On our last day in Beirut
with my ten years packed in a suitcase,
my best friend asked for a keepsake.
I found a little tin box
to give her, emptied of lemon drops,
that would hold memories of our childhood:
us swinging in the dusty school yard,
rooftop hide and seek,
wispy-sweet jasmine, kilos
of summertime figs, King
of Falafel’s tahini-bathed sandwiches,
our pastel autograph books.
All those remembrances
crammed in that box,
tiny storytellers waiting to speak.
Later her family would uproot too,
transplant like surly Palestinian weeds
pulled every few years.
We all knew about this,
even the kids.
I never saw her again
but know that she also
learned to travel lightly,
hauling empty boxes
pulsing with kilos
of memories.
The Night Migrations by Louise Glück
This is the moment when you see again
the red berries of the mountain ash
and in the dark sky
the birds’ night migrations.
It grieves me to think
the dead won’t see them—
these things we depend on,
they disappear.
What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it won’t need
these pleasures anymore;
maybe just not being is simply enough,
hard as that is to imagine.
Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams
If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,-
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,-
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
When Great Trees Fall by Maya Angelou
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
america by Fatimah Asghar
am I not your baby?
brown & not allowed
my own language?
my teeth pulled
from mouth, tongue
bloated with corn syrup?
america, didn’t you raise me?
bomb the country of my fathers
& then tell me to go back to it?
didn’t you mold the men
who murder children in schools
who spit at my bare arms
& uncovered head?
america, wasn’t it you?
who makes & remakes
me orphan, who burns
my home, watches me rebuild
& burns it down again?
wasn’t it you, who uproots
& mangles the addresses
until there are none
until all I have are my own
hands & even those you’ve
told me not to trust? america
don’t turn your back on me.
am I not your baby?
brown & bred to hate
every inch of my skin?
didn’t you raise me?
didn’t you tell me bootstraps
& then steal my shoes?
didn’t you make there no ‘back’
for me to go back to?
america, am I not your refugee?
who do I call mother, if not you?
Verities By Grace Cavalieri
Maybe she had dementia,
the old lady in the woolen hat,
I don’t know, but she
stopped short in the middle of the aisle,
when her son shouted, PUT THAT BACK.
Clutching a small bag of chips –
like a newborn against her chest,
like a prayer,
like something she owned –
her face collapsed,
Please, but no sound came except,
PUT IT BACK! NOW! PUT IT BACK!
This was Christmas Eve, not that it matters;
Why even embellish a story like that.
I can only tell you I walked behind her
as she walked behind her son,
until I could no longer watch,
yet there was something about
her lopsided hat, her lowered head
that made me sure
no matter what happened next,
she would not put it back
Dorothy Wordsworth By Jennifer Chang
The daffodils can go fuck themselves.
I’m tired of their crowds, yellow rantings
about the spastic sun that shines and shines
and shines. How are they any different
from me? I, too, have a big messy head
on a fragile stalk. I spin with the wind.
I flower and don’t apologize. There’s nothing
funny about good weather. Oh, spring again,
the critics nod. They know the old joy,
that wakeful quotidian, the dark plot
of future growing things, each one
labeled Narcissus nobilis or Jennifer Chang.
If I died falling from a helicopter, then
this would be an important poem. Then
the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore
declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous
youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren’t you
meat? But I won’t be another bashful shank.
The tulips have their nervous joie-de-vivre,
the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop
interrupting me with your boring beauty.
All the boys are in the field gnawing raw
bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who
the hell are they? This is a poem about war.
Hold by Gowri Koneswaran
we’re taught to hold hands
when we cross the street
or walk with our mothers in parking lots or
navigate crowds with a friend and
don’t want to end up alone
hold hands with whomever is closest
when the power goes out
when the sirens scream near
when the moving of men marches
silences into the corner
hold hands when
they come calling,
when they threaten,
“this is necessary to
teach you a lesson” or
“this is necessary
to protect you”
hold hands when we stand still,
when we walk, when
we run
when they tell us to
surrender
when they tell us
to do anything
hold hands when we
fall from the sky,
with or without parachute
when we leap from tall buildings,
with or without
the ability to fly
hold hands with the ones who
don’t
look like us,
talk like us,
believe like us
hands like fragile boxes or bombs,
things that could break or explode
each finger a troop in the human army
each gesture a shield
The Courage to be New by Robert Frost
I hear the world reciting
The mistakes of ancient men,
The brutality and fighting
They will never have again.
Heartbroken and disabled
In body and in mind
They renew talk of the fabled
Federation of Mankind.
But they’re blessed with the acumen
To suspect the human trait
Was not the basest human
That made them militate.
They will tell you more as soon as
You tell them what to do
With their ever breaking newness
And their courage to be new.
I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Compassion Camp 