for Yannis Ritsos for years in exile on an island, wrote with no other witnessthan sea wind and the ranked blue waves,wrote on scraps of paper skinned from cigaretteshiding the rolled-up poems in his trouser cuffs,permitting guards to believe that his penwas for stones, for finding faces in the stonesand drawing them out, feature by…
Some days each grain of her dragsthrough unsafe air. I wrap her in stardustscarves that float around the anchors of her heavy arms, those limbs anchoringher, and me, to all the words we women dragbehind us, the ones we wish we could dust off: fat, bitch, she wishes. I reach for the starof her body, so…
She didn’t know what they were—pebbles—the soundsrolling around in her father’s mouthlike sour ball candies when he told herthey would find them. Left behindby fairies, he said, in creeksand under leaves. Her fatherwore that look that said he wasteasing, that it was all a jokebut come along anyway. Ft. Amanda,a short car ride, an adventure,and…
In the thicket that is just now considering the poignantslantlight of ebb, one blush rose hip, polished and stalwart. Matt texted me today that he misses you. Somethingparticular or just general sadness, I asked. This is the way for an extinction that cannot be reasoned with. A summerso wet and cold that even the fireweed…
My father is smaller than a potato now maybe in the bluebird’sfeather or the beak of the cactus wren but where is my mother? In myfingernail? The crowd of bushtits on the thistle-seeds probably are uncles andaunts from various boneyards with their fetuses whispering together,ensoul, from bad days when they couldn’t be saved. Someone planted…
Prologue: It’s traditional to begin by telling you this: this was once Chada’ssukdu. In the retelling it becomes my sukdu’a. For the unfamiliar, sukdu is story.Sukdu’a is a story that’s become a personal story.I’ve decided that it’s akin to how some people build familial homes. Oh this? It’s our ancestralfamily home! My greatest grandparentsbuilt it….
Planes rise from the neighbor’s Norfolk pineAs if floating. Sometimes I float tooIn the brilliant afternoons of not-knowing.As the aftershock of the infusionsLays me back in the cloud of the recliner,I stare with fierce new interestFrom our glass-walled living roomAt the world that always continues.I sleep these provisional days, dreamingOf flight, up and over the…
Red brick textile mill justbarefoot steps from red brickcompany store, and barefootsteps from red clay graves, the apparition childrenmake their hazy way upthe hill at 6:30, quitting timeafter twelve-hour shifts. Maybe they are doffers,small, nimble fingersa commodity in the riskyremoval of spike spindles, bobbins full of spun fiber,replacing them by hand whilemachinery whirrs. Maybethey tend…
Do butterburs follow a religion,a particular day of the week whenthey take time to meditate or prayinstead of photosynthesize?What does a butterbur believe in—a single God or as many higher powersas exist in the clouds of a mackerel sky?Which spiritual realm lies in the shadeof their stems, their wooly under beards?In the sway of leaves…
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