Tonight she asks for enchiladas, and my sister
suggests pizza. I think they must want to die.
I’m ashamed to feel this. I roll the shade of
blame down the living room wall, screening
their lives…
Poetry
The girls who were talking in the corner not long ago are just now starting to get up (grabbing jackets from the coatrack) taking up their umbrellas again and a forgotten wallet that the tallest…
Anna 1 “Now I know how faces disappear, how terror nests under eyelids,” wrote Anna, Anna Akhmatova. Can you understand such suffering? While I read her, I lie stiff on the bed. She,…
Photo by Pop & Zebra on Unsplash In your white vest and blue flip-flops, you wandered about in the fierce sun, a can of black paint in your hand. We read your family history on lamp-po…
Andrew Wyeth, Cranberries (1966), Collotype, 45.7 x 30.5 cm When I pushed the door there was no one in the room. In the background, an open window and a disquieting afternoon ligh…
Wassily Kandinsky, Composition #218 (Two Ovals) (1919), Oil on Canvas, 107 × 89 cm, Saint Petersburg, The Russian Museum I glimpsed the oases of childhood with gingerbread houses and…
Workshop of Rembrandt van Rijn, Young Woman at an Open Half-Door (1645), oil on canvas, 102.5 x 85.1 cm, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago / CC0 Pub…
Ghislaine Lejard, l’ombre (2020), 6.5 x 7.5 cm, torn paper glued on cardboard / Reproduced by permission of the artist I tame shadows each day I descend further into their world an…
“I Have Nothing but Exhaustion the Size of a Forest” after Sirkka Turkka I have nothing but exhaustion the size of my daughter’s pupils, when she brings her face close to…
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash The Bread of Letters I Who will blame the trees when they loose their leaves? who will accuse the sea of abandoning shells on the sand…
A detail from Merikokeb Berhanu’s (Ethiopia/US) Untitled LII (2020), acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in. / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art When floods rose, the tree branches thinned, ca…
Merikokeb Berhanu (Ethiopia/US), Untitled LII (2020), acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in. / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art From the watchtower, you utter the suburbs I grow up in, ripe for t…
A detail from Daniela Yohannes (UK/Guadeloupe), Black Oil (2019), Acrylic on Linen, 116 X 89 cm / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art We pause at the edge of the river listen to its rhy…
Photo by Terry Kearney / Flickr There should have been roses . . . Instead, I clutched red and white carnations my aunt bought from a street vendor outside the courthouse.…
Daniela Yohannes (UK/Guadeloupe), Black Oil (2019), Acrylic on Linen, 116 X 89 CM / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art What we do not say to each other bites speech into ultimatums a…
A detail from Dereje Demissie (Ethiopia), Psychscape (2009) In Krio, there is a word with Atlantic Ocean spray still swirling in its gut: Freeborn. I heard this word often afte…
Dereje Demissie (Ethiopia), Psychscape (2009) On my mind daily with the insistence of a metronome is that thin granular layer, rich humus, spare humility, black earth daily lifted…
Detail from Girma Berta (ETHIOPIA), Moving Shadows XI (2016), digital archival print, 40 x 40 cm / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art after Inji Efflatoun Sarah Hegazi …
Girma Berta, Moving Shadows XI (2016), digital archival print, 40 x 40 cm / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art after “A Walk through Intimacy,” by Theresah Ankomah Under the auspic…
Daniela Yohannes (UK/Guadeloupe), Subterranean (2019), acrylic on linen, 116 x 89 cm / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art there are flowers you can’t touch outside someone’s house at night,…
Merikokeb Berhanu (Ethiopia/US), Untitled XLVII (2020), acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in. / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art You always serve coitus with a side of cheese silkworms squirming…
Dereje Demissie (Ethiopia), Psychscape (2009) This poem is written in response to a news story in Spotlight (South Africa), headlined as follows: “What the Charlotte Max…
Ch’ol embroidered shirts / Photo by Diana Laura Montejo I Am the Alphabet They say, grass born in the forest, my body holds the freshness of mountains. I have absorbed the garden’s blossom…
Don’t just aim the telescope at the night sky’s swarming to discover one more planet. Turn it also toward the earth, toward the bottom of the sea, see the fish in between the rocks, a flicker…
Poetry is not solace, it is not a song of joy and of sadness, it is not a haven in the mouth of a bl…
