Valery's "cemetery by the sea," Sète, France / Photo by Mathieu / Flickr
An Encouragement
by Yoo An-Jin
“The wind is rising!We must try to live!”So said Paul Valéry.How shall I adopt that Frenchman’s…
Poetry
For more, read Daniel Simon’s interview with Ted Kooser, “Starving for Order.” The Constellation I was on my way home from a party,ten-thirty, a dark winter night, no stars,a few snowflakes drifting…
Photo: Ath-Har Saeed / Flickr I play on the water. It’s not completely necessary or required, but things flow under the treeslike a gentle melody. Day unto dayuttereth more lo…
Mona Nicole Sfeir, The Maps of Our Making (detail), 2015, acrylic, chalk, collage on canvas. Political maps are human constructs that have continuously changed since the first maps were scratched ont…
Photo: Daniel Ebneter/Flickr Crossroads All winter I didn’t write a poem, and I didn’t remembereven one dream that I dreamt. I left a houseand a wife, rented an apartment, and everything I neededI fo…
Photo: Daniel Simon Egret The bird was just searchingfor food not metaphors –or taking rest from a day’s flight It was dusk after all and its ancestorswho might have crossed the MiddlePassage, crosse…
Satiro della Valle, Capitoline Museums, Rome Эти бездонные ночи в июле Эти бездонные ночи в июле, О!Ты вопрошаешь: — Меня обманули? — Да, — отвечаю, — но как! Лучше не спрашива…
Photo courtesy of the authorI.A mark across the body. The morning I watched my beloved uncle disappear down the alley. His car left sitting in our yard for thirty days. This tattoo we…
Norman Akers (Osage), The Gathering (2012), lithograph, 22 3/4 x 16 3/8 in / Courtesy of the artist (normanakers.com) Summers we lie out on the hot porchpalms splayed— raising flames from ra…
Tony Tiger (Sac & Fox / Muscogee),Intertribal / Courtesy of the artist(facebook.com/tony.tiger.5268) I Mix cultures of homeWest Africa West Indies disrupted along slave tradeFrench and S…
Photo: Ruth Ellison/Flickr for someone who’s been delayedon a cold, gray, rainy daytakes me backto that little girl waiting in the cold car with the littler onesas the night took over the skywhile he…
Photo: David Hepworth/Flickr i pull my brothers from words, stupid injun, shot like bullets. when people ask why my brothers hated school i say: the spirit remembers what it’s like to be lef…
Photo: Jin Choi/Flickr All the mangoes I’ve tastedin California were imported and lost their true flavors in transit. And, even though all the mangoes I’ve enjoyed in Hawai’i were homegrown and ripen…
Photo: Jake Bellucci/Flickr What holds water in a droptension that holds humans in between their sweet skins water holds usher arms baystide of bloodbeat so close just our skins betweenhome and oce…
Photo: WerbeFabrik/Pixabay A bottom-lit sea ponders the lake’s questions,their secret conversations thatch howls to whimpers exhaled from an isthmus of drowned wolves. Its glossary’s cataclysms smoo…
Photo: Mark Brodie/Pixabay between landscape and the female body:earth sand stones plants flowers blood a silhouette digging molding carving space visible & tactile between the body…
Photo: Granger Meador/Flickr Our stuck tongues screamed louder In Alabama, words hung in a rhythm Reservation hands could basket Tied back rocks rose, picked Tarnished cigarettes unsupervised Betwe…
Marwin Begaye (Diné), Riders of the Storm II, lithograph, 15 x 22 in / Courtesy of the artist (@m.begaye2015) That day my guardian angel was cast out,she responded, “Fine, your heaven is too bougie,a…
Photo: HeinerTenz/Pixabay Daybreak After the watch, dorveille,pin-prick of stud in sky,before that six a.m.first warbler wake-up callfrom elm above the deck,in dream a wife no longeranswers…
Kim Shuck, Warrior Trout (2016), 15/0 glass seed beads on brain-tanned hide, 9 x 2.5 in / Courtesy of the artist and Doug Salin Photography Memory spirits give me days full of Words I’ve forgotten or…
Photo: David Cantu/Flickr Brother piles sand on his pregnant girlfriend’s belly. On her sandy stomach I draw a belly button. Soon it will be dusk and the last surfers in the distance will disappear …
Photo: Dan Zen/Flickr I think they know – about every leaf I’d catch to peel from my tongue. It spoke to how good I was at being alone. This morning I sit in the still kitchen, rued by autumn passing…
Photo: Mike Charest/Flickr That slick envelope of developed film is tumbled in a storage closet next to old seating charts and a stale granola bar in foil. In one of the frames, faces are locked in a…
Photo: George Moga No. Nothing. Nothing on a really tall chair; a chair with very long legs; up to the sky, which was empty. And down fell fragrance; fragrance of flowers, although there were no fl…
December 5th 2016 / No Spiritual Surrender by Zoë Marieh Urness (zoeurnessphoto.com), taken at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, North Dakota there are persons who delight in human suffe…
December 12, 2023
October 24, 2023
