From OMEN: CALLA LILIES …The last chickadee on earth flies out of your mouth. You are that perfect. So perfect that birds nest in your mouth, and I am a wolf toothed she-beast panting and wild on the shore, blood-driven and stirred. I shred you, a whirlwind in a wheat field. All the seeds […]
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Prelude to a Massacre Twenty men crossing a bridge, into a village, is not a metaphor but prelude to a massacre. Marred by violence my mind begs forgiveness, self-conscious at its pattern of reprise. This old song can’t stop singing itself: If men, Then… The bright clatter of boots on the slats of a bridge, […]
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March 31, 2022 – 12:38 pm
Garden In the first weeks we already knew this was history, that you’d speak of our nakedness, the flat grasses we wove & slipped over each other. First there was wild onion, the sharp tang of shoot & bulb. Later came frills of green leaf, stalks, tips too. Then peaches. Standing together in sunlight, of […]
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AN ERASURE AND FOUND POEM A seagull, all fluffed up, sits at the edge of the pier, chest against the wind. A sharp explosion interrupts its contemplation, the gray water, it spreads its wings. Seagulls don’t know what war is. But after sixteen days, the gulls overcome confusion, learn not to fly too far when […]
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March 22, 2022 – 10:59 pm
OscarDomesticated @OscDomesticated A note from #Mariupol : “Dima, Mom was killed on 9 March 2022. She died quickly. Then the house burnt down. Dima, I’m sorry I didn’t protect her. I buried Mom near the kindergarten” – and the scheme where exactly. It’s so horrible that tears are freezing in the eyes. 2:03 PM · […]
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March 21, 2022 – 10:27 pm
from The Separate Notesbooks: A Mirrored Gallery Pure beauty, benediction: you are all I gathered From a life that was bitter and confused, In which I learned about evil, my own and not my own. Wonder kept seizing me, and I recall only wonder. I asked, how many times, is this the truth of the […]
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Crow, Wheels When the city was destroyed, they started fighting over the cemetery. It was right before Easter and wooden crosses over the freshly dug graves put out their paper blossoms— red, blue, yellow, neon green, orange, raspberry pink. Joyful relatives poured vodka for themselves and for the dead—straight into their graves. And the dead […]
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Grief Runs Untamed In one hand the exiles hold a bundle with a blanket, medicine, and a comb; in the other, a door handle. They attach it to every mountain and wall, hoping the handle will conjure the door that will open and let them in. Through the swamps, down the dirt roads, through the […]
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Letter to a Photojournalist Going In You go to the pain. City after city. Borders Where they peer into your eyes as if to erase you. You go by bus or truck, days at a time, just taking it When they throw you in a room or kick you at your gut. Taking it when […]
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The Migrants in Me Maybe I look as if you could spin a story at me about how threatening and dangerous migrants are, as I neither I nor you would ever dream of upping sticks and living somewhere else and being, you know, a migrant. As if neither I nor you might suddenly find ourselves […]
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