You fitted so snugly
through the window I opened wide for you.
Then you shut it with a bang giving me your back.
The shards, too small, took forever to gather.
I put them in that wooden bowl you made.
Then I bought shatter-proof glass,
lined it with black blinds that do not open,
so that I will never be tempted
to open the window again.
Makhosazana Xaba is the author of These Hands and Tongues of Their Mothers.
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CONSTANTINE CONTOGENIS
I’m just trying, wretch that I am, to put my life together. / Now, had the ruling gods bothered, they could have / made a fourth, who was good. / I’d have followed him, with pleasure.
PETER FILKINS
pissarro is dead cézanne too / swept away like willowed flotsam / that brute degas gone as well / chafing tides the sea of years // long ago battles fought discarded / ballast tossed from fame’s balloon / rising like heat and the unheard prices / feeding straw to the fires of need // for more garden cuttings variants
This forest is named for the first head of the National Forest Service, who warned of assuming natural resources were inexhaustible, who said without conservation we pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure, who asked if these resources were for the benefit of us all or for the use and profit of a few? He was also a leading eugenicist.
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