I was so small, so very much afraid.
I prayed my father might turn into light.
There was no price that I would not have paid
to pray the way the light knelt down and prayed.
I prayed that I might learn to be like light,
but I was small, and very much afraid,
and he stayed silent. Was I badly made?
His violin made sound turn into light,
and there’s no price that I would not have paid
to hear him play Thais each night. He made
it sound as though the bow was made of light.
Still I was small, and very much afraid
when he got mad and broke the things he’d made.
He tried and tried so hard to do things right,
and there’s no price that he would not have paid
to sit with me at dusk and watch light fade.
Both of us were made from that same light,
And there’s no price we two would not have paid—
we who were small and very much afraid.
Copyright © 2016 by Marilyn Krysl. Originally published in December in 2016. Used with permission of the author.
Copyright © 2017 by John Koethe. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 20, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
Tiger beetles, crickets, velvet ants, all
know the useful friction of part on part,
how rub of wing to leg, plectrum to file,
marks territories, summons mates. How
a lip rasped over finely tined ridges can
play sweet as a needle on vinyl. But
sometimes a lone body is insufficient.
So the sapsucker drums chimney flashing
for our amped-up morning reveille. Or,
later, home again, the wind’s papery
come hither through the locust leaves. The roof
arcing its tin back to meet the rain.
The bed’s soft creak as I roll to my side.
What sounds will your body make against mine?
Copyright © 2015 by Jessica Jacobs. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 8, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
in the divorce i separate to two piles books: english love songs: arabic
my angers my schooling my long repeating name english english arabic
i am someone’s daughter but i am american born it shows in my short memory
my ahistoric glamour my clumsy tongue when i forget the word for [ ] in arabic
i sleep unbroken dark hours on airplanes home & dream i’ve missed my
connecting flight i dream a new & fluent mouth full of gauzy swathes of arabic
i dream my alternate selves each with a face borrowed from photographs of
the girl who became my grandmother brows & body rounded & cursive like arabic
but wake to the usual borderlands i crowd shining slivers of english to my mouth
iris crocus inlet heron how dare i love a word without knowing it in arabic
& what even is translation is immigration without irony safia
means pure all my life it’s been true even in my clouded arabic
Copyright © 2017 by Safia Elhillo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 13, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
From Personae by Ezra Pound, copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this poem may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publisher.
Be in me as the eternal moods
of the bleak wind, and not
As transient things are –
gaiety of flowers.
Have me in the strong loneliness
of sunless cliffs
And of grey waters.
Let the gods speak softly of us
In days hereafter,
The shadowy flowers of Orcus
Remember Thee.
This poem is in the public domain.
there are the stars
and the sickle stare
of the moon
there are the frogs
dancing in the joy
of the ditch and the crickets
serenading everything
there are the trees
and the huge shadow
of the wind whispering
the old hymns of my childhood
and of course, there are the stars again.
winking at me like a curious woman.
i am learning to breathe.
From A Jury of Trees (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe and Letras Latinas, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Andrés Montoya. Used with the permission of Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe.
i have found
the face
of story
lying again.
i’m tired.
i’m a moth
on sunday.
i’m rain
looking
for a cup’s
crippled rim.
this is my decision:
blindfolded
i will look for truth
in the rough skin
of wood
sticking up
at the sky
from the largest hill
at the dump,
in the sound
of a car
on its way
to church,
in the smell
of beans
boiling away
into the night.
From A Jury of Trees (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe and Letras Latinas, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Andrés Montoya. Used with the permission of Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe.
the night swoons
to the hip-hop
of gunshots
and stars.
a young woman’s teeth
challenge
everything
about sorrow’s suitcase
of explanations
and i am learning to hope
like a bird
learns
its first
affair
with wind
and sun
like an orange
learns
to take flight
into the mouth
of a boy
in summer.
the trees are prophesying.
the mountains are waiting
for the long trek to the sea
and the sea
waits
like a lover
anticipating the kiss
of three thousand
lost kisses.
the night swoons
and the trees
begin their blue-black
dance
in the wind.
From A Jury of Trees (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe and Letras Latinas, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Andrés Montoya. Used with the permission of Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe.
“God is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.” —Borges 1. The peony, which was not open this morning, has opened, falling over its edges like the circumference of God, still clasped at the center: my two-month-old daughter’s hand in Palmer reflex, having endured from the apes: ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, clutching for fur. Her face is always tilted up when I carry her, her eyes, always blue. She is asking nothing of the sky, nothing of the pileated woodpeckers, their directionless wings, directed bodies, the unmoved moving. 2. Hold still, song of the wood thrush, twin voice boxes poised, smell of the creek and the locust flowers, white as wafers on the branches, communion: pistil, stamen, bee. Hold still. She doesn’t say a word. 3. When we eat, what we eat is the body of the world. Also when we do not eat. She is asking the sky for milk. Take and eat, we tell her, this is my body which is given for you, child, who are here now, though you were not, though you will be old then absent again: sad to us going forward in time but not back. Not sad to you at all. The peony whose circumference is nowhere, you, whose head now is weighted to my chest, the creek stringing lights along next to us, the peony which has opened.
Copyright © 2017 by Leah Naomi Green. Originally published in Pleiades, Summer 2017. Used with permission of the author.