Mantas Balakauskas: letter from Rome
I’d really like to tell you everything
but there in the cities we once fully trusted
white noise dominates
Alfred Corn: Unforeseen Tragic Scenario
The heavy balls thundered back and forth and collided with the execs, bowling them over like ninepins.
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.
Alfred Corn: All It Is
The flexible arc
described by treetop leaves
when breathing currents ripple
a branch to one,
then the other side.
Charles Reznikoff: The lamps are burning in the synagogue
Let us begin then humbly. Not by asking:
Who is This you pray to? Name Him;
define Him. For the answer is:
we do not name Him.
Once out of a savage fear, perhaps;
now out of knowledge—of our ignorance.
Alfred Corn: Naskeag
Once a day the rocks, with little warning—
not much looked for even by the spruce
and fir ever at attention above—
fetch up on these tidal flats and bars.
Alfred Corn: Instagram posts of Dr. Ali Tahrawi (second gathering)
We are dying in the longest nightmare in the history of humanity, with the most disgusting and immoral generation in human existence, witnessing the most human abusing and destructive period.
Alfred Corn: Instagram posts of Dr. Ali Tahrawi
Tired as if we were dead and lived again and suffered all kinds of pains and died again and again every day, in this hell of life, as if this is it, forever, as if this genocide would never end, and as if death is the only way out!
Leslie McGrath: Late Summer Afternoon with a Friend
There were husk cherries that looked like jack o’ lanterned tomatillos, tomatillos as black as plums, and from the rafters hung dozens of bunched heads of garlic still covered with the dirt they grew in.
