Citizenship
A ghost is not one who cannot let go but one who we cannot let go of…//Now I am neither one thing nor another” | by Kazim Ali
Poems
Cathedral
“Who was I when I came here before./What were all the reasons I found all this…” | by Kazim Ali
Icarus Turns Fifty
“For us there’s no epic end, no begging the king of the underworld/to return the lost son, no father casting himself grief-stricken into the sea.” | by Kazim Ali
To My Son Who Gave Me Light Blue Beads
“But it seems to me, I can still please/A nineteen-year-old boy, like you,/Like this, the way I wear these beads” | by Celia Dropkin
For My Daughter
“For you, Miao Miao, my daughter,/a sign of the cross.” | by Liao Yiwu
Uncle Jim
“His feet leapt inches from God-given ground./His smile was toothy, laugh snapped toothy joy./His head—his heart—his head was tightly wound:” | by Ben Riggs
My Mother’s Memory
“We live on separate planets now,/And she mulls and mulls,/Wanting to join me in my world,/Where sometimes I’m a son, sometimes not,” | by C.G. Hanzlicek
Mama’s Work
“Her work/in the quiet corners of barns on the hay, on hot days/when locusts launch themselves out of thickets.” | by Santee Frazier
Hello Brother
“Sometimes in these Bengali summers/When dust sticks to our skins/And the crows shit on our heads/We bond like hydrocarbons,” | by Zubair Ahmed
It Was the Coffee in the Mornings
“the smell somehow staying with me//well beyond his walking into the living room naked” | by Allen Shadow
Litany for My Mother’s Body
“We sew my mother’s body into the blanket. I make stitches. My sister makes stitches. My brother’s wife, my half sister. Other women.” | by Goldberry Long
James Baldwin is Dead
“What death desires most/is the body that it had to endure/James Baldwin’s body/is qualified” | by Zang Di
Discussing Death with Death Row Inmates
“And we, born from the vagina/understand what pain is./What is pain?/Even the bad guys have mothers.” | by Liao Yiwu
To Gaze is a Ghost
“in a nest in the middle branch/of the pine sleeps. We find peace.” | by Steve Scafidi
Oregon Elegy
“for language swaying with the branches,/soon picked to silence by crows—” | by Christian Campbell
God’s Insomniacs
“One of the saints dipped her forehead/Into a candle, another tasted the flame.” | by Edward Hirsch
Without Her
“her fine long tail waving a thin farewell/as both flew away from my life.” | by Katharyn Howd Machan
Back When Water Was an Element
“since we couldn’t just walk across a lake,/the bed of it cracked now, bed of it dust,//dance partner of the wind” | by Rob Carney
Early Morning Rain
“The dragonfly tilted its wings, curved its tail, / Your fingers as thin as a pier’s posts.” | by Nguyễn Quyén
My Story
“if flowers fruit / there will be seeds of pure tears.” | by Ý Nhi