Hurt
Your mother starts crying when Dami turns up for his funeral. He is fashionably late. You expect this. You also expect him to overdo his entrance, but you are…
In Vain
I’m lying in the ditch, bleeding. My son has died. I can’t move, can’t climb. I will never be the same. I will never be the same. I hear you above me on…
Nomads
He pushed his cart to the end of the benches and left it sitting there. The benches were empty, snow heaped on them. He watched his breath form on the wind and felt…
Death is the Color White
"Your lips are a door, your mind is the key." Those words your mother whispered to you scream louder in your head than her ensuing screeches as they placed the…
Dead Leaves
After Remedios Varo If I do not tell you of the lichen growing on the living room floor will you feel it on the soles of your feet? What of the yellowed…
I know the river ran red
I know the river ran red until the sea, where the wild throat of a sky washed to the reaches before the magnet dark of eve. In this wavelength, this limbo…
hecate #1
undeath is in creation / and the degloving of hands / digging up of pale yellow talisman / kiss of moonlight through the willow branches / fade / d / undeath…
Zero Tolerance
Lights blaze from above day and night, but give none of the sun’s warmth. Around me the littlest ones grab onto the metal fence, cry out “Mama,” “Papa,”…
Marigold
Mornings in Uganda are first the color of periwinkles, then roses, then suddenly a shot of brightest marigold. I watch it from my doorstep, listening. The caws of…
Arsonist With Unlit Match
She stands close enough to the building for the fumes to creep into her nose. This is the last time, she tells herself, as she always does. Even as the strong scent…
White Knives, Blue Tears, & Red Whips
The whips fed on the blood of my forefather's backs. Soaked it up like needed sustenance, leaving the drops for the soil We cried into the sea, bodies floating…
Growing Up Polack
My dad spent 4 ½ years in Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany. My mother spent 2 ½ years as a slave laborer in various camps there. When the war ended,…
perhaps the sea
Foaming and violent as the wave, we echo of beatings taken on shores unknown or known too well. The sea is as young as it is sage, as seasoned in relief…
After D
a light rain is falling. perhaps, like the trace of a breeze it will bring a fresh spirit of peace to a world that's imploding. shattered seeds scatter, soft,…