Celebrating 15 Years
Overlook Kentucky
October 29, 2018
Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry
All posts tagged: Poetry
We Used To Call it Puerto Rico Rain
October 29, 2018
Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry
The rain had just finished saying, This block is mine.
The kind of rain where you could sleep through two breakthroughs and still have enough left to belly sing in the ambrosial hour.
Blood pellets in the dusk & dashes of hail were perfect for finding new stashes; that is to say, visitations were never announced.
A broken umbrella handle posed a question by the day care center.
Four Skies
October 29, 2018
Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry
By JOANNA KLINK
What have you, in such indignation, become. Dusty—
a vaulted interior echoing with air, envy, blood.
Vanity’s steady hum. Each wrong done to you
a gate that opens forever into storm. Farewell to cobwebs
swept with water-lights. Farewell to children who smile off
into the distance.
Buscando un árbol que me de sombra
October 29, 2018
Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry
In conversation with A Hill in the South Bronx, by Perla de Leon
Estoy buscando un árbol que me de sombra
Porque el que tengo me lo van a cortar
Coro de bomba
This building stands,
the last tree to be cut down
in a garden of brick and steel
made desert of rubble and dust.
To The Women Who Feel It In Their Bones
October 29, 2018
Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry
Excerpt from a speech given by Don Pedro Albizu Campos, Ponce, Puerto Rico, October 12, 1933:
A people’s sense of unity has to come from women … the woman nurtures the unity of a race, the unity of a civilization, the unity of a people … Puerto Rico will be free, Puerto Rico will be sovereign and independent when the Puerto Rican woman feels free, sovereign and independent. And for the Puerto Rican woman to achieve this unity, she has to feel it in her bones…
4,645+
October 29, 2018
Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry
By MARÍA LUISA ARROYO CRUZADO
June 2018
Ten months ago, rich Puerto Ricans & tourists had the means
to flee first after the hurricane. What about the average María y José?
Where are the names of the dead to make them more human?
Why do the deaths of these U.S. citizens matter less?
Easter, Bonifacio High Street
October 29, 2018
Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry
a “mixed-use development”—huge shopping mall—in Bonifacio Global City, Metro Manila
Between the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and The Body Shop
a station of the Cross. On a trodden lawn browning into
desert, two lines are formed for shoppers to be Christ-like.
Christ-lite, puns the Pinoy. The devout come forward to suffer,
put their suffering on display. They’d strap a stretch of varnished
four-by-four across their shoulders, ropes tied around their wingspan
arms, the weight of sins redeemed by Jesus on his march to Calvary.
After the War, in the West
October 29, 2018
Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry, Translation
Translated by VALZHYNA MORT
Old Lady Gippius
of a tumorous Adam’s apple
from a damned balcony
watches
an officer fool with a puppy.
Hurricanes Irma & María in Puerto Rico
October 29, 2018
Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry
Born near the Cape Verde Islands, Hurricane Irma swished
her skirts of winds & rain, toyed with Puerto Rico,
stole light from 1,000,000 Puerto Ricans, her eye
on Florida. Some say she roared past like a train
When Weathermen Insist Storms are Feminine
October 29, 2018
Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry
they say it’s because they are hard to predict
and even harder to forget
their naming ceremony broadcasted over live feeds, satellite images
insisting she settles on the tongues of both faithful and atheist
