Karen Friedland: Gone
Gone is the old grove of green trees
…
Gone is the once-young, dancing body I had
Choman Hardi: Homeland, what shall I do with you?
What shall I do with you, homeland?
What shall I do with all this blood?
Where shall I put you
to prevent you from filling my days
with damage and grief?
Video: 12 Zloty
Yael and Nofar were inspired by the eclectic and colorful look of a Polish deli they stumbled upon in Scotland. Wanting to create a story within this setting, they came up with 12 Zloty – a love story about a daydreaming butcher and his favorite customer.
Marco North: The Stairs
Downstairs, there is a pile of kopeks next to the garbage bins. A ruble is far less than a penny, and there are one hundred kopeks to every ruble…. The kopeks are not there to be thrown away. They are for someone who actually needs them. Three hundred of them would buy a potato or two.
Miriam Levine: Beauty Secrets of the Dead
Jen who never read anything
but bills and Sunday papers
comes back from the dead educated.
Baruch November: Beard 18
The Zohar tells us a beard embodies the 13 attributes of mercy and compassion, yet sometimes I care only about myself. I love the snow in its falling, though, I … Continue reading
Elena Karina Byrne: Marlene Dumas : World Evil is Banal
I stood up, willed for nothing. I looked into this liquid mirror until she
looked back & remembered me holding out the scissors like albatross wings
Jason Baldinger: David Ogden Stiers
I can’t come off the night shift schedule
so I get 4 hours sleep a night for a week
drool all day, try not to pass out standing up
god forbid I catch a nap, sleep with a bag of diapers under my head
Robin Wall Kimmerer: I close my eyes and listen to the voices of the rain
Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy.
Michael Simms: Love
When I was a child, my mother told me
God has many faces
And She reveals Herself
In many ways.
Meg Pokrass: Between Animals
I imagined climbing the Everest of his body, perching on the top of his belly like a sexy squid, dangling my breasts over the shelf of his face like fishing lines.
Robert Frost: “Out, Out—”
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
Angele Ellis: Naomi Shihab Nye’s “The Tiny Journalist”
In her latest collection of poems, an award-winning poet explores resistance and hope among the Palestinian people.
Sheila Carter-Jones: Running into a high school classmate years after
I was the only, back then Negro, girl
in a class of four hundred waves splashing,
tossing me about in the crash
