In his office the ruddy face sweeps down white lips to hers stubble-white chin coming in at an angle white hair over white brows over white lashes blue eyes narrowing from pecked corners years of years lips of lips Mr. Fisher’s wrinkled lips under the white mustache between creases and his tongue between teeth. That […]
Poetry 77
Ely Shipley: Glass
A disco ball gleams, an eye of God, and I’m reflected thousands of times, tiny in squares until I can’t breathe, drowning in the sounds of bass I mistake for my heart. The other dancers – my shadows, come closer to, then farther from me, sprayed out in the strobe lights, pressing me in and […]
Nicholas Reading: The Jazz Kitchen
This kid finishes his first night of washing dishes and steak knives when he hangs the apron and walks into a room with short ceilings and long, very long legs. He comes up to their waists. His image of the blues pales in this gray. Cigarettes are tongues flicked and ashed over. Louise Misha, he […]
Luis Nieto Miranda: Romance de la Barbaracha
(A Rafael, a Juan, a Víctor, al Sr. Conde, al Cholo, al Caballero, al Glorioso, al Pisquito, al Borracho y a K’allata, mis amigos.) Chola que te quiero chola más fresca que una manzana, con tu pollera redonda y tu blusa de percala. Te brilla limpia la risa como el cristal de la escarcha. Tus […]
Luis Nieto Miranda (Translated by Lynn Levin): Romance de la Barbaracha
Barbaracha’s Romance Chola, how I love you, chola, fresher than a just-picked apple, with your big gathered skirt and your blouse of finely woven cloth. Your laughter sparkles like crystals of frost. Your impish eyes twinkle like stars in the dawn sky. The sun plays upon your lips; the moon grows jealous of your broad […]
Teresa Leo: The Lasting
What we will remember is this— in the graveyard late at night, the brief curve of the body as we hoisted ourselves up the cemetery wall, that moment of hanging when weight shifted back to some image of ourselves holding out like kids in our parents’ kitchens when love fell away in knives and screams; […]