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there is a voice behind
each morning prayer that
wakes Jerusalem before the
rooster’s shrill cry -
and before
it was a boisterous thing,
it was small; tiny itch
nestled between vocal chords,
brief settler - barely a home
at all -
much like the heart
whose swelling cries & floods
& tears membranes with its
wanting & maybe wanting
is its own home -
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Artwork: Rebecca Pyle, Spaceport, North Temple Street (Salt Lake City), oil on canvas, 32x32, 2013
You were the wrath of a rock with mouth opened.
With a face through which death has passed, you came back
with shoulders which changed the wind’s path.
Photo: Sequences by Mohammed Ali Mirzaei
I am all the sad women,
women who bring loneliness to bed.
Cold passes even the surface of the house;
Beneath the wallpaper it becomes jaundice . . .
Artwork: Uncharted Space by Joe Balaz
Photo: Aggregation by Mohammed Ali Mirzaei
When I see a cardinal in February, I think of snow
even as I stand on a green lawn beneath palms
and plumeria, watering the grass. I think the bird
Photo: from Gorges - Entering the In-between by Rita Mendes-Flohr
I did not find the lost oasis
of Zarzura, nor spears and swords
of Persian armies drowned
in sand, not even the wreck
of Count Almasy’s plane,
Photo: Two Girls by Mohammed Ali Mirzaei
dear baby with your hands in the air
tears in your eyes and explosions in your ears
Artwork: Rebecca Pyle, Between Two Trees, oil and black gesso on canvas, 24 x 30, 2016
Excuse me miss
Maybe it’s the dim lighting
but what is your ethnicity
or the aroma of spices
because you’re too beautiful
but a funny thing happens
to be Native American
"All cargo must filter through a beagle’s wet nose
though no hound found me in 29-E,
coiled behind a toddler’s homesick wail."
Read more"Roaming across the Zumwalt Prairie,
I play my flute.
The Nez Perce know I am coming when
a tune in my key approaches."
"The summer heat wave hung, heavy on our bones,
and fat flies droned on the windowsills.
Our airedale hid, snapping at our fingers.
She would not leave the cold dark space beneath
our back door steps."
"the Fantastic Four is tré shitty but tough shit. Michael B. Jordan is already on flame. on fleek. he’s ahead of the game’s excited red, to the danger zone and beyond. so innanet trolls seem quite non-toxic,"
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Photo: Mobility in Border by Mohammed Ali Mirzaei
"my mouth is a room that lights up in the dark
the girl who trained me spatula-full of radium in her mouth the corners gritty
and glowing her reassurance that the paint is harmless taught us how to point the paintbrush tip between our lips"
"The pungent smell of fresh cut grass on a Saturday morning
My grandma frying up bundi bundi
The scalding oil searing my lips and tongue
Too anxious to wait for it to cool"