Poetry |
“Redwood”
“… and in ten million or so years / I might reach a tablet / inscribed with the poems of Enheduana; / and in another stretch / a bark-cliff-edge leading inside the mind / of Dante.”
Essay |
“My Mother’s Fingers”
“As I learn about her incarceration during World War II, I better understand the anger that she expressed when pain and dysfunction prevented her from sewing and gardening.”
Poetry |
“Mother As Bird” & “Red Tricycle”
“Reflections of clouds and trees / shone on its silver handlebars but only for a moment / before they’d slide away …”
Literature in Translation |
from One Year and Three Months: “The Mystery and the Secret,” “The Truth of Fiction” & “One Year and Three Months”
“I watch her in the mirror / as she arranges her hair / like someone lining up at the boarding gate / in search of her destiny. / I don’t know what her patience promises, / nor what my silence holds.”
Poetry |
“The Cryptid” & “The Loons”
“Drinks blood thinking it wine, / drinks wine thinking it dreams. / Its eyes are tattooed globes. / The cryptid sees through a thousand eyes hidden by fur.”
Lyric Prose |
“Box of Life”
“I slid the spoon in and took my first mouthful — and I froze. I was no longer in our kitchen but standing in the sunny piano room of my mother’s small shingled house on Cape Cod.”
Literature in Translation |
“Speech Therapy,” “Two Stars” & “Jay”
“As a child, he stuttered / terribly, hid behind others, / spoke indistinctly. // They sent him as expected / first to a speech therapist, / then to a drama club.
Poetry |
“Her Turquoise Eye Shadow” & “Poem”
“Nothing was open at the airport / all fifteen or so people / early to their flights / just kinda looked through / the slats to the combination / gift shop Dunkin Donuts.”
Poetry |
The Poets of Martha’s Vineyard, part II
“There is warmth in the flash / of his smile. I am Syrian, he tells me. It is all one country, Lebanon, Syria, / Jordan except for those damned Turks, / it would still be one country.”
Poetry |
“Everything Else Can Wait”
“No perfect couple / right off the cake. / No swollen uncontested // years, wings bent / and tattered by the cat.”
Poetry |
“The Heart of Humanity” & “The Perils of Not Dreaming”
“Why are the unwaveringly humane / harder to find than those in stasis on a boulder / with eyes unblinking?”
Poetry |
“Prognosis” & “Yearbook”
“It doesn’t seem fair that we only get one / for what are probably some / of the worst / years of our lives.”
Literature in Translation |
from The Story of the Marquis de Cressy, a novel by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni,
“The marquis, accustomed to having his desires anticipated, could not stand this kind of scorn from a girl who seemed to have no reason to display such pride.”
Poetry |
“Of Cypresses”
“Jagged stone walls look as if ravaged by storms, / though the cypresses remain upright. // I must begin again to say what I see / and not use the rotted names.”
Literature in Translation |
“blazing cities,” “page blank” & “moment of silence”
“while night and day / cities flicker on under the stars / while things go swimmingly in Amsterdam / I doubt Ghouta / could present you a single dewy lawn / or Gaza …”