To be old in the time of disease is to be angry for the crushed wren on the sidewalk; for the resurrection lily, its stem bent by the storm; for school children who carry their nightmares in backpacks; for the dead tree in my yard waiting to disintegrate; to be angry at liars who ignore courts and recounts; for hungry families without three full meals; for women with more babies and less choice. I wait for hours of music to wrap me, tickle my ears, awaken my soul; for raucous evenings, family …
“Do you want to die?” Sundeep’s brother asks. I nod. Devidas whirls the playground spinner before I have time to grip the metal bar and hold on for my life. He races around and attempts to knock us off with sheer velocity. While I rotate like a kaleidoscope, the ground sparkles with broken glass littered below. His brother, Sundeep, falls first. I’m almost thrown from the wheel, but as the only girl in the group, it’s imperative I hold on. At the last minute, I …
all this time we were seated for our own share of the light now it doesn’t matter how much furrows are set in our butts today I unthink suicide I uncork my body into the arms of morning sun & fall back into a garden of lilies I’m the chips & also the ketchup I eat the sweetness out of myself into myself here it is: the delicate art of unspooling in a birdlike motion I love the way my body loves me we think we’d walk into a …
I lean behind the wet leaves to pluck what I think I see— a wild black raspberry. Thirty years of picking distills in my hand; I’m confident I can eat what I find. I lift the vine above my head to shake away the rain, pull off the dark caps lined in honeycomb. Leave the rest for next week or after. I hear myself, decades back, prickling at the thorns I’m happy to know as I retreat. A mile on I lick my palm where the stain lasts, a useful dye. Sandra Marchetti is the author of two …
In the goldening late afternoon sun, screeching green loros fly from tree to eucalyptus tree. A boy rides a white horse bareback down a dirt street. · Now cricket song swells in the rose-brushed twilight reflected upon the steady river. There chiquilines (children) skins sun-toasted, still play in the waters. . The near-full moon whitens the dense brush. Frogs have joined that grillo chorus. . In the midst of this starry night, I hear the sputtering …
We took down the bird-feeder Because they told us to, even though None of the birds here are sick yet— We live in a period of excessive Pestilence, which sounds like a metal band Or the beginning of a tongue-twister Except it’s not so hard to say, Only to live in, red thread struggling Against passage through a needle’s eye, The space usually occupied by a rich man But they’ve all shot themselves into space, As if we aren’t already there; money In uncountable currency makes black Death savory, …