Arts in Society

The stones are endlessly weeping in the dark. Or is it
the bird-chatter of rain. O darling, are you writing
another poem about trees? No, not trees but ghosts
that live on trees and their legend of never-let-gos.

The world never really ended. An apocalypse wasn’t an end so much as a change of state, ice into water.

What does it mean for those living in the diaspora to remain attached to the land they left behind?

“I will be a tightrope walker,” she said, “and I will walk across the air to you.”

“Most were drills. Pilots weren’t to know which were the real deal. They were not to think of the lethal effects of their duty.” A pilot is pulled aside by a desperate woman seeking help.

This is my version of the story, but I will illuminate only a corner of it, one that ran parallel to and underneath it, revealing what was left in its wake.

“Abroadness became my obsession.” When a young Nigerian girl is invited to go live with her uncle in Canada, it sets in motion a peculiar friendship with someone she has long envied.

“You can’t go to Mass like that.” A woman’s mother wakes up dramatically transformed, leading to a reappraisal of their relationships.

When you were / in the Everglades we canoed from Flamingo and through the canals.

My feet moved down another street / and I saw the shape they would draw / on the map in my mind.