By Terrance Hayes You can be a bother who dyes his hair Dennis Rodman blue in the face of the man kneeling in blue in the face the music of his wrist- watch your mouth is little more than a door being knocked out of the ring of fire around the afternoon came evening’s bell […]
by Honor Moore Brink of September. Mountains rise as I drive. I enter where they are highest, where clear springs wash trunks of spruce, where white everlastings splash dusk-dark meadows, where north means wild. Lake ringed with mountains. I shout, hear it back, back. I do not imagine in days I will touch your face, […]
by Nathalie Handal My cousin the Army Captain didn’t say much, then one day he wrote to her: Didn’t I adore you harder than silence? Didn’t you know I kept trying to reach you but kept appearing on the other side of wherever I wasn’t? Didn’t you know I tore time into pieces
By Richard Blanco O say, can you see us by the dawn of our ancestors’ light still breathing through the cities we forged from the wind of our wills, drenched in the rain of our dusty sweat, and christened for the faith gleaming in our saints’ starry eyes: San Francisco, San Antonio, San Diego? O […]
by Kwame Dawes I imagine there is a place of deep rest—not in the resting but after, when the body has forgotten the weight of fatigue or of its many betrayals—how unfair that once I thought it clever to blame my body for the wounds in me: the ankle bulbous and aching, the heaviness in […]
by Stephanie Burt The many- oared asters are coracles; the goldenrod pods, triremes. They do not plan their voyages to please us. The tangle of brambles and drupes shifts only slightly when the wind attempts to
by Joy Harjo We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves. We were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike. It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight. Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We […]
by Ellen Bass So this is what I’m here for, to see inside the mute weight of my right breast, heavy handful of treasure I longed for as a girl when I cried behind the curtain in the Guerlaine sisters’ corset shop. Those tender spinsters could hardly bear my tears, as they adjusted the straps on a padded lace […]
by Maggie Smith If you drive past horses and don’t say horses you’re a psychopath. If you see an airplane but don’t point it out. A rainbow, a cardinal, a butterfly. If you don’t whisper-shout albino squirrel! Deer! Red fox! If you hear a woodpecker and don’t shush everyone around you into silence. If you […]
by Joy Harjo Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop. Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control. Open the door, then close it behind you. Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean. Give it back with gratitude.
