HIGHER
mama, what happened here?
I ask and ask, already, one might say, grown up Nastavi čitati “Higher | Sunflowers”
Oglasi
WHITESLEEVES
A. had decided to wear a white shirt, although
black befits a funeral, they say,
for you cannot be wistful in white, yet Nastavi čitati “Whitesleeves | Extorris”
NAMES AND NOUNS
at night grandma prays lying on the floor. i hear grandma sleep. mouth open. breathing like she has flies in her throat. i accidentally break off the head of my doll and tell mami Nastavi čitati “Ani Gjika, Three poems”
Home
I watched the video of the ocean
that you sent
and read Rumi’s “The Seed Market”
per your request. Nastavi čitati “Naomi Schademan, 2 poems”
SPLIT
I am a woman and I speak.
I am a woman with lines on her face and I speak.
I am a woman with lines on her face and scars on her belly and I speak
with the voice of a mother
I said, a mother Nastavi čitati “Jackson, Two Poems”
(translated from the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian by Mirza Purić)
not my children
beggars at my door
I’m not opening
the spyhole is a safe space Nastavi čitati “Bojan Krivokapić, Two poems”
1.
If I could talk to the old, sage winds
That roam the ancient skies of your land
I’d ask them to tell me stories of yore
Of the gods and the rulers and the holy men Nastavi čitati “The Three Ifs”
Generation MM
O dearest child, millennial thing,
how slow the world must seem to spin, Nastavi čitati “Matthew Pither, Poetry”
You wanted it all
I get it now. There are many different ways of coming
close to heaven, you say and I’m listening Nastavi čitati “Sophie Fenella, Poetry”
Aqua
They’ll punish you like they did
Alice Fitzpatrick for crunching on
an apple in church, her cold gloat
reduced to half a calf’s lick: a curl
of baby hair tossed into crater lake.
Distilled aqua ersatz, tear-stained
glass in Mary’s corner. Nastavi čitati “A Triptych, Grace Herring”
That day, we found a moon
of a fish, belly-pocked with
spots, on the lip of the shore. It
was still. It was gorgeous. We
did not know what to do. You
filled with manic hope, Nastavi čitati “Afterwards: A Love Poem”
Ramadan has just begun this year—a time of restraint and self-reflection, a time where I intentionally build moments to return to myself amid the everyday chaos of living. Four years ago I was living in Sarajevo; my last month in the city coincided with the holy month. As a Muslim woman who grew up in America, I had never experienced this month with people who knew or celebrated Ramadan. Nastavi čitati “How Sarajevo shaped me: forgiveness, poetry and the holy month”
Sarajevo meant a lot to me, means a lot to me still, my time there has shaped me, in fact. Everything I took for granted, every dream I was realizing; all painful laborious struggles. The warmth of every hearth I was drawn beside, every silently proffered plate of food; a realization of some eternal purities. Nastavi čitati “A Scottish Girl in Sarajevo”
Roses are red and
Saturn blazes scarlet in the sky
Or is that Mars? Nastavi čitati “A rose is a rose”
