humanity
He was shy. I was shier in asking if I could photograph him while he was showing a souvenir the Konso children of the Ethiopian highlands make for tourists: a paper and sticks manual TV. Hand drawn, coloured, shaped, assembled, calibrated to perfection. There are always expert travelers who number the countries visited, who know what to look for, who state what is trendy and not, who arrive at a destination and in no time know everyone. Everyone deemed to matter. […]
I will stand by you I have taken the first lash the second Others followed, tearing my skin I begged the Maza — the unwed men with the whip – to strike me. Blow after blow. I want to prove to you I will defend you from life’s harm. I am not afraid I don’t complain not a moan not a sigh Pain is nothing compared to my love for you, Brother And one day when times of trouble, doubt […]
I believe in the power of protests, strikes, in women taking to the streets with pots and ladles. I believe in their daughters, friends, mothers on the streets of every city. I believe in women in factories, in women directors of glam and glossy magazines, in models, students, doctors; I believe in the love of prostitutes. I believe in women with panniers and men with aprons. I believe in guilds, trade associations of arts and crafts and I believe in […]
We are near the beginning of everything. It’s a little under 14 billion years ago. The newly formed universe has been cooling for 380,000 years and something monumental is happening. All light has lain trapped behind an immense and impenetrable particle cloud for almost 4 thousand centuries. But now, in the cooler temperatures, electrical combinations are occurring, and great bodies of a new gas are forming. Transparent hydrogen opens passages in the dense particle cloud and, in a sequence of […]
the only love sentence – ever, above all – is ‘did you eat yet?’ Elsa Morante Three hours from Utrecht, the night train takes another of the many curves, en route to Innsbruck. Beveled wheels glow briefly as they ride the tracks’ camber. The train had left the Netherlands on time, as could usually be depended. As the train steals through darkened countryside, somewhere in Germany, the outside disappears, and the rattling, glowing train is, for now, all that […]
I held you so the universe would not suck you in protecting you from the wind, the bullets, the pain mama’s tears, mine our neighbours’ fears I taught you to count while picking up stars to pray be thankful, always we are children taking care of all the children under bombs ammunitions and firing squads in tents in the desert close to a bridge the sewage doomed to forget home (all the bread we broke shared and raised to heaven […]
We, the unruly, with no fixed time for meals and hearts flowing as freely as our blood, wait in the small, dark, hot room for a different kind of feast. Earlier, you had said, It is no way to live out of suitcases, but words last little. Suitcases are shrugged off as it is suitcases that bring us to each other and cancel the distance between us. Truth is, we are not unruly. We fulfill every sacrosanct working commitment. Our respective […]
it’s not about me, said the wind, the leaf the branch, the tree it’s not about me, said the moon, the tide, the shoals, the sea no, it’s not about me, said the root, the bloom, the honey, the bee you are mistaken, said the morning, the body warm, the cup, the tea you see, it’s not about me we simply be part of forever the veritas, the hajj, the ver-a-city oh, you sweet dear, it’s not about us, it’s […]
Loving service is the natural position of the soul. Sanatana dharma He skipped lunch to rush home for half an hour as she was engulfed in fever waves; returned to the office, was late for the meeting of the year. Promotion went to someone else for five years in a row. He did not care. The barycenter, his wife. The same morning a teacher put her own money in front of a yawning museum employee to buy entrance […]
though your dress conforms, your manners comport, though the offences you give, may be measured at naught, though in society’s net, you are inevitably caught, may your garlic wild heart, question all that it’s taught though your surface be steady, placid and still, may your lungs stretch to bursting, may you feel your own fill, and when dubious duties beset and make fraught, may your star-burst heart drive waves of sharp thought may your days be full of […]
