my sister and I got them just from growing our thighs and breasts marked as if by tiger claws first they were bright red then with years faded to silver moonlight someone said it was because we were fed too…
I want to share with you my story. But none of the sentences make it to the page. You see, I have fled from my mother tongue— abandoned my voice. I have fallen in love with a new vocabulary, words…
As for Hannah, she was speaking in her heart, only her lips were moving. So Eli thought she was drunk. — Samuel 1:13 In synagogue I pray, my body separated from the men, a glass screen between us: they still…
It was the absent one that kept her awake at night while the others slept peacefully, tucked up in their beds after another story, another sip of water, another kiss dropped on their little heads. Years later, it is the…
When El-Natan was born the room swelled like a balloon and filled Jerusalem, my wailing knocking on the walls, my open legs the valleys of the souk and he between them, the rope of our dual history unfurling him. At…
born not in a hospital not in a bedroom not a manger not ark and wicker not an alley not the backseat not a clinic not the White House born a Sabra— tender, tough in a porcelain bowl welcome home…
An exercise on Psalm 119 I am truly blameless. Or happy. Or neither one. Deep at night, I sit in the shadow of my own verses the furrows I tread with my mouth sheltering saplings that might never grow into…
We sit in the kitchen my grandmother, my mother, me listening to the susurration of water boiling on the stove. Once the bottle is sterile, a careful spoon of powdered formula— my nephew needs to be fed every hour filling…
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Genesis…
Kristin Prevallet – From dire to duty and all the muck in between, change is the only constant. This seems important to remember, lest what is fatal (fated, un-chanced) appear doomed to fail. Nothing is set in stone (made…
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor In Her Lingerie Drawer Five Years Later In her lingerie drawer two pearl and crystal hat pins a black flip phone that says Samsung Verizon my brother’s blue stained drawings from when he was five a braid wrapped…
Rosa Alcalá Homophonic Translation We like things written on us, juicy not the least of which what is your team the ironies I thought my favorite sweatshirt (damaged in print shop) said a coat of sugar, my budding coquettish-ness,…