Sunbeams, by Avner Treinin (also transliterated Tranin, 1928-2011) Do not allow the sun to dim. Out of paper, friendship, smiles, Cut many suns As one cuts cookies with the glass’s rim. Let it be round, Rays extending from it (They’ll say: make believe!) Two lines like two hands, Outspread with a fistful of seds, […]
Living Here Now, by Eloise Klein Healy (1943-) My father’s dying resembles nothing so much as a small village building itself in the mind of a traveler who reads about it and thinks to go there. The journey is imagined in a way not even felt as when years ago I knew my father […]
Two Women Drinking Coffee, by Laila Halaby They sit in jeans and drink their coffee, black As kohl on their eyes. They pour their tales Of broken romance through a sieve: the words, While cardamom in flavor, are in English. Today they’ve met outside of a cafe; Their work is done and each is going […]
Three Birds, by Matthew Brenneman (1960-) 1. ALBATROSS A thousand miles of gale-lashed sea Is nothing to this winged mariner. Of all the birds, he would prefer This emptiness to earth’s solidity, The gray abstraction of the waves Rolling beneath great tapered wings, whose span Would dwarf the stature of a man And lightly glide […]
The Old Man On The Shore, by Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963) deep mountains lined up in rows the pine forest reached to the sea on the shore an old man lay stretched out on the pebble beach and this sun-ripe September day the distant news of sunken ships the cool blue of the northeast breeze […]
The New Experience, by Suzanne Buffam (1972-) I was ready for a new experience. All the old ones had burned out. They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside And blew in drifts across the fairgrounds and fields. From a distance some appeared to be smoldering But when I approached with my hat in […]
The Parakeets, by Alberto Blanco (1951-) They talk all day and when it starts to get dark they lower their voices to converse with their own shadows and with the silence. They are like everybody —the parakeets— all day chatter, and at night bad dreams. With their gold rings on their clever faces, brilliant feathers […]
Poetry II, by Andre Chedid (1920-2011) What is more than the word but delivered by the word What dies but rises again What always surrenders but is reborn What grows beyond us but is rooted in us What we call life but the days destroy What is obvious but remains […]
The Day Time Began, by Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005) Our days were yellow and green we marked the seasons with respect, but spring was ours. We were shoots and sprouts, and greenings, We heard the first word that fish were running in the creek. Secretive we went with men into sheds for torches and tridents for […]
Only until this cigarette is ended, by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) Only until this cigarette is ended, A little moment at the end of all, While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, And in the firelight to a lance extended, Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, The broken shadow dances on the wall, […]