Reverent

Cold Solace

When my mother died,

one of her honey cakes remained in the freezer.

I couldn’t bear to see it vanish,

so it waited, pardoned,

in its ice cave behind the metal trays

for two more years.

 

On my forty-first birthday

I chipped it out,

a rectangular resurrection,

hefted the dead weight in my palm.

...

Anna Belle Kaufman

Other

1

 

Men prefer an island

With its beginning ended:

Undertones of waves

Trees overbended.

 

Men prefer a road

Circling, shell-like

Convex and fossiled

Forever winding inward.

 

Men prefer a woman

Limpid in sunlight

Held as a shell

On a...

Dorothy Livesay

God the Tea Master

All the weapons we marshal to confront the day

You ask to be left by the door before entering.

The sword in its sheath must lie on the grass,

the quiver and bow hung off a branch.

Daily mind, that dons the armour of thought,

does not shed the weaponry easily; too many are the tasks

that require its particularity – its thrust-and-jab...

Sally Ito
1964

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

My grandmother puts her feet in the sink

                  of the bathroom at Sears

to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,

wudu,

because she has to pray in the store or miss

the mandatory prayer time for Muslims

She does it with great poise, balancing

herself with one plump matronly arm

against the...

Mohja Kahf

My sister cries the sea

My sister is crying and crying

her tears grow to salt stormy showers

to rain and to rapids and rivers

they run to the sea to the sea.

 

My sister sobs softly she knows

she listens at shells and the shoals

she hears from fish sleeping at nightfall

she gathers from mushrooms and moulds.

 

Hears walking...

Pamela Mordecai

Ideas of Home

              i

 

Winter has landed; my boot bucks on a stone

surrounded by snow; I swear, I murmur

Oracabessa. “The rock” is what I call home,

all islanders do, and I’m in blessed Ann Arbour,

mainland, where I found safe harbour under

green sea of trees now becalmed, frosted.

Ideas of Oracabessa propel me forward

...

Lorna Goodison

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They...

James Wright
1927

Glass Hands: A Eulogy on the Anniversary of the Pandemic

Hands pressed to glass

 

On the...

El Jones

The Bow

I only know rivers

 

Waters elongated to the unrumpled recitatif

of endless land

The Bow knows

Has tongued and grooved the firmament, baby,

of this Last Best

 

The Bow knows

Stoney and Sarcee

The Bow knows Blood

The Buffalo spilled beyond its banks

 

The Bow knows Crowfoot...

Bertrand Bickersteth

Planet Earth

It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,

has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness;

and the hands keep on moving,

smoothing the holy surfaces. 

              ‘In Praise of Ironing’, Pablo Neruda

 

It has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens,

the way she moves her hands...

P. K. Page
1916-2010

Holy Ghost

 

We had no paper

then, or we had

 

no pen, or no words. How

to say it. We had

 

no voice. No listeners.

Just deaf night

 

and the flames that chased us

up the stairs, that

 

found us

panting, singed. There was

 

no story then, no

greater...

Deanna Young
1964

from Cross River . Pick Lotus

9

 

How to describe sea

To someone who’s never seen it?

 

He lives to ninety-nine, he wants it, to see it

To walk on its glass surface, to blow the seven trumpets.

 

At this joyous moment gigantic angel wings

Write prophecy all over the sky. How can I tell him 

 

About sea storms, the chocking...

Zhang Er
1960

Praying Herd: For Safe Journey

Draw a line through our scattered bodies. The pattern of fallen calves in this meadow will mirror

the constellation above. Look up. We whip our tails to a silent song:

 

We sing to the moon, ask for wings to lift our flock to heaven;

We plead to the moon, since she will take pity;

We beg of the moon since she changes, as our circumstance must also...

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

From The First Water is the Body

2345*.

The river is my sister—I am its daughter.

It is my hands when I drink from it,

my own eye when I am weeping,

and my desire when I ache like a yucca bell

in the night. The river says, Open your mouth to me,

and I will make you more.

 

Because even a river can be lonely,

            ...

Natalie Diaz

On My Tongue

Bismillah is my first memory.

 

I became a bird in the Qur’an

at hardly eight years old.

 

I opened the dark green cover

and revealed the slippery

 

two hearts: Arabic

and its English translation.

 

On Saturdays, I learned to repeat

passages in Arabic,

 

to...

Alycia Pirmohamed

voyage, oh voyage!

voyage, oh voyage!

the final fire that ravages the air

unveils the soil on which

we walk aimlessly

and tirelessly

 

the hypocrisy of the strong protects us

from home. I prefer leaves

yellowed by the rain to false

victories

 

so I listen to the wind. It's good to live

where there's...

Etel Adnan
1925-

Filament

Always that spectral fragment. Filament of line cast back there.

Where open-mouthed fish rise to gulp down shiny lures.

 

I sang once in an auditorium to almost empty rows.

I looked for my people in the seats, under the seats, behind

the seats, but they weren’t there. I called the three people

who were there to come up and introduce...

Armand Garnet Ruffo

bhater mondo