That last February before the war and the hard years that were to follow it, forty-one years after the Leader’s revolution, Laila woke to the sound of explosions in the street. She sat clutching the blanket, eyes darting, half expecting to find herself buried in dust and rubble, her vision slowly adjusting . . .
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1936The year your grandmother swallowed her gold coins to hide them from the soldiersThis is how you keep yourself safe, keep partsof yourself in different boxes Trust no onewith everything —from “In Case of Emergency” from Summer 2017 (Volume 58.2) Tell us about one of the first pieces you’ve written.I worked for several . . .
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“We do not expect to be bludgeoned by laughter and/or by loveor other pleasantries, and neither do we expect music to be used on us. . .” – From “Muzak” which appears in the Music issue (Volume 57, Issue 4). Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.In art class . . .
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“. . .No one thinks this is enough to get the blood out. No one sleeps to the sounds of bombs.[ . .] No one shares the bed with his sisters and brothers.. . .” — from “No One and Syria’s Struggle to Sleep” which appears in the Summer 2017 issue (Volume . . .
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“There are queens and divas here, holding notes and holding sway and cloaking themselves in poisonous ways that march on no feet. They say to be careful here in the desert, that the uninitiated will pay like the gamblers they are, amateurs welshing on a price they negotiated themselves.” —From “Desert Suite . . .
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“But it always happens, and at a certain point the torpor broke up as if the whole garden had completely awakened at the same moment; I believe it coincided with the appearance of Baroni. The oppressive fragrance turned into the air’s perfume, the trees and plants regained their habitual splendor, and even . . .
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“The poems of my friends will never be lost in layers of white death.I read them aloud and hear them breathe.Gene’s Dostoevsky & Other Nature Poems. Alvaro’s little brothof a train in the distance boiling down to nothing.This is not an elegy but a love poem.This is not a love poem but a praising . . .
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“In the Maltese Church the American kissesher dark groom and the priest watchesbefore he grants the blessingwhy did the choice land on Prague why on this rainy daywhite veils belie nothingbut the girl in the wheelchair wants to make itover the bridge before the lightning gets going”—from “Rainy Sun” by Ilma Rakusa, . . .
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“. . . as the sea commits to its mutability, and when rainstrikes the earth, commitment,as one commits to breathe.”-From “The Commitment of Rain” which appears in the Summer 2017 issue (Volume 58, Issue 2). Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Although I have been writing and publishing in . . .
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“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to,says my son at his bris, though it’s my partyand I carry the weight of a hundred generationson the tip of my penis might be more apt.Or: It’s my party. Let us pray.” —from “Meditation in the Key of an Exhale,” from our . . .
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