Poetry – Page 25 – swamp pink

Portrait of My Father as the Trojan Horse

Say father, father & listen for war. Stay quiet and listen for a drum beat, the same as the heart of war. The breath of men is a reckless sound that splinters in the throat. Dad drinks a little then a little more, and I wait and I wait. When the Greeks leave they leave...

The Child Speaks by Liliana Maria Ursu

tears down his cheeks then onto the paper meant to capture spring. When asked about his parents, he blurts: “At night mother washes the stars and during the day clothes for two families. Evenings she irons out words, to unwrinkle them. And father, father puts lipsticks on fish at the market so they’re always fresh.”

Self-Portrait as Milk Hare in Active Shooter Alert

We plan our escape from our basement classroom. My students share memories of school shooter drills. I share what police advise—run. Trees blush and undress, but the scratching outside our window is not the dead we fear to be. Today in the news I read rediscovered stories collected by Irish schoolchildren of household medicine and...

The Book

December 20, 2018

I went to a place where the wind had died, where the sun was resting its heaviest light on the clouds, where the water was perfect and looked like glass. What was the point of forgiveness again? That year of forgetting your face. The snow ...

The King’s Edition

December 20, 2018

Turns move clockwise, each player naming a species then pretending their lives impart lessons we can follow. A feather on a tomb or a plant that eats other plants. For every marble we steal, another forms in our gut that cannot be got rid of with guile or incision. The scalpel wasn’t always rusted, but...

Newton’s Third Law / Negritude’s First Law

December 20, 2018

To at least one force I’m equal in magnitude and opposite in direction, a law of motion enveloped in a man. Swagger, sway—whatever you want to call it, it’s scientific. Measurable, if not quantifiable. Fixed, if not stationary. Gravitational. Unfuckwitable. I praise and cuss by parting the same lips and there’s not one thing you...

Love Poem: Fox

December 20, 2018

The dogs sing in the wood and I marvel at their song. O caved-in burrow, O stench: marriage of my betrayal. To dress myself in woman would be a finer sport; a rich man would offer a gloved palm toward the furl of my unnatural grin. Here, I damn the mocking trees, the man on...

Thanks, stupid heart

December 20, 2018

like for that time I’d banished her number from every device I owned only to find the digits scrawled on your anterior wall. Diastole, you whispered, relax and fill. But what did you know? Flushing and pumping like a jellyfish going nowhere, stuffed between my lungs’ pink wings like an ugly flightless bird. The trick...

Prior to the Departure by Iman Chahin Sharba

December 20, 2018

Before I was killed by a matter of minutes I was combing the hair of my …daughter And braiding her plaits With a pair of barrettes in the shape of a map. Before I died in a matter of a few minutes I was telling my husband About possible solutions for peace And assuring my...

Poem Where I Refuse to Talk about —

December 20, 2018

I’m eight wearing a frumpy bunched-up dress with stockings I put runs in that same morning while rushing to pull them up after peeing and flattening my midweek temple frizz the cool girls in their jeans and angel|devil Ts are having a laugh at my existence they are white and built like miniature bird-chested women...

Three Poems by Linda Abdel Baki

Incantation of Rain Under the sight of your mirror I raised the edge of my longing To uncover The ankle of the moment And started to run across the fields of revelation My mad steps Shoo the doves My heart turned a deaf ear to the lily’s songs And here I am Singing the incantations...

Tame

Seeing the bared teeth of one chained to the tree, we say The animal must be trained. But what of me? What I found in the body of the first...