Sonoran Desert
I recover each tiny thorn that’s / lodged itself into my sky-worn eyes. / Los ancantilados rojo han pinchado / el piel mío.
Poetry
We are so grateful to all of our partner-poets for sharing their work with us—please enjoy their beautiful words in our Featured Poetry catalogue.
Invocation
By Marlon Hacla (translated by Kristine Ong Muslim)
In the name of the rock. In the name of the lily blossom. / In the name of white paint smeared across a tomb.
Vague Lights
By Donnalyn Xu
“without the rain i undress the night myself / like the skin of bruised fruit”
The Bookman
By Lise Goett
“Alden is a bookman. // The gift of a great bookman lies in his ability to pick out the right book for anyone”
Our Father, Who Art
By Gale Acuff
“after Sunday School this morning I / expressed my concern to my teacher and / her answer was tears and a silent weeping”
X-Ray Diptych in Ben Gurion Airport
By Tarik Dobbs
“The body compounds / lack: when the mother lacks light, does her child / inherit absence? Today, / I sleep in a room with no / blinds. Do I carry radiation/ like a sadness? Do I irradiate generations?”
Schizo Plays a Werewolf in a Black and White Film
By Jake Bailey
“I’ve heard / that water makes up most / of an argument / I’ll drink whatever / someone gives / this body is a sponge”
Hippocampus
“I couldn’t breathe. No one was to blame. / It was spring. Buds were busy / mocking me, proving we could live / through many deaths.”
Planting Tulips
“we reenact old rites, rise as supplicants / on the cold ground of November, plant / our small intentions which will in time // become silken frame, ruffled apricot”