how many egrets lost footing in the candles of your chest,
syllables broken by rust?
(poetry/ No Place is Foreign)
Category: Poetry
Man’s resentment at her for being torn in half, forced to share his Maker’s image but not enough to spare. He wept petitions in the lap of Tigris and Euphrates, “Please, please!” he moaned, “She’s too singular to be understood!”
(poetry)
My mother insisted
til the day she died
that I was born at a very early age
I still don’t know if I believe that
(poetry)
The song might be the length it took for a historic city to be destroyed (twenty-two minutes) one February evening.
Who collects the snow globes of war and of fathers?
A collection of snow globes, each says “it is snowing.”
(poetry)
if the Earth would just split in two
& one half would take its leave
I’d take a seat on the other half
& absorb the blue skies above
(translations/poetry)
Farmwork required
strong hands and body
not the somersaults
of ABCs in the mind.
(No Place is Foreign)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
exhausted like a French arthouse film
there’s always a male and female lead
reuniting for us
(TCTC translations/poetry)
to know everything
and understand everything
doesn’t guarantee I’ll be able to tell the difference between poisonous and edible
(No Place is Foreign/ translations)
The man
With the cash in his pocket.
Never less than a couple hundred.
You’d never know with what
He might be armed
At any given moment
Behind the charm.
(No Place is Foreign)
Because these times are fresh paint, fresh wax, fresh garlic. These times are new grass in the same wasteland where every spring new grass grows.
(poetry/translations)
