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 …”
Poetry |
“Texas Roaches” & “Inventions”
“What’s dis for? the child inquires, holding out a pair of red tweezers. / The next day, running barefoot through a sprinkler’s spray, a sharp / splinter in her foot supplies the answer, and I try not to look away”
Literature in Translation |
“Canto XXVIII” from Dante Alighieri’s Paradiso
“And when I turned around and my own eyes / Were met with what appears in that vast space / Whenever one looks intently at its circling, // I saw a point that radiated such an intense light / That eyes seared by it are forced to close / Because of its extreme brightness.”
Literature in Translation |
“On Visiting an Absent Taoist Master,” “Endless Longing,” “Drinking Alone by Moonlight” & “Lute Song”
“I try as soul to leap the earth and air between us, but / my dream self can’t get through the gate that marks the Great Divide.”
Poetry |
“Self-Portrait as a Vermeer Painting” & “Self Portrait as an O’Keeffe Flower”
“I was never what the critics proclaimed — / they never touched the core of me, those smug / assumptions …”
Fiction |
“Is Your Heart In It?”
“The dog will be terrified. I’ll grip its lower jaw with my left hand and lift while pressing down on its neck with my right hand. It’s scary for me, too.”
Poetry |
“I tremble sometimes when I remember what that quilt knows” & “What Women Say Only in Quilts”
“Nights and nights at the wooden frame fighting // sleep to finish that quilt — a gift for a couple / whose marriage would last — I fight // for ours”