By CLARA CHIU
Photo courtesy of author.
Amherst, Massachusetts
I. Tablecloth Winter
We are holding the edges of the fabric,
throwing the center into the air.
& even in dusk this cloth
billowing over our heads
makes a souvenir of home:
mother & child in snowglobe.
Yet we are warm here, beneath
this dome, & what light slips through
drapes the dining room white.
By AIDAN COOPER
Photo courtesy of author.
Boston, MA
After Frank O’Hara
Father’s Day, it’s 8 a.m. & I’m late on the road
to Boston because I drooled too much sleeping
I’m driving to a Red Sox game, yes I’ll go
because my dad at one point liked the pitcher
& the tank’s too full to not go
when I reach the MFA beehiving with students
I wonder what’s on & it’s Van Gogh’s Roulin Family Portraits
& I want to park there in case I have time to peruse
but it’s 50 bucks & I’m seeing my family anyway
so I circle Huntington until I find an empty spot
on Parker & it’s Sunday so I’m off the hook
& I don’t thank God pay a thing
Photos courtesy of author.
Florida
After the Storm
(after Donald Justice)
I will die in Portland on an overcast day,
The Willamette River mirroring clouds’
Bleak forecast and strangers not forgetting—
Not this time—designer raincoats in their closets.
They will leave for work barely in time
To catch their railcars. It will happen
On a day like today. Florida’s winter
Brings the satisfaction of sunlit goosebumps
As I read on the veranda wondering whether
To retrieve a sweater. I’m learning
Of life’s many versions of triviality,
Which merely manage to repeat themselves.
Pictou County, Nova Scotia, Canada
Lint blue thunder flavors the memory. The waves are enormous, curling up high and mighty like Caribou antlers. In hindsight: Why are we at the beach during a thunderstorm? But back then, in all of my five year old wisdom: The water is so warm and excited to see me.
The power went out for three days during one hurricane or another. My niece was only a baby, my mom and sister murmuring about warming the milk. Everybody crowded together onto a bed, every blanket in the house employed. I thought it was wonderful. I remember standing in the middle of the street, the wind tearing straight through me. I watched my red hat get sucked up and away into the grey, watched trees flail, calm as a clam, as a strange and lonely little girl transfixed, like watching a snow globe from the inside. The Ship Hector crept up onto Caladh Avenue and my mother finally burned the candle. Life went on.
A Mathematical Formula for Continuing
I’m asking for a new geography,
something beyond the spiritual.
Tell me again, about that first
drive up Appalachian slopes
how you knew on sight these hills
could be home. I want
When the whales wash up on shore, my friend grieves. I feel it too, but it feels further away. Deep in me, treading water, legs furiously churning under the surface. The first whale washes up on the oceanfront, just off the boardwalk. People drive out to stare at it. Its dark wet form deflates into the sand. I don’t drive to find it but think of it all day.
I scroll through the Facebook comments that claim it’s all the fault of the offshore windmills, the sonic waves mapping the ocean floor pummeling through the ocean. Everybody seems to have watched the same hoax-y documentary funded by the oil industry. But of course, it’s the boats. The whales scarred and torn up by container ships. 165,000 tons of steel running into migration paths.
Author’s Note:
Cold War divided Berlin haunted me growing up because it was a place where history was unavoidably visible, and when I lived there for two-and-a-half years as a student in the 1990s, I was always watching and trying to document the city’s rapid changes after the Wall fell. In 2022 a cousin found an advertisement on Ebay from circa 1939 that showed images of the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station from my great-grandfather’s glass factory in Waldenburg (now Wałbrzych, Poland). I’m still processing what it means to have my family history connected to a place that is a central, broken image of Berlin and so crucial to the imagination of the Cold War, particularly at a time when we in the U.S. are (or should be) thinking about what the world looks like when democracy yields to authoritarianism.
Photo courtesy of author.
Berlin, Germany
Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, April 1939
We were successful in securing major commissions—for the Reichsbahn–
underground station Potsdamer Platz and Anhalter–Bahnhof—and in
fulfilling them on time. Such large-scale projects are crucial for breaking
fresh ground for sales of Opaxit glass.
—Annual Report of the Schlesische Spiegelglas Manufaktur
Carl Tielsch G.m.b.H., 1938
Poems by S. VIJAYALAKSHMI, KUTTI REVATHI, and PUTHIYAMAADHAVI
Translated by THILA VARGHESE
A farm in Tamil Nadu, India. Photo by Flickr user Emily Abrams.
Mullai Nilam (The forest and pastoral region)
Forest Fire
By Vijayalakshmi
My forest is on fire,
and a solar sphere explodes within.
Chicago, Illinois
things break. The last time, on the last day, the pipes in the kitchen burst and flooded my parents’ blonde wood floor. When I’m up in that 87th floor apartment, I look at the sky’s blank expression. I keep the little square office window open for the sliver of nature. It’s hard to read with Fox News blaring, so I drift from room to room.
Each time before I fly to Chicago, I lose my debit card. This time it leapt out of my raincoat pocket on my way to the grocery store and refused to reappear. I had the new one shipped straight to the Hancock.
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