Paul Christensen: Nutshells
The inside of a nutshell is chambered like the heart, with little ridges and flanges where the nut grew and prepared itself for falling into the waiting earth. That’s what I smell when I hold up a nutshell to my nose. It is the odor of anticipation, the willingness to be sacrificed to the sharp teeth of an animal worrying the shell until it breaks.
Video: In a Nutshell
From a seed to war, from meat to love, from indifference to apocalypse: Director Fabio Friedli uses 3,000 pictures in a montage that attempts to capture the world in a nutshell.
Video: application for the position of abdelhalim hafez’s girl | Poem by Safia Elhillo
i am six months
returned from incense smoke to soften the taste of river water
James Wright: A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
Sydney Lea: To Sydney Lea, Whom I Found Online
You must get tired of requests from witless strange men to meet up.
Luray Gross: Curriculum Vitae
Some days I am nothing but bluster. Bluster, and this
small dance I let my hips lean into before they snap back.
Jose Padua: In Contemplation of the Failure of Empires
ready for everything
in the world that’s dim, dark,
shady and beautiful; ready for
the city that moves us like a river
Kathleen O’Toole: Half Italian
The brain’s hard-wired with the impulse to feed
when given the chance, and it’s why I always double
the garlic in any recipe.
Paul Christensen: Summer’s End
Summer is like old gold, dark with age. You feel its strength become mellow and pliable in the soft breezes. There is wisdom in the heat that still simmers along the edges of noon, as if it were trying to tell us that illness or aging are as natural as drawing breath.
Stephen Dobyns: Santiago in Winter
He is gone now, the blind man, tidily dressed
in a suit of dust, with a dusty tie and dark glasses,
who played the clarinet on Paseo Huerfanos,
the paseo of the orphanage…
Karen Friedland: Ahimsa
You could say
it was a vegetarian’s revenge
Richard Wright: Haiku
I am nobody:
A red sinking autumn sun
Took my name away.
Joseph Fasano: The Figure
You rise. You turn back to the room and repeat what you know:
The earth is not a home. The night is not an empty bridle…
Elizabeth Romero: Being Poor
It can be waiting
And telling your children to wait
Wait their whole childhoods away.
It’s knowing they blame you.
