-
“Bird” by Jenna Le
We heard her and came running
We heard her
wings blurred
We heard her fly up the metal chute
only to find herself self-entrapped in our laundry room
self-buried in our linen hoard
her exit route barred
We heard her throat burr
We heard her
wings blurred so we came running
feet bare on the red-carpeted stairs
We heard her so we herded her
We harried her toward an opened window, a soft sunlit square
amid the hard boards
We hurried her and harried her
and herded her toward the open air
our broom-waving horde must have seemed to her a horror
for all that we heralded her liberty
*
Jenna Le authored Six Rivers (NYQ Books, -
Two poems by Allan Popa (translated from the Filipino by Bernard Capinpin) Artwork by Lorina Tayag Capitulo
Narrative
I wish to be a monk
is what I often tell anyone
whom I want to befriend.The kind that doesn’t show himself to others
for solitude is prayer.I would not be surprised if they mention
that a dream not far from my own
had once entered their minds.If it had been in the aisle of a monastery where we
had first met, perhaps, we would have paused togetherat a single bead of a mystery we recited on our way
back to each of our own cells at the corner
to bow for a moment as a recognitionthat we have already met
although it is only our hands that can be seen. -
Five micro-poems by Margarita Serafimova (translated from the Bulgarian) Photography by Milen Neykov
L’éternel retour
(Eternal Return)An animal I am when I love you,
and above my face, an aureole of cosmic bodies is spinning –
ringed planets; a star’s glint.
***
L’éternel retour
(Вечното завръщане)Животно съм, когато те обичам,
а над лицето ми се върти ореол от космически тела –
планети с пръстени; отблясък на звезда.
-
“Between Grief and Nothing” by Linnea Nelson
What interests me takes place in the interval
between two people.
For example, one halfinch from your human body,
I can feel the heat of your life
without touching you.Nothing I learned in school
is as essential as that.
Or that the reverse is true.Or that, between grief and nothing,
there is a broad, bright space.
What happens to me alonenever seems important. Last week,
the dusk draped heavily
on the valley was beautiful, -
“Orange” and “South 2” by Michel Vachey (Translated from the French by S. C. Delaney and Agnès Potier)
ORANGE
Air France stewardesses are in danger
carmine strokes the dried blood near some petals slams into the sink of the crime now softly blazes on crimson curtains
pink only belongs to pink roses
why does orange gall us, revolt us, sicken our stomachs and our hearts to the point of despairing of a varnished and vanquished rage?
color that, henceforth, symbolizes most of all chemistry, which is the plastic reality of modern life beyond any philosophical and political concern,
-
“Bartering: Day after Diagnosis” by Cassie Garison
I will give you my horns, hooked& taurean. I will give you my crown,woven from rose-thorns and olivebranch, copper wire & shardsof glass. I have been collectingshells: fastening them togetherwith scraps of twine, wind them tightaround my neck. They drag me deepbeneath a rabid sea. Other days:I press each conch into my skinlet it sting like iron at the hipof a cow.
