Month: April 2021
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Red Run
Here in February’s grey I bleed away, Red run into the snow. So many years from home I, here, a fugitive A captive too. The home I had gone away This one not mine, not quite. The whisky jack mocks me The “caw caw” and my soul crawls Into the frozen ground. I will die
My Swamp Time
MY SWAMP TIME I was barely surviving in Louisiana, unpleasantly and unsuited, a land as shifty, unstable, as a drunken father, where no frog, no gator, ever took a vow of silence on a long hot night, where I couldn’t step outside my door without some critter gnawing on my flesh, and all in the
A Descriptive Linguistics of Isolation
A Descriptive Linguistics of Isolation Verbs of motion will be the first to go—well, not go which has long gone the way of disappearing into idiom. No, we will lose the careful ones: disembark, sojourn, trek, take leave. Perhaps, even, arrive. There will come a day when we will believe all movement is rooted into
Crossing Acheron
though he had known every quantity of life: its short repose, its indefinite strike; though he had knowledge of the indifferent span of evening and daylight and the repetitious metaphysic of sound and fury; though life had been every superstitious quality of sensate being, he, with indifference, collected the manifold days into folded gestures and
Heart’s Homes
Three sounds I love, stepping out my door: The patter of oncoming rain The splash of a refilled creek The hushed howl of sweeping winds. Perhaps I should have made my place Somewhere near the Pacific And all its rugged glory; But I’d miss the downy waves of green. The tall eucalyptus and pines Rustle
Anywhere But Here
Exodus bound Senegambia down rivers of dignity leaking From Fouta Djallon out of Banjul’s mouth sailing listing creaking Culture history music art left in the scupper’s wash Bodies delivered with flaming heart all history the cost Commerce of thralls conscripted fed on diets of fear Future beyond unscripted and anywhere but here
Writing the Road to Hana
Writing the Road to Hana It’s open season for wild boar, the driver says, pointing out the truck half-hidden in underbrush. No one’s in sight but he assures its rusty bed will drip with blood before mid-morning sun. For hours I’ve photographed ocean-pounded cliffs, forests of bamboo, twin waterfalls; jotted down impressions of impressions I
African Insomina
“African Insomnia” by Mark Blickley I’m tired and I hate the daylight. This strange sun reflecting off the white djellabas irritates me. It lights up a city of men tugging at their genitals, smiling toothless smiles. It shows dogs and children, bones pressing against skin, begging for relief. The sun releases the warm smell of
Why Not?
“Do you wanna go?”, Yevgeny enthusiastically asked. He didn’t have to specify where and she didn’t need to ask. He had asked her many times before. “Not now”, Yael responded in one of her various ways that wasn’t quite a yes, yet preserved hope by never being a definitive no. This wasn’t a technique of