Lawrence Wray: Stonehouse Alms
There is in me a traipsing line of ragged men
I can’t ignore. Grass stalks dangle from chinks
in the house’s mortar by the caged window.
Nicanor Parra: There is a happy day / Hay un día feliz
I went wandering this afternoon
The lonely streets of my village
Accompanied by the good twilight
Which is the only friend I have left.
Michelle Bitting: Sudden
I wanted to come home transformed
and be surprised by the flickering
in our radically impermanent
robes
Elizabeth Bishop: Insomnia
By the Universe deserted,
she’d tell it to go to hell,
and she’d find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
Robert Cording: Reading Poems with David
Over the phone, David begins to read
and Mary, in old age, in a nursing home,
returns to life in David’s voice, voicing
her words, her questioning
of her own bafflement
Naomi Shihab Nye: Voice of America
The Voice of America got us to Karachi. Damascus. Islamabad. Dhaka. We went everywhere thanks to the Voice of America. Sat in circles on wooden floors, wore white flower garlands on beaches. Spent birthdays beneath mosquito nets. Rode in rickshaws. Stirred curries. Made friends. Loners. Social butterflies. A monkey climbed through a window in south India to lift the lid of a pot.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Leaving It There
I stop weeding, stand still a while, hands on hips,
because it’s back again — that feeling of elation
tangled with grief.
Ann Fisher-Wirth: Empathy
In the long long bliss of the breastfeeding years, I belonged to that rocking chair where sun filtered through the window and the leaves of the summer pomegranate shifted slowly in the hot June air.
Rachel Hadas: Why Trump’s rage defies historical and literary comparisons
As he has gained fame and power, Trump’s contemptuous rage at his opponents and his appetite for vengeance appear to have sharpened.
Jianqing Zheng: The Overlook
I embrace two rivers, the Changjiang and the Mississippi, each taking a share of my tributary for thirty-four years. Life is a river. The migration from East to West is a way of releasing the self for a confluence of places and allowing the rivers to flow through me and form a shoal of belonging.
Kathleen O’Toole: Migrations
On exiting “Warmth of Other Suns” at the Phillips Collection, 2020
Naomi Shihab Nye: The Words Under the Words
My grandmother’s days are made of bread,
a round pat-pat and the slow baking.
She waits by the oven watching a strange car
circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,
lost to America.
Nasser Rabah: The War That Just Won’t End
In wartime the heart expands, becomes a boat for little kids.
An hour of peace and quiet is pure heaven for writing.
Linda Blaskey: Two Poems
The air I take in feels thin, ragged, and rough against the walls of my lungs.
This neighbor to the south of us uses a .22 long rifle.
So does the neighbor to the north.
