We had gone out for drinks to celebrate J.’s birthday the day he finally came back. He had a habit of disappearing, his body turning into a dense fog before metamorphosing into tiny crystals of ice where he used to be. Sometimes he would send a postcard from an unknown country, a picture of him floating on the surface of… Read more →
Four Poems: “Song of the White Lilac” (1934), “Violets” (1934), “I Am the White Lilac” (1934), and “Moonlit” (1938) Translated from the Russian by Bita Takrimi Song of the White Lilac Grant me the joy of a tender greeting,Crown my hair with your wreath today!– On the blooming day of summer’s meeting,The white lilac began its bright display. I crave… Read more →
The sky emerges from a fallen branch pierced just so to gather shards of the first note from its death throes billions of years waning in a vast silence, shadow of perfection, detritus of white noise and innumerable strings that wrought all existence: the storming stars and spheres of alien oceans, home to the miniscule mind of the tardigrade, the… Read more →
a fly poised on the sill where a shadow falls half bathed in light half my mind on the Hiroshima bombing seventy-nine years ago yesterday considering those who survived the flash shielded by some arbitrary cast of shadow jumping to fifty years ago today Philippe Petit who danced a tensile line between World Trade Towers gazing down into a gawking… Read more →
after Vasilisa at the Hut of Baba Yaga by Ivan Bilibin Before, my torch, a mouthful of engorged lightning bugs carving radiance into the soft pink of my cheek— how curious must a creature be to know what lies beyond the body: lichen armoring the striped trees, pickpocket ferns yearning for the hem of a skirt—I am the greenest of… Read more →
How very like a machine, Christmas, inventions, the earth understood and conquered, fragile as the James Webb telescope. The photographs pink and alive, the formation of minerals adding up to, eventually, breath or soul. God. How many thousands of years would it take for a machine to live. How many gods are transplanted, like cactus, full of barbs and teeth…. Read more →
the sound of salesmen laughing ellipses in emails unexpected crunching under foot the complaints of computers unplugged too soon green-grown color of mold on white sliced bread the speckle of skin scarred by sharp nails and zealous fingers when tweezers fail unsolicited greeting cards from estranged relatives phone calls at night signaling an end of cards setting alarms on Sunday… Read more →
Two poles in the sea. I watch my brother pass between them – water taking his death down to where unpredictable currents pull surface swells apart. Deeply tethered into sand the poles tilt as though bent by the ocean’s solipsistic tides. Two sentinel legs resisting erosion’s salt chaft . Clouds like wet holes pierce the stormy sky, moodiness receding into… Read more →