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days about a purple butterfly kite that refused to fly. Weeks later, I sobbed at our toaster for burning my optimism,

and when you called me unstable, I kicked our floor pantry just to prove you right. It was inevitable. You would spit me

out as if I was a watermelon seed. You would ask me three times a day how I felt about broken backspaces, but my eyes

were already decomposing. Days expired. I was the rotting Jack O’ Lantern left outside our door. Every time you told me a

truth, I used a magnifying glass to find all of your potholed lies. Eventually, I fell silent watching the image of you,

dad, melt like the icicles that later formed on our house gutters. I tried to hold them once, but they only burned my hands.

by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, a Tibetan poet. On a personal level, this is one of the most stunning poems I’ve read in a long time.

1

The persimmon tree and my neighbor’s son — fronted by acne — winter’s diet. Meanwhile, caves and rocks are named in the future tense. Stupefied gargoyles have had better luck in history books; the nation’s monuments are made of enduring stuff. We are obstinate ink stain, memory, an animal whose similes lose scale. If story is a wavelength, we could pick a beginning, follow intention to the border, then let custom reign. When we build a nation, we are permanently old and always new. Mother died a refugee, she thought the status was a promise of return. She had a version of nation under the bed. Never mind that her village took a new name; the jar of water from her childhood’s river, ten stones and five twigs were clues that home was transitive.

2

The invasion on body holds only the heart hostage. Armies of the past unfurl the flag of love at dawn, there are no takers but the part of self that privileges misery. Soon, you will fall. As the fruits swell, the branches sag with orange sweetness. I miss you, orange much. I want time to return to the moment before you got off the bus and walked toward the beginning of the story (this is a we tragedies are made of). If you’d been ten minutes late, if geography was inconsequential to the struggle of belonging, there would be no reason to allude to the mood of patriarchy. Bring a different set of ears, or measuring system, something that communicates the loss that all the words along the border are fiction. Bring a heart that barters; that is not afraid to split.

3

Heart muscles begin their dirge during a heart attack. Oxidation is linked to regeneration, which is also to say words build their own web within a system. She said, All disease starts in the colon. She knows where oxygen is stored in the building. She knows who needs it most, sometimes it is given to the one who will heal quickest. In time, new tissue granulates the wound: pattern of tiny cells visible on the sun’s surface through a telescope, or cumulus clouds, or dandelion clocks. The edges of a wound shrink over time around a scar, that, like maps, tell an incomplete story.

4

Drizzle morning, a color-shy palette against which trees, brought to the forefront, are not themselves. Elsewhere, the heater rumbles, abiding to mechanical intuition, turning on and off. I stay cold, I am warm. I know nothing about conduction or the secret of a lie. The street, wearied by leaves pressing as far as stone allows for sinking, is mottled from impositions. A crow hovers over a chimney, buoyed by who knows what. Intimations of life push upward in hot air. An ordinary day on an ordinary street, where the only proof of people are lights on the porch, timid in the brume, and images of refugees on television screens.

5

“the siren song” by nina maclaughlin

“out there: on not finishing” by devin kelly

“illuminating kirinyaga: meaing and knowing in mount kenya’s forests” by tristan mcconnell

“on the igbo art of storytelling” by ikechukwu ogbu

“poetry fills tehran streets as iranians adapt nowruz rituals to corona restrictions” by alex shams

“writing emails to my late father” by krista stevens

Molly Fisk, “Winter Sun” (We can make do with so little / just the hint of warmth, the slanted light.)

Pat Schneider, “The Patience of Ordinary Things” (It is a kind of love, is it not? / how the cup holds the tea.)

Barbara Ras, “Bite Every Sorrow” (You can speak a foreign language, sometimes / and it can mean something.)

Jack Gilbert, “Failing and Flying” (Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.)

Lisel Mueller, “Things” (Even what was beyond us / was recast in our image; / we gave the country a heart, / the storm an eye)

Rabindranath Tagore, “On the Seashore” (The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach / On the seashore of endless worlds children meet)

John O’Donohue, “Matins” (May I live this day / Compassionate of heart / Gentle in word / Courageous in thought)

Wallace Stevens, “The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm” (The summer night is like a perfection of thought. / The house was quiet because it had to be)

Brian Patten, “Inessential Things” (Cats remember what is essential of days)

Emily Dickinson, “Simplicity” (How happy is the little stone / that rambles in the road, alone)

Yi Lu, “Valley’s Green” (flowers like tiny saucers — little bowls — little cups / filled to the brim with their own colors)

Jacques Prévert, “How to Paint a Bird’s Portrait” (When the bird comes / if it comes / observe the most profound silence)

Archibald MacLeish, “Eleven” (Happy as though he had no name, as though
 / He had been no one: like a leaf, a stem,
 / Like a root growing…)

Denise Levertov, “A Woman Alone” (Then / self-pity dries up, a joy / untainted by guilt lifts her. / She has fears, but not about loneliness)

Richard Brautigan, “Your Catfish Friend” (I’d love you and be your catfish / friend and drive such lonely / thoughts from your mind)

Linda Gregg, “The Letter” (I’m not feeling strong yet, but I am taking
 / good care of myself)

Andrew Lang, “Ballade of True Wisdom” (And I’d leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, / For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers)

Ada Limón, “The Raincoat” (my whole life I’ve been under her / raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel / that I never got wet.)

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Just” (These people, unaware, are saving the world)