Poetry
Eating Phở with My Grandpa
Nod
I’m ashamed I miss the congregationthe teamwork cheering the Lord’s descent setting us apartchosen as we are I miss the altar the laying of hands the suturing the melodies that vindicate howsoever we needin the hour we bleat like sheep confused & loosed into the blur I want to be among them again nodding bonded by certainty that I’m in the worldbut not of …
The Buses of Montevideo
This special bilingual feature by Jesse Lee Kercheval is a departure for us, but we agreed with the author that for those with both languages this would be a study not so much in translation but in the dynamic of language variation and nuance that these versions of the poet’s imagination offer us. We hope …
Drought as Desire
orange groves to protectin a land of mini-malls when seasons stopped I accepteddrought as though it were life we had no water we learnedto harvest in thirst
Trade Matters
for a slave to snore in sleepingis counted a very great fault indeed no-one buys an adult slave (domestic—wild from inland is a different matter) the worst is the treacherous weatherthe tedium, the wearisome monotony Note: from Ternate,
View of Toledo
after El Greco Beacons on the skyscrapers hovered,The river’s black mirror jeweled with their lights. Watch as the exotic crosses loomed into viewOn top of the Byzantine church. The sign for Homestead floated overhead,And then a sky as wide as the river valley Working in the darkness in a world of flame,Ladles the Dippers above …
Tangled
Peonies
Now that the garden has been bulldozedby local managers, the jasmine has been put to the ground for now, lest the man in Burgstrasse 19 admirethe scent he feels coming throughthe clear window across the seas. Done with gardenia, I toyed awhile with black-eyed susan (even drank it dry in Kentucky), so that every other yearall would appear to come …
I Was in the Commons Kissing, and Lucy Next to Me Kissing, Too
Both of us under one boy or another.That’s how we spent our senior year,Beacon Hill, Harvard Square,Coolidge Corner, anywherebut Belmont, or Westwood Center. Boylston Street for bongs—Reefer Madness, incense, Yardley’s makeovers,buffalo leather toe sandals—her baby was bornwith encephalocele. While I held her,I hoped she’d die, though tried to love her,four months, she didn’t grow—Lucy rocking her,cooing, passers-by …