A Winter Tree by Yea Weon Kim

A mother’s love shining on weak light and a brown tree.

There,

No leaves, no birds or squirrels ... only black

Lost flowers, floating shifting in a dew

Created by brown horse hairs    Oh, Lonely and

What a lonely tree nothing around it, only a white white

Wonderland that greets black, flower, dew, tree.

Touching the two clouds -----------------high upon the sky

Why torture yourself you poor thing that’s why

Your hand has no circulating blood Yes, I know

I know your loneliness, I might be your mother, Please

come down from that cloud that freezes

Your life; it will hurt you; cloud promises no harm,

But they are all lies; I know your loneliness; I am your mother, Please

come down from the cloud before

I drop tears; I can’t lose you

I’ve lost others in whiteness already; clouds’ cold hands

Took them away -------- evaporated;

Don’t tell

Me to live without you. I am your mother, I’ve known

You very well; I was always there right

Next to you touching your shoulder, shoulder to shoulder

Come down my dear, our beloved one, your

Hurt will be gone; your heart will be back; Bump

Bump. Can you hear?          Can you hear this?         I see your

       Fingers                tapping on the air.

I hear you. Yes, yes of course,

I know you. Don’t worry; I can read your eyes

     Your eyes

Are beautiful; it will be more beautiful if you come down. You must

Be afraid! Hush! but don’t cry remember? I’ll be with you

I’ll hold your tiny fingers that I love to hold;

Please now

Close your eyes and come down

Come down my dear Come down just remember

I know you;

Come down I want your sunny smile

Smile                          smile


[watercolor, ink, and tissue on paper illustration by Yea Weon Kim]

photo by Ria Han

Opposites by Jay Bonti, remixed by Sarah Shulman, Green Hill, and Renee Waller

Two weeks ago, Jay Bonti gave his class a poem entitled "Opposites." He was ready for revisions, but maybe not as many as he's going to get — fourteen of them, if everyone in the class does their own version. The only rule is not to put in any new words. Words can be taken out, and everything else is changeable. 

Here are three remixes of Jay's poem. The original, you ask? It's gotta be somewhere...look for it here soon.

NB

BOUNTI by Jay Bonti / Sarah Shulman Every day, sometimes,  almost always, sometimes,  I think of you.   We can accomplish anything,  Everything. Being "us" is the reason.  Day becomes night, night becomes day. Here we still stand. Different pieces of everything,  clustered within, come out during times of rejoicing. Us. We have peace.   We live in a world of opposites,  but you and I are not one. ❉ Every day by Jay Bonti / Green Hill I spend every day with you Sometimes, almost always I think of you We swim in the sun Ants march between our toes Watch out gentle giants I caress your hair so lush I peer over Your tops untied Sweat rolls down your spine night and day become one and moon and sun There’s an opposite to everything There’s an opposite of everyone I am my own ransom ❉ As by Jay Bonti / Renee Waller As I caress your hair, to the touch so lush, the smell, so sweet it could be a crush. As day and night become one, everything has an opposite. Are you mine? As I look into your eyes,  I see the sun rise against the starry night, and we are still together. We can accomplish anything. Everything is possible because of us.

Poem by Tyffany Richards

The Hair Story

​Once upon a time, there was a blond hair on my shoe,

And no matter how hard I tried to get it off

It just grew and grew and grew

The more I tried to cut it

The bushier it grew

Until, one day it finally swallowed me and you

Inside it was quite cozy

We got used to living there

But all the while we had this constant underlying fear

What did this blond hair want from us?

What was it going to do?

How long would we be subjected to living on the underside of my shoe?

One day I finally figured it out

Suddenly it popped into my head

We could cut all the hair

And stuff it in my nice new comfy bed

We chopped and chopped and chopped

And we stuffed and stuffed and stuffed

And finally my bed was extremely super puffed.

But the blond hair had more plans

It continued to grow and grow and grow

Until my new bed looked like a hairstyle

From the Bronner Brothers Show

It took over the apartment

It took over the street

Until we all realized we just couldn’t compete

So everyone took a flamethrower

And then….​

The eighth volume of Douglas Messerli's encyclopedic anthologies of international poetry includes twenty-one poets of renown, including Adonis, Ilse Aichinger, Dino Campana, C.P. Cavafy, Julio Cortázar, D.H. Lawrence, Olga Orozco, Robert Sosa, and Tarjei Vesaas. Biographies and complete listings of books in the original languages and English are included. 


Purchase the digital edition here.

from the long overdue (re)readings (X)

Alberghi, città, scale, sempre in sogno
varcati al dir: "qui resterò e la pace
mi sarà data alfine." Nulla resta
di quegli anni che un dolce e lungo errore
e la memoria d'essere straniero
a tutti fuor che al cielo apparso ai vetri
bianco di luna.


Hotels, cities, steps that in my dreams
I always pass through, saying "Here I'll rest
and peace will be granted me at last." Nothing's left
of those years but a long sweet blunder
and the memory of being foreign
to everyone except the sky appearing at the windows
white with moon.


— Alfonso Gatto, from 'Room in Darkness' ['Stanza al Buio'], translated from the Italian by Jack Hirschman, in MAGMA (Los Angeles: Caza de Poesia, 2009), 58-59. 

Hommage à Professeur Tryphon Tournesol

Poem by Cola Hines

Secret secret

our fictions become real

don’t say that you said 

you need to become 

an admirer or else 

you are lost — what you prize 

above all else is 

clarity — but what you 

must have is harder 

to determine

flagrant moonlight

craving for peacocks

air pouring down

horrific mofo

or no one; the problem

always sticking to

what’s determined

or imagined; you shouldn’t 

do that, you’re a tool

following nacre

when you know it’s uncool

to insist on continuity

in this night curiously 

without coyotes

they overdid it last time

day decanted

the nothing that happened

reality and dream

while you’re away

photo by Taylor Silk

From the long overdue (re)readings (IX)

I have heard them all. I do not have a favorite.  I do not know what they mean. Though "Cake" sounds to my ears like the English name "Kate." A "Kate" who is good enough for GertrudeStein to eat is a "Cake," I say to myself and smile. Bão would be proud. "Slip your own meanings into their words," he said, a bit of advice that has saved me. Language is a house with a host of doors, and I am too often uninvited and without the keys. But when I infiltrate their words, take a stab at their meanings, I create the trapdoors that will allow me in when the night outside is too cold and dark. When I move unnoticed through the rooms of 27 rue de Fleurus, when I float in a current swift and unending, and I hear Miss Toklas offering to GertrudeStein, "Another piece of Cake?" I can catch my breath and smile.

— Monique Truong, The Book of Salt, pp. 155-56

sonnet by Cola Hines

you might say (she did say) it’s a pleasure

(and a treasure) exotic and certain as death

(and as original) — that’s why we keep quiet.

what do you want me to talk about. How about

the exhausted, 'ulcerous poodles and pekes

on the promenade,' the backlit colored-glass mural 

of the waves. What do you want me to remember?

Start at the beginning. I am too tired to say. Toot

toute down the hallways. You left your door open in

those days. I was always frightened of the next bright

smile, the next normal thing. I stayed in the elevator.

When we kissed, I thought how long before she needs

to take a breath? And we went beyond what we knew

and circled back, outwitting ourselves. Like cigarettes,