Hadn’t it been for the two peregrine falcons, I could’ve quibbled today’s versification along in typical cryptic– disguising the joy as grief & vice-versa– but first, submit to my credit, I did tuck a bow paddle responsively to the stern & with few complaints, such as why, human, overcoached yet ostensibly possessed of a free will, can’t I shrug myself… Read more →
You will never know I am here, beneath your feet, but I will feel the tread of your boots as you move down the trail, between trees whose roots shape my own corridors. How incongruous your method of movement, so many limbs to coordinate, the process of mastering balance. As you push your body through the air, do you feel… Read more →
I traverse ages across orange-red tiles, ceramic, beautiful, rich in hue and tone and warmth, like a cathode ray tube shot from them to us and back again, my mind a buckshot mess of uncertainty. But tomorrow finds me with radium Brazil nuts voyaging through my veins, penetrating my weakened sinews, long since severed from their purpose, me, asleep, nearly… Read more →
He wraps his arms around my waist in front of the boiling pot. Sturdy, the hands of an Irish mother, our obstetrical instruments shaving down their own bacteria. I think about legacies, the parents in us, the same escapes we fail until, somehow, it all locks in place. What lies our bodies tell. He taught me to butcher, the biggest… Read more →
A Poem by Sina Behmanesh, Translated by Bänoo Zan They wrote on the walls:Death to smiles I was a mouthI died They wrote on the walls:Death to kisses I was a mouthI died They wrote on the walls:Death to poetryDeath to words I was a poetI was a mouthI became a scream To turn all walls to mouthsI write my… Read more →
The mystery of growing pains is what hurts. If I felt growing pains, I didn’t know it. I can imagine what it feels like, the way I imagine it hurts when leaves fall or grow— a chemical reaction signaling discomfort, roots unsheathing themselves. There is so much that wants to grow, harden, parameters pushed to extremity. It’s like the word… Read more →
a slanted wish and its two-tongued answer. a misspelling of melted snow. morning runs in the cold, in shorts, in shrunken sneakers thumping pavement, the cysts are rattling inside me like loose change in a pocket. synonyms for decay : rot, wither, the wrong kind of quiet. the ghost of a grief so shape less it can hardly be grief… Read more →
I learned your language by its edges first: the crescents of your fingernails, the smooth nook of your earlobes. You practice entangling promises in the kitchen vents, dropping words like dimes into the mouth of a milk jar, no longer hers or mine without inverted light to claim it. Your face along the sidewalk cracks resist the truth of mirrors,… Read more →
Little engine inside each leaf, the cloud a sharp feather straight to the moon. Each day returns to itself in search of safety. Animal tracks circle the sidewalk. I carry my green panic like a wardrobe stuffed with dirty dishes. I crawl back to bed. Let the animals sign my name with their soft paws.
The pre-summer air has a smell: reminiscent of singed clothes from a basement dryer. If heat has a feel, I cannot sense it today. For now, I am done feeling my mind busy with the truth serum of unadulterated observation removed from the catalyst of change.