WHERE ARE YOU FROM? I am a poet from Chicago.If music can be carried place to placeand one constantly moves, it’s hardto hold what is needed. Objects dropfrom my hands. I am from the Americas.You say you have people here? Home to home, each time something islost and almost replaced. A drumbeat continues.Things gathered up…
Blind Date with Salmon and Cultural Differences He buys me an avocado salad and a salmon skewereyes my skewertakes someeven though it’s cooked to death—death as an appetite spoiler: the death of Aristotle,his 16-years old cat when it tried to follow his car,as he was leaving, after dumping it at a farm.“Toronto apartments are too…
Requiem I nurse cold evening in my soft palmeach star drops a haiku that hangs on the treetop, the moon slices into a half, The mirror the old memories the long darknessfall inside and the gas lightshines at the corner of the street, Shooting stars cross the courtyard,the last time whispers forget to stealthe shy…
A Bazaar Scenefrench peta square, Machilipatnam The first tuk tuk un-tucks the village women,arranging the cane baskets of fresh vegetables along the pavement, thefarm-fresh colours smile, like the prisoners being released but,only draw the cow, the same trespasser again they whiskoff she humbly moves to the just arrived Huassain’s pushcart of bananasfor consolation and gets…
A Wind Murmurs I cannot give up on my madness for she will not let me. My body a wavering curtain of decaying flesh, my mind a caged wounded breathless animal. Steeling her shoulders, rooting her feet, she is a tree, gnarled, bare, breathing, letting wan light into the cage like a godly shaft, challenging…
The Ignored Fresco The future of this valley has faced off against the Depressionand it has won the finished product of an education. A man holds up a black sphere to teach its musicand hints within it is a bomb to blow up all ignorance. Two pause in the opening and turn to go down…
At the Nursing Home Offered the old folksmy poems. SaidI hoped we could talk and share. In our circle of chairs, allsat quiet, maybe confusedor shy. ………..Except onewho struggled to speak,lips quivering, his tongueslow, his wordsmisshapen. Still, light shonein his gaze, his fierce intentionto gather the shatters inside,a stutter of something he ached to say….
Nothing but Dust and Ashes INow I adore my days in exile.Everybody expected my stay in hell,My lonely departure to an unknown destination.At the call of winter, my favorite season,I left the stirred land with ShonkoGhosh.I crossed the river of sugarcane,went up-stream and far beyond . Today my exile square is dazzling with distant sunshine.The…
Fallen leaves gather all the way to my doorsteps and all over the deck, some beckoning for a touch. The slightest breeze uncovers new colors. I step over them, they’re still warm inside, won’t break under pressure, yet sing a song of longing to the abandoned branches once heavy with birds’ nests filled with fluttering fledglings; their silent song, a score of a thousand shades, spotted or tainted as though dipped into a watercolor wash, the way paint bleeds over silk paper.
A Recipe for Rotwelsch On the road eternallyescaping to nowhere,relying on zinken* for sustenance,a sign to welcome the stranger,the peddler, tinker, grinder,those with no abode,itinerant speakers who appliedthe lesson of Babel to birtha recipe for an almost language–a sociolect. Equal parts Yiddish, Hebrew,repurposed German,a concoction cooked up to speakopenly in code and safety,a linguistic mixing…
LET IT SOUND We hear a long familiar melody. Let it sound as gratefulness of our breath. Shadow falls from our eyes, my love. Secrets always remain the same. We do not hear the distant roar of gale, tonight. We hear that melody; a tide that tugs at us. The night is calm. Above our…
Tell Me How They Exfoliate Sin Time bending upon cynosureThe waxed heads of clay mothersFingers running about, work overtime.The miniscule and microcosm of their headcountInspiration, warped in amnesiaPreyed about and reined inAmidst folds of archaic reverence.Vexed palms that never rest in the chasm of sleep…. Sluice confetti Upon asbestos roofs washing down the smellOf garlic,…
