You come to a clearing like the knoll before the ancient temple in Bar’am a village emptied of its inhabitants still waiting to return. You reach that grassy open…

  6. With an eight-stringed harp. In the grave Who can give thanks? I will try with my fingers to pluck the chord to please you. Though I have never…

  Mornings I walk among trees, walk away my wanting, long nights, teeth clenched, waiting; stormy nights, light slashes the sky, my body restless, succumbing finally to my own hands,…

  We know only that the curtains fly like sails, the earth keeps spinning, tilts over and back, rains come, leaves shrivel and die, the snow gathers then melts away,…

  He’s gone, the voice says. Before I can ask where to, the call disconnects. I find him sleeping peacefully through the ride on old city roads, the crowd’s whisper…

Tr. from the Galician by Neil Anderson   If I had drunk more milk as a girl the magpies who settle in the brush wouldn’t mock me, the bats wouldn’t…

Tr. from the Galician by Neil Anderson   They don’t build their nest under the roof tiles anymore. They fly circles around the shed, they come and go with mud…

  the washing-machine repairman asks if I’ve saddled my sons with biblical names on purpose the plumber presses me to admire his sculptures the electrician wonders if I have skills…

  We have been Taught that we Must not Speak. We must Not see each other. We Would want to Speak then. And If we want Love from the Father…

The air in a 30-by-30-by-30-foot room weighs a ton. --Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen   Though they’d watched it fill their sails and felt it lash their cheeks, had…

  The path was there before anyone human trod it A random formation in nature On the lofty cross the white-gowned angel lifted her heels At your finger’s touch the…

  Why was my father wearing a blue formal jacket when it was so hot? It was summer in Oklahoma and over a hundred degrees. He wanted to know where…