My friends are distressed Stunned into silence Many of them grieve And all have despaired Suddenly the night has attacked us It’s so dark I can’t see my path Darkness spreads over everything Like grief after a death            People look for light They search for candles, lanterns To cast light on this tragedy Instead of lighting their houses My friends grieve And my brothers Stunned into silence Everyone despairs       ...

History will remember this man Our grandchildren will study him between school recesses Old women will speak of him as a strange enigma A myth, an eccentric aberration . . . The old men will brush off their shoulders Their lesson finished, the children will rush to the courtyard to play ubete, the wolf And mothers let out a weak sigh At hearing their children cry: Peter ninde? Ni wewe, ni wewe Who’s Pierre? It’s you, it’s you. There will be no more wolf on the vast...

What’s real isn’t this thing or that thing my presents that you gave away once they lost the weight and sheen of being given and became no more than fragile objects. What’s real isn’t our clumsy lies or the bodies of others we barely dare to touch. Nor is it doubt—it can’t be doubt— nor can it be hatred, fear, fatigue. My bet is that what’s real is infinitely beautiful. There is a false time set in motion when we fall, but true time is the...

Fragments from the Guidebook of the Dead                         First daytrip/ Kolafjöll No lemonwood grows here, but those interested should note a pale moonwort inching its way from under the lava rock On the Sunny Side There are planets that have two suns and black plants— even though there are two suns and the plants are the color of night there are...

The tallest mountain on Mars is 24 kilometers high and I have climbed it in my dreams. I remember the view from the peak: magnificent; the blue planet swam in the half-twilight of evening. I seem to remember Louis Armstrong was with me, no, Lance Armstrong, no it was Neil Armstrong, I mean. When I awoke I was still in hiking boots caked with red clay, which I scraped off the soles and rolled into a tiny moon.

Did you never get my letter, Mister Brown? it was aurora pink and glittery and I poured perfume from the tester all over it Mister Brown, “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love me,” do I look like a terrorist? I am not the (hu)man with the wine I’m a completely different (hu)man when I’m drunk I am more (hu)man a stronger and bigger (hu)man when I’m drunk greed, ambition, the crazy jealousy are not characteristics characteristic...

Friday. A summer day. The sun shines. Everyone takes off socks and sweaters and jeans. Beautiful girls spread out blankets on the grass. Beautiful girls have a good day, a summer day. When evening falls, they go out and dance until morning and go home with a boy or a girl and wake hungover but happy for the new day, the summer day. The dizzying scent of freshly cut grass. A wriggling blossom in a flower bed. Dolphins leap in the bay. The sun shines. Nothing is missing. Babies smile...

In memory of Jónas Þorbjarnarson (1960-2012)   1. The dark kaiser’s ship, deep-keeled, cuts the water from head to head, breaks and sinks.        * The one who is here to tell us what it means to drown also knows the miracle of lungs filling anew with air when the body shoots up to the surface, treading water, gasping for breath. 2. It seeps into the brain, the black sea:...

The funeral meal—all of the relatives and neighbors have come. I don’t know any of them. The death of my parents in the village, it played out long ago in the future. I cannot summon the memory. I cannot cry. After a long and difficult illness, the death of their eight-hour workday                                                        ...

Bus I Wednesday arrives and my only thought is that I’m looking forward to taking the bus at noon. I didn’t know there would be days like this—days when the only thing I look forward to is the bus, and the only positive thing I think about myself is that I have clean hair. A new month arrives and I realize that the last month passed in the wish that it would simply pass. One summer I took the bus to work every morning. One day, I realized that the bus route had changed;...

One day I’ll tear off my lips and eat them like candy. One day I’ll rip out my chest because I’m not an orphanage for gathering angels. One day I’ll remove the door and stand in its stead to stop myself from leaving for the hole in the world.

Though I’m right beside it, I can’t call out to the sea: neighbor, come join me for coffee. Instead, my other neighbor Carmel visits me through the window without my permission and never even once  tries to enter through the door (anyway, it owns the place). Sometimes church bells reach me from the depths of Wadi Nisnas, other times the morning call to prayer comes quietly from the Istiqlal Mosque (that the old breeze carries from Wadi Salib), the Baha’is keep...

I spill twenty liters of darkness and a childhood up against the wall A Stone-Age hand a paperback Koran Maybe I could have loved you if I was your father and not your son

She has walked and walked for nine long days. All of nine days and nine long nights have passed by. Weary of wandering as she is, the mad woman mutters brokenly, "Have you seen my daughter? have you seen her?" All along the paths she takes the heavy clouds freeze—a thousand birds fly past her in scorn and the wind howls aloud. No man or woman would help her nor would the great gods come to her aid. Wherever she walks, at the touch of her feet all the plants burn and blacken. No...

I saw the Lord, Sriraman, for the first time in an ancient alley in Choolaimedu, playing kittipul with other small boys: no naamam on his forehead. Yet another time on a footpath in Bombay, he was hawking TV covers with loud cries. Just as I passed by, I heard him swearing in Hindi at a north Indian woman who was haggling persistently, The third time, at hotel Park Sheraton, I saw him with a well-known Tamil writer, tunelessly singing a fine poem by Charles Bukowski which was never...

Along the highways of a refugee’s life snapshots of childhood memories hang: hedges overspread with field bean thick with honeybees, a courtyard filled with goat droppings, the shade of a portia-tree, school children under a neem-tree, a pond swarming with buffaloes woods echoing with the koel’s song the sea-shore where sea-birds call. The highways carry us along to yet other highways.   © 2011 Malathi Maitri. By arrangement with the author....

The first dream… An island surrounded by a green, green sea. Everywhere, trees yielding heavenly fruit. Golden-yellow sand drifts. Fishermen at rest. The second dream… Pale blue fields. Pomegranates, lit up by the sun’s rays Weaver birds’ nests, hanging down, Under the shade, women opening their bundles of food. The third dream… A crimson sea. Gardens caught up and drowning in a vortex. Sand drifts lost in the waves. Fishermen’s wrinkled necks....

The little one laughs innocently, without blinking at the raised hand. Then one day she feels the pain caused by the same raised hand and her eyes tremble. Fear depends on the mind; the mind depends on experience. At one time the earth’s tremors drove us out of closed doors, out into the open. The sky our only roof, we ate, we slept. The once quaking earth is now an arena for rioters, within our own cages, our doors never opening to anyone’s cry, each with her own identity,...

Morning comes with a denuded wind empty of cock-crow and summons of temple bells. Sleep dissolves into the alarm clock’s rebuke yet eyelids droop over eyes refusing to open hands outstretch to meet love’s touch and fall into emptiness. I reach the window, a walking corpse, draw the curtains. The city, sparkling, unfolds. Toronto, like a courtesan, casts off her dark cloak and shows off her seductive contours clothed in white undergarments. The Sun god sits shyly like a...

Artigas is an abandoned station the hope left behind by a train that won’t come back a road that disappears heading south.                                                     * I don’t know how it is in civilized places but in Artigas people have a last name. Mr. Nobodies like me—         we come...