I didn’t know we lived a few counties
south from where Frederick Douglass stood
half-naked, one shirt for a whole winter.
His hands smaller than my brother’s
who took all the jokes on the school bus
(poetry)
Tag: Poetry
how many egrets lost footing in the candles of your chest,
syllables broken by rust?
(poetry/ No Place is Foreign)
This is the first in our Palestinian Voices series, featuring work by Palestinian writers and artists, including people who are part of the Palestinian diaspora.
The dignified broadcaster on TV smiled. “The boy’s mouth is now a restricted military zone,” he announced.
(Palestinian Voices/ Translations)
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)
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)
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)
Nothing is so dangerous as a news report wherein Palestinians die in the passive voice, the horrific violence massaged into meaningless oblivion, the perpetrators somehow irrelevant.
Some art just makes you think instantly of the seven deadly sins. Not because they traffic in, say, lust, but because they arouse feelings in you with such painful precision that it seems some dark magic has occurred.
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
I hope the water of Lake Michigan knows the water of your body like kin. I hope there is soil under your nails, that the light of necessary fires burns luminous in your corneas.
Between us – a screen, a thirty-minute flight, / the friendly/ uncaring world, / car crashes, NATO drills
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
I tasted only / freedom, opportunity, knew little of /
all the difficult work my body would / endure to exist here, examine patriotism.
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
in America under a big chandelier that fills my chest with ice
Blond women selling their hair injure their faces to produce
an altered shapeliness, their lips a pert woodland scene
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
how anne frank would’ve been a belieber
& ur body beneath all those clothes
the color of my skin being important
to everyone but me
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
I am longleaf pine, soybean
and cotton fields. I am not American.
(poetry)
a dandelion doesn’t remember
when it sprouted
or how it ended up
in this yard.
(poetry/translations)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Like a twig afloat on a sea of dirty towels, the feeling inside me, laid out on the countertop of my soul, filleted and sweating in the humid air. And yet, wonder eludes the twirling gearhulk of my heart.
Hawk is an everyman, a representative of everyone human. And—like Christian in John Bunyan’s moral allegory A Pilgrim’s Progress, like Dante in The Divine Comedy—Hawk is on a journey to the Godhead.
Even a Banyan tree lives longer than an emperor.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
We each take what we can / from the angels that visit us.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
It is disrespectful to sleep over the stones / of the insane without dreaming our dreams.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
as if it matters / that you drowned in freshwater, tap water, or first / in yourself.
(poetry)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Yesterday’s rosy cheeks we thought would stay. / Today our hair has turned more and still more gray.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“I wish I could once again see / your benches where the weary come to sit / and watch their burdens bloom into butterflies.”
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“For once, I don’t want to call love a feral cat; / I want to forgive myself the way water / forgives everything.”
where were you // when you heard it / who were you with / what did it make you feel
All that’s left of the baby is the rattle. / All that’s left of the granny is her knitting.
Another Chicago Magazine 