Celebrating 15 Years
As through a prism, the city shifts
to rainbow. We cross into technicolor,
Castro Street
October 25, 2021
Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings
Poetry Recordings
My Body as the George Washington Bridge All Lit Up at Midnight
October 25, 2021
Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Issues, Poetry Recordings
|
434 wires unlock the land |
limbs sling across the chasm |
Appetite
October 25, 2021
Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Issues, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry Recordings
Emerging from her cocoon without a mouth,
the luna moth climbs onto a stem to unfurl
and dry her wings. She’ll find a mate tonight.
There will be no kiss. There will be no taste.
There will be no speech or song. After midnight
the still, silent couple will join like drops of rain.
Mercy
October 25, 2021
Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings
I’m facing two stone walruses in a Platz near the death trap,
the death trap a life trap now, there’s no one out.
What do walruses dream under a socialist—now
capitalist—regime? I teem with desire. Teem.
Uwi
October 25, 2021
Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry, Poetry Recordings
Uwi verb
to go back to your residence.
One word, meaning to return,
not just anywhere, but home.
Three Sunrises to Ouranopolis
October 25, 2021
Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings
I rode a slow bus out of blackness.
Five a.m. in northern Greece.
The language, blurry and mumbled.
I paid pastel money for a bus
ticket to Ouranopolis whose name
means “City of Heaven.”
Misdirection
April 26, 2021
Fiction, Issue 21, Issue 21 Fiction, Issues, Poetry Recordings
For years, I have tried to describe the light: the dry, dry gold; the purple peaks of our horizon; the long-armed valleys sliding off the peaks. Craters tinseled after frost, glaciers before the recent years of drought. Late-afternoon glow over brown dirt walls, valley floors blasting green with sugar, and the black volcanic rock of the single mountain without snow. Light like liquid gold against the brown, radiant gold drizzled across the ridges.
And then I try to name a lack of light, the mist that isn’t gray and isn’t white and isn’t rain. Light through fog, light instead of fog, fog instead of light. The sparkle of dew along a leaf, even when it seems there isn’t any light at all. Light, and not-light, that you can get lost in. Light that misleads you, leads you on. The flicker of a flashlight through tent walls.
Bird Man
April 26, 2021
Issue 21, Issue 21 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings
“You were only waiting for this moment to be free.”
Lennon/McCartney, “Blackbird”
As a Bronx kid at a homeless shelter, he watched
a peregrine falcon devour a pigeon on the windowsill,
and what began in violence leapt to awe,
and awe begat beauty.
Cento for Surrender
April 26, 2021
Issue 21, Issue 21 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings
Nostalgia is a well-
intentioned wound,
you have to hold
it in mind all at once—
you have to need it
enough. I’ve been
The Good Donkey
April 26, 2021
Fiction, Issue 21, Issue 21 Fiction, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry Recordings
I am not pleased. Paint is dripping down my hoof and the colors are muddled together. I shouldn’t complain. I agreed to it, of course.
Hafiz is putting together a zoo. And he asked me to be the zebra.
“You’re a very good donkey, habibi,” he told me three days ago, “but the border is closed, and everyone says prices for using the smuggling tunnels have gone up. I can’t afford the zebra in Damascus, and the one in Cairo is twice that price.” He gestured wildly, scattering my oats. What a waste.
I don’t know much about borders, but I would do anything for Hafiz. He is more than a father to me.
