t change clothes in either locker room. She’s between two rooms of time. And the country is different but the same—everything we talked about. Nothing really changes except…

           from Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmısınız or Long Words, a sequence of poems that take their titles from the English translations of long words in various languages. This poem is drawn from Pinakanakapagpapabagabag-damdamin, a word in Tagalog. is qualified by an inserted parenthesis there is of course a difference between disturbing and upsetting but that is registered…

Ramphal sat in the section of Georgetown Cinema Called The Pit, right up under the big screen Where all the bad boys congregated To hoot, whistle, and offer slapstick outbursts, Even instructions to the cast, as the film rolled. Next day, in a corner of the schoolyard, He narrated whole westerns to us, Starring Audie…

Already dying, she would lead the way to a table Full in the window and watch out eagerly Over the hurry of life under the sun, drank this Till the coffees came, then woman to woman Asked after my life that would continue a while yet Beyond hers. The heart side, she asked, What of…

And in that same tempest the Austrian Ambassador Fearing he stood on the brink of drowning Flung his snuffbox, on whose lid was painted His mistress naked, into the sea. Unlikely He hoped this would persuade the god Poseidon To rebuke the wind and the wind would cease And there’d be a great calm. No,…

for Kang, born in Sonchon, North Korea   Better not to have been born than to survive everyone you loved. There’s no one left of those who lived here once, no one to accuse you, no one to forgive you— only beggar boys or black-market wives haggling over croakers and cuttlefish, hawking scrap-iron and copper-pipes…

Where did the dust come from and how much of it do you have? When and where did you first notice the dust? Why didn’t you act sooner? Why don’t you show me a sample. Why don’t you have a sample? Why don’t you take some responsibility? For yourself, the dust? Personally I’ve never suffered…

She thirsts for her lamb, minutes old, still-born and cooling in a cold dawn, licking him clean with a growl of love till you turn her away, steal the corpse and rip with the hiss of the blade in a single tear throat to tail. The stripped flesh is a breath of steam, delta of…