Photo: Ath-Har Saeed / Flickr I play on the water.It’s not completely necessary or required, but things flow under the treeslike a gentle melody. Day unto dayuttereth…
Poetry
Mona Nicole Sfeir, The Maps of Our Making (detail), 2015, acrylic, chalk, collage on canvas. Political maps are human constructs that have continuously changed since the first maps were scratched onto…
Photo: Daniel Ebneter/FlickrCrossroadsAll winter I didn’t write a poem, and I didn’t remembereven one dream that I dreamt. I left a houseand a wife, rented an apartment, and everything I neededI found…
Photo: Daniel SimonEgretThe bird was just searchingfor food not metaphors –or taking rest from a day’s flightIt was dusk after all and its ancestorswho might have crossed the MiddlePassage, crossed th…
Satiro della Valle, Capitoline Museums, RomeЭти бездонные ночи в июлеЭти бездонные ночи в июле, О!Ты вопрошаешь: — Меня обманули?…
Photo courtesy of the authorI.A mark across the body. The morning I watched my beloved uncle disappear down the alley. His car left sitting in our yard for thirty days. This tattoo we…
Norman Akers (Osage), The Gathering (2012), lithograph, 22 3/4 x 16 3/8 in / Courtesy of the artist (normanakers.com)Summers we lie out on the hot porchpalms splayed—raising flames from ragwe…
Tony Tiger (Sac & Fox / Muscogee),Intertribal / Courtesy of the artist(facebook.com/tony.tiger.5268)IMix cultures of homeWest Africa West Indies disrupted along slave tradeFrench and…
Photo: Ruth Ellison/Flickrfor someone who’s been delayedon a cold, gray, rainy daytakes me backto that little girl waiting in the cold car with the littler onesas the night took over the skywhile…
Photo: David Hepworth/Flickri pull my brothers from words, stupid injun, shot like bullets. when people ask why my brothers hated school i say: the spirit remembers what it’s like to be left…
Photo: Jin Choi/FlickrAll the mangoes I’ve tastedin California were imported and lost their true flavors in transit. And, even though all the mangoes I’ve enjoyed in Hawai’i were homegr…
Photo: Jake Bellucci/FlickrWhat holds water in a droptension that holds humans inbetween their sweet skinswater holds usher arms baystide of bloodbeat so close just our skins betweenhome and oc…
Photo: WerbeFabrik/PixabayA bottom-lit sea ponders the lake’s questions,their secret conversations thatch howls to whimpers exhaled from an isthmus of drowned wolves. Its glossary’s cat…
Photo: Mark Brodie/Pixabaybetween landscape and the female body:earth sand stones plants flowers blooda silhouette digging molding carving space…
Photo: Granger Meador/FlickrOur stuck tongues screamed louder In Alabama, words hung in a rhythm Reservation hands could basket Tied back rocks rose, picked Tarnished cigarettes un…
Marwin Begaye (Diné), Riders of the Storm II, lithograph, 15 x 22 in / Courtesy of the artist (@m.begaye2015)That day my guardian angel was cast out,she responded, “Fine, your heaven is too bougie,and…
Photo: HeinerTenz/PixabayDaybreakAfter the watch, dorveille,pin-prick of stud in sky,before that six a.m.first warbler wake-up callfrom elm above the deck,in dream a wife no longeranswers to…
Kim Shuck, Warrior Trout (2016), 15/0 glass seed beads on brain-tanned hide, 9 x 2.5 in / Courtesy of the artist and Doug Salin PhotographyMemory spirits give me days full of…
Photo: David Cantu/FlickrBrother piles sand on his pregnant girlfriend’s belly. On her sandy stomach I draw a belly button. Soon it will be dusk and the last surfers in the distance will dis…
Photo: Dan Zen/FlickrI think they know – about every leaf I’d catch to peel from my tongue. It spoke to how good I was at being alone. This morning I sit in the still kitchen, rued…
Photo: Mike Charest/FlickrThat slick envelope of developed film is tumbled in a storage closet next to old seating charts and a stale granola bar in foil.In one of the frames,…
Photo: George MogaNo.Nothing.Nothing on a really tall chair; a chair with very long legs; up to the sky, which was empty. And down fell fragrance; fragrance of flowers, although there were no fl…
December 5th 2016 / No Spiritual Surrender by Zoë Marieh Urness (zoeurnessphoto.com), taken at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, North Dakotathere are persons who delight in human sufferi…
“Vets Stream into Standing Rock.” Photo: Joe Brusky/Flickrfor Zhooniyah Ogitchida, with gratitudeHe walked to the frontline in his Army combat shirt.On it, his sergeant badge, name tape, US A…
Anila Quayyum Agha, Alahambra Nights (2016), acrylic and halogen bulb, 30” x 27” x 30” / Courtesy of the artistQasida of the Bridge of TeacupsThe soul cleaves into two somewhere alo…
