Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
I recently learned that Björk is a common girl’s name in Sweden, and it also means birch.Once, some students were playing a game in which they namedeach of their professors after a singer or a band; and I got Björk.I was amused, and wondered: did it mean they imagined mewith a live swan draped around …
The penitent must perform certain acts besides prayer—good works and pilgrimages— to receive an indulgence. Even after forgiveness through confession, you’re toldmore is needed to restore the soul; hence, the indulgence.This can sound confusing, even a little bit medieval, especiallywhen taking into account modern meanings of indulgence.Even more confusing are those Catholic prayers called ejaculations:utterances …
Lately it’s been hard to feel inspired. Every taste is chalky, every meal uninspired. Fruit spoils fast, the bread won’t rise. The air smells oily, stale, uninspired. The soup is bland as the window view. Fingers trail no shapes in dust, uninspired. Sleep is late, is hard to come by. Dreams dissolve—unremembered, uninspired. In the …
City dweller, town-dweller. Civilian as private individual, not soldier or civil officer. Inhabitant of a country: not an alien, but a citizen. Other early roots point to defenses built around community: walled towns with battlements and watchtowers, a night watch of citizens. In the ’70s, during the years of fabricated emergency and Martial Law, we …
I dig out a bag of meat—sliced rounds of beef rescued from an age of freezer burn. Now I have to figure out how to make them tender. There’s no meat tenderizer among my kitchen tools. I can’t pound pieces on a cutting board, imagining my enemies, to make the fibers tender. Home cooks’ remedies …
At the all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue, the TV above the bar shows a bevy of girls in mini skirts and Santa hats with that glow on their faces called glass skin. They romp and sing on loop, wink, toss their hair, and never seem to break a sweat. Their cheeks have the sheen of peach or …
I can’t remember the name of the girl in high school who tried to convince us to smoke by saying “It’s just like inhaling paper.”After school, we’d walk to Session Road and try to get into GingerbreadFolkhouse, where college kids drank beer and passed around rolling papers.A group would sit around in their denim bell-bottoms, …
I know my mother’s mother only by her old-fashioned name, like a flower or a sweet twist of bread. She died in the war that came to our islands, but mercifully wasn’t taken by force as many young girls were— marched away in that war at the thrust of bayonet points while brothers, fathers and …
Either a rift or a consummation: the cinematic deployments of rain. That hidden country of scent, triggered by heat in the earth and imminent rain. The dark hem of approaching clouds unrolling over vineyards, delivering rain. Think of the lakes’ silvery fingers combing through cool tresses of rain. In cities, cars drown in flooded tunnels. …
Dear tufted seed lying in the maw of thunder, I raise my cup to be blessed. Which isn’t the same as raising my right hand to swear allegiance. A hall filled with immigrants like me lined up in the spring cold, on the sidewalk. Some clutched little flags, craned toward the endpoint of fearing allegiance. …