Featured Poems
In October in the Kitchen I Listen to My Son
explain he needs a shooting game. I don’t get
the beauty of the open world, roaming freely
city to country, joint in hand, cops at your back;
I don’t understand how great speed feels. Right.
Learning to Write Poetry
I was ten the first time, handed a pen, paper
dawn in the Mojave walking in silence.
The monks led us in a file to an oasis.
A rattlesnake lettered itself over the sand.
Given permission, the world cracked open,
pink sky singing, an egg-shaped bell broken.
Flag
I had lived in this country a long time
before I noticed you: on April 23, 2015
two boy professors proudly raised you
over lunch. It was your English day. You’d
been hiding in the British splash, a cross
with no blue: blank white, red like blood.
Utopians of Tahrir Square (Translated Anthology)
My first translation project, translated with Dr. Anba Jawi, is an English version of an anthology of 28 young poets from Iraq, responding to the protest events of 2019. Doing this work gave me a chance to get to know a group of brave, interesting, hopeful writers from another country, whose words witness a struggle for human rights that is universal and vital.
Click here for a link to the Amazon page, or directly to the publisher, Palewell Press
