Her mother’s touch

She sat on a stool the shape of the world
By a balcony door once open to narratives
The air was sweet with a hint of sorrow
Of a Saturday. Or maybe a Sunday.

The woman in bed — a distorted mirror —
Clenched eyelids and fists
A stilled phantom dissolving into a stain
A black-and-white life slashed with a pen

Orphaned by letters on a legal pad
She clutched the silence
While lace curtains billowed and caressed
Her cheek like a mother’s touch

Pollen into stars

A man with no face
Fear on his tongue
Defaces history
With graffiti of blood
In an ancient land

A court beyond measure
Files “People Above v. People Below”
Verdicts in its dusty chambers
Chisels worth into skin
Like stone carvings in Peru

They deny they bleed
In terrestrial tongues
That their bodies decay
In full spectrum
That they too are dust
On a bumblebee’s wings
As it buzzes its workday
Over the petals
Of apple blossoms
Scattering pollen
Into stars

Between Worlds

My essay Between Worlds was published today at The Massachusetts Review. 

“It wasn’t my choice to leave Odesa. My father decided, my mother agreed, and so it happened. In 1976. We were lucky to get out, lucky to avoid the fates of refuseniks and political prisoners in the Gulag, lucky that my father—who lost his job immediately upon applying for an exit visa—did not get arrested for parasitism…”

What a joy to work with Jim Hicks and Emily Wojcik who nurture my work to become its best self!