I can
always feel you
in the center of my chest

    I can feel your longing
and I can feel your sorrow
as-well as your love and joy

Don’t you know— I ask you to be well
because I can sense you
             less than hour ago you were here
at center of my costal

If I can practice,
sitting here, being
in transit on a vehicle
and feeling the sun simmer
me behind the glass tucking
my hair slowly
behind my ear,Touching
cold glass until
it becomes a word: animate
now worldly and shared
If I can focus on the scent of flowers
and count my breaths
I am sure that when I hold
your hand, I will feel it’s warmth

so calmly,  I practice
for I love myself
and I love you

the scent of orange blossoms will guide me and the peel
of a grape may be deemed too thin, but it encloses
the softness of flesh, the outer & inner mesocarp, the sweet dream
of the migrant—
my grandfather over a field, surrounded by his sons
somewhere on the surface was a point of rupture
but I know there was a seed, too

it is spring again, the planting furrows will blur
as some drive past them but I see with clarity
where I am going

My mother’s wings would be made of thin iridescent chitin. The kind everyone notices
because they absorb black light and give off a bright blue-green glow. I am certain this glow and the spiral of her womb  are what others sought to dominate. Her inner beauty,  her pretty, her numerous adjectives that numerous men wished to fish out and keep as keepsakes to make them feel like the bigger fish. She was never a small fish in a pond she was always fluttering in the sky. Free. Wild.Winged

They only try when someone else wants you. When I want to sit next to you, they pick up the slack and show more love. You become like a fish in a pond they isolated you in. Then, they proceed to reel you in year after year. Every time they sense another they throw in more bread crumbs and you swim with hope that dethrones your gut. But  if they were sitting there in same house as you suffered without offering to lead you to the ocean do you think these love bomb crumbs they start to sprinkle into the water make up for more than a decade in the pond of never good enough,  never pious enough, never quite right as you are so they have to change you? Does it make up for all that sorrow of not being who you truly are?

Expect beautiful things: she runs to me and laughs with her usual pink furry sweater.  we combine “my mãe” with some English “let’s go” and head to the door

“my mãe, let’s go!”. We try to make out the door to downtown to meet her divorce lawyer.

for my mãe, mãe
I finished filling out a declaration and 5 other legal documents. Did her laundry, folded her hospital uniforms and cleaned the yard.

She laughs and smiles and sometimes looks off into the distance, my mãe

everyday we try to find something to smile about

dear life, dear long stretched yarn, I am no longer at your sweet beginning

If you were to have a four hand width from beginning to end, I would be be placing the the second hand over your yarn

I always assumed you were a skein
but your paths are simpler but far more intricate than coiled yarn

dear life, use me
one more humble string to weave beauty

cut across the community center and walked quickly with eyes on the light

I have timed these lights. I know it takes a minute and thirty seconds from when the light on the other side of block turns green until this light ahead of me turns green. And I know they go clockwise.

So, I lift my left hand and tighten my grip on a bag of muffins and a roll aiming to participate in the upcoming race against the street-light clock. I exert a faster pace than I have in days because tomorrow is a monumental day and I have yet to pack.

I have yet to pack a suitcase to board my flight tomorrow. Yet to pack with the sincerest of reasons as to why I haven’t yet done so, so darling are these reasons that they carry my friend’s name. She came to my town and we talked as we always do for hours of her childhood in Ukraine and mine in the states, of dreams, of joy, of both falling the bathroom. We stir the banter until it’s ready to be cooked, and then we cannot part until sundown. It is true I walked to the station and the chatter became daily bread. The kind only a good friend can share with you.

Although I carried muffins, I was already happy. I was full.

You are already a poem
that I love—

Like all great poetry
it is to be shared with the world

Look at the very edges of yourself

the wall studs that have always been sturdy
from corner stud to corner stud you have been built well               you are made to fit

each end joist, brace and girder right where they must be
you are harmony and beauty just as you are

Look at yourself every edge constructed with purpose       and the space left in
between purposeful, too

My name short was uttered with reluctance in a room in which I was not in. Why ?

I wake up in the morning, and I understand why.

we are in our home
where the pomegranates have begun
to fall

where the sugarcane is planted
next to the persimmons, and the limes
drop round as heavy as chucked pebbles

into a sea of black dirt below
illuminated by one round moon
your face stern and mine young

         begin to sing to our elder
                                                      in the sky
that was it, I remember—

my paternal grandmother would sing for us

I awake with you asking me the same questions, and I answer truthfully and then I cry.
But I don’t know if I cry of joy or sorrow because before I can take another breathe the dream is over and you are sleeping next to me. And the dream is a piece of yarn that unravels me into waking life where I don’t have the courage to answer you truthfully.

glorious grounding silence engulfs all, evening comes but only makes it’s gust stronger. It is here where my fear touches the tip of my love that I close my eyes and hold the hands of uncertainty—

may hope truly give us wings

My brother picks up the phone and speaks slowly to me. My arms and legs tingle and begin to buckle beneath me, I am simply grateful I am seated in a car on my way home. “You did good” he says. “Today was a test run. You learned your limitations”. I tell him I wanted a book. So I tried to go to the bookstore but ran out energy. He tells me, I overdid myself not because of the book but because upon exiting the bookstore I joined a march around the block to protest g e n o c i d e. The timing was perfect. I thought it as a sign to join I mention. He laughs while holding his phone almost 6,000 miles away, asserting that I should take care of my human needs and rights especially after my injuries. I laugh again. He is right. I laugh some more but I begin to cry. The book I bought was by bell hooks.

In the preface, she describes how turning away from love in our society “risks moving into a wilderness of spirit” one from which it would be hard to find our way home. Is that what I am witnessing, I think of the picket signs. I think of the lovelessness war connotes.

Have we lost our love of this world?

Are we so afraid and so broken-hearted that we merely theorize about love? But will not stretch our open palms towards it? What does it mean if collectively we cannot conceive of love’s open palm or the love of others to makes us smile at a stranger or cook a dish for friend.  
I like a  falcon in her gyre of words spin in their warning. When suddenly, I hear my brother’s  voice and I am on the ground watching the falcon turn in gyre, his voice soft like when we were kids. I return to his voice, I return to the comfort of sibling love. Each block of joy we have built since children and I cherish the placement of each one.

I think, the world is not too far gone. It is like this. Waking up to the sudden voice of love that will breathe life. Suddenly able to see clearly with awareness where we stand and where our hearts have stood and will stand until the end of time—in love.

Thoughts: I observed ducks in the lake comfortable in the cold their plumage  warming them. I thought about what my plumage may be. If the plumage were a metaphor what is it a metaphor for. Is it wisdom, is it skill, is it a learned capacity? I pondered  and then I just laugh because my mind is conditioned to find patterns and metaphors that somehow I momentary lost the point… I don’t have to know. I can just sit here and observe & be present.

2. Thoughts: … ☁️

I have lifted the mug to quench my own thirst. I content,—— a middle line, silence, full as I always was find myself beautiful and find you divine. I need no other reason but this deep love of ours here on the spin-off rock to smile.

the alarm rings in Guernica
All wounds open with this one

The first verse of Dalton’s Como tu
“I love love, life.” witnesses as
All wounds speak with this one

Ingram’s interview with Ms.Goodman
the Jews Hamburg taken to the Mintz Ghetto stripped of clothing  and then shot
All wounds unravel with this one

The way I cannot speak the language of my ancestor and the violence it took to strip our tongue away but not our lives
All wounds open with this one


Refaats join Jara
All wounds open

And as they open still mothers and fathers wipe the clean the face of their dead children and smile

My your god and mine have mercy and smile upon us again as these wounds open I begin to understand a smile is a treasure

Deadly Dior
Grave digging Givenchy
Dead bodies still in cells Celine
Children Crying Chanel
Some are still in the rumble Starbucks
Never Again, Nestle the why you funding genocides
I’m lovin’ it, McDonald’s- actually, no I don’t love you funding war
Where dreams come true Disney+, I beg to differ and offer. Where nightmares are funded for children caught in a conflict.
And so many more who to boycott, I do believe I have stumbled upon a long, long poem that wishes to be longer. Don’t forget you money speaks too like words and songs and paintings hung up.

Words of self awareness are like harpoons

that hit the places that are already wounded

                From those wounds blood still flowed but now as the second sharp point penetrates

It becomes clear that it is there what we must begin to heal

you grab the fruit but you do not

water the tree

                           then you cry in silence at night without asking

the tree why
Why it can no longer bare fruit

your thoughts circle a dead end street
and scream “BARREN”

But why

Why don’t you just water the tree

Nuestros cuerpos parados de lado a lado
nuestros dedos entrelazados mientras el sol convierte el atardecer en mañana

Aquí la boca de la tierra exhala formando gotas de roció sobre el pasto de migraciones passadas

nuestras manos son flores cúspides
que se extiende más allá de las tierras altas occidentales a tocar gramática de las cuencas costeras donde la avenida Central recorre la parte media de la espalda de Los Ángeles.

Desde allí crecemos flores de cosmos para alimentar a los colibríes
con nuestros dulces néctares
y los colibríes viene y nosotras sonreímos

If you look away from the horrors of war, if you ignore reports, personal accounts told, videos of children with amputated limbs, the dead, the dead and many more dead children, and a whole family lifeless on the street next to their car as they tried to flee with now only mosquitos alive circling the camera man who found them–know that what is rotting is not them. It’s our society’s humanity. It’s the lighting of the Christmas tree at square with the reporter standing on a roof instead of on the ground because the area was filled with protesters. That calling for end of  g e n o c i d e when you continue to watch the dying and hear the mourning calls is not anti- anything is simply who continue to watching thousands of children die. Inside the rumble rotting are our values of justice and freedom for all, our great dream of democracy, they push towards the West Bank as they pushed towards the westside of the what became the U.S. manifesting cruelty this story too old and too fraught with river that runs red. Inside the rubble of the past and now the present– along side that dead will lie our humanity and our soul if we look away, silent.

If you walk down the hallway of all your sorrow Watch on each passing door a projector display the whirling colors of the hands bearing gifts and shackles, shaking trees under frightening storms and caskets of people and things seemingly lost. If down this corridor you continue, I promise you will get to the very end where only a final door in front of the corridor remains open where the temperature suits your skin and life still exists lighter and freer than where you were before. This gift I am sure you will receive if you walk through that corridor of your sorrow and you step through that final door

Go find people who will talk to you on a bridge, who will meet you in vulnerability. Who will not leave you in silence under a street lamp. Go surround yourself with those who will ask “what ails you?”
You deserve to find respect in the way someone considers you. Find those who are sure of you, who can see you are a charm not a thorn. Folks who make you feel like you belong; folks that choose you. Do not spend your life crying over those who could not hold you. Forgive them and forgive yourself for asking the naked for a coat. It may be that you were naked, too. Hold nothing against anyone just be on your merry way, see where other roses grow and what spring looks like when winter releases its grip over your heart. You cannot stay in the past, no matter how sweet or how troubling it seems. You are here on this “x”. Take heart and go find people who like you –wish kindness, love and joy for all those around them. Go, go bravely, go quietly into life.

me gustaría sentarme y decirte
que yo siempre te quise
y que si no te conocí bien me disculpes
no es fácil saber como moverse
en sincronía a alguien mas aunque haiga amor
hay que saber cuando tomar un paso hacia adelante y un paso hacia atrás –hay que saber bailar

We should see each and think brother, sister– earthly kin.

Love our kin so deeply that when they survive
the unkind acts that do unfold
in life we sit with them and cry

May we love our kin so deeply we become even more courageous and emboldened
to stand in the door way if they wish to seek revenge

Walk them through their pain
to understand their hate and sorrow because the wick of  hatred will burn them distort & corrode them burying
the thread between the world and them melting away
their peace–their heaven on earth surrendered
if they walk through that door

Spent so much time alone
Suckled by the edges of leaves and awaken by mountain slopes that the first person I see makes me smile just like the first flakes of snow

When I stir the ***, I am happy with the scent of every ingredient that I have poured into my life, of every version of that stew that slow cooked until now.  

I am not saddened, ashamed or ******* my hand that poured in salt.

I begin to feast.

I see the oatmeal boil in hot water.
That is my mind I think to myself, and that’s all human lives lifting as they are born and sinking once they died

You swirl in a sweeping of leaves up to the heavens, and I stand again at your grave
your songs spin and join the dried foliage, I hear you sing my name and the flowers you gave me, now dry, spin in air too and so does my grandfather’s songs at your window, my uncle’s guitar before he passed, the tuning  of my cousin’s bass and the strumming of my brother guitar melt into the canvas of today’s fall skies. And just when I feel so close to surrendering, I feel all these dried parts of myself begin to lift.

I am here to hold you my uncertain sorrow, hold you my jubilant cries while holding with my other palm the shrieks of excitement. I am here to walk alongside you as you walk back from a dead end road you thought would go somewhere. I am here in the rain–unwilling to abandon you when you spit out words half peace & half misguided renewals of sadness. I am here for the sentimental-girlish **** others refer to, to lift your chin up and say “baby girl you got this”. I am here to squirm and dance with you when no one else will. I am here to hold you. I am here. Here, to break bread with you. Here to drink of the same cup and comb your hair when you’re drunk.

This cracked vase, shatters
leaving only the space around it to witness

I pass my hand through the space
only air, I breathe–

When all the sorrow of the world spills over, cup your hands and try to hold it.

Even if you think it might run over,
know the earth below will hold it, too

Together you will see to it; see that these rivers that long have ran with each others blood and that are marked white deposits of salt from histories of tears serve
their deepening purpose and  nourish
the soil. That all boiling blister of hate pop
by our consciousness renewed. Growing among the dirt of yesterday, the fruit of all our mistakes will be our garden that grows flowers.

From one gut wrenching moment to the next you breathe, you breathe, you breathe
and listen–to the bird’s song and water trickling until the leaves become leaves and you become you, again

The marigolds sing, and although I cannot reach out and touch you—I can still find you.
You are the warmth and the light and the luminosity of love that sticks to me and transforms life. Yes, the marigolds do sing. I can defend this because I know—
I know you and you and you
your eyes stare back at me, your thin hair I inherit, your beauty marks reflect in  the same position as mine. I know that the marigolds do sing.

( the marigolds sing “Here I am. Here.”  And there I find you, again)

Donde la vida te lleve
ahí se abrirá de luz

In Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, a bomb falls over Saint Porphyrius Church
and the promise of never again
is obscured under the rubble  

civilians told to move south towards
the border, take to the roads
mid escape a bomb falls
their bodies scatter over Salah-al-Din street

the son of man mangled over the floor

Sweet and luminous sit the flowers
over the crown of your head

song-ridden mornings bring me old lullabies you sang

so close you are, I simply smile now

our bodies stand side by side, fingers intertwined as the sun comes turning dawn into morning. Here earth's mouth exhales
forming cold dewdrops over the pastures of past migrations

our hands cusping wild cosmos stretch past the western highlands
to touch the grammar of coastal basins where central avenue runs down the middle back of Los Angeles

there, too we lift our palms to feed the hummingbirds with our sweet nectars of wild cosmos


Translation to Spanish:

Sueños de tu y yo

Nuestros cuerpos parados de lado a lado
nuestros dedos entrelazados mientras el sol convierte el atardecer en mañana

Aquí la boca de la tierra exhala formando gotas de roció sobre el pasto de migraciones passadas

nuestras manos son flores cúspides
que se extiende más allá de las tierras altas occidentales a tocar gramática de las cuencas costeras donde la avenida Central recorre la parte media de la espalda de Los Ángeles.

Desde allí crecemos flores de cosmos para alimentar a los colibríes
con nuestros dulces néctares
y los colibríes viene y nosotras sonreímos

Do not disappear again

above us all the stars remain luminous
bellied laughs, and curtain smiles that open to the gleaming sun
shining between your two front teeth

Do not disappear again

above us all there lines tied to kites
like on the day I went to a old place in south of Seoul
next to Hwaseong fortress
there the kids flew kites and I tied a small white paper along with others as a prayer

Do not disappear again

Above us all there should be a mirror reflecting our own beauty, old pictures taken years before make us sigh
we didn’t know we were so lovely so tender and filled with life. Why not take a photograph, today or all days when we still are radiant. Why not realize that our worldly anchor of change and age do not subtract the charm our new age.

Do not disappear, again  take another picture with me

We are still beautiful, tender, and filled with life.

There are two quilts of stories woven and hanging between you and I. You cannot see  the layout of my thoughts or their coordination with my actions.Nor can I see yours.

You see the quilt. The same quilt from years ago. The stories blow in the wind and as does your hair . The same dead ends come up one after the other like roads signs as you drive into the highway of the past.

One question, two questions, ten questions and perhaps you would understand. Perhaps all could fold their quilts and see clearly what has been blowing behind the fabric.

May you soar whether you can see a crowd or a crow from the corner of your eyes.

Constantly, may you see the sky and take it to it–all flight is nature’s miracle and so are you.

If our line of flight crosses or never does overlaps matters not. Let us be two fleeting flapping winged creatures for now

be today’s love child, look
out the window or put down
the glass screens, all seconds yearn
for you, moan for sweet attention
and you yearn for every single
one of them, too
so deep is your yearning
that you hush it with reproach
like you would a neighbor’s dog
barking outside

But it’s your dog
so it’s right outside your window
and the years of wishing
your were someone else
have not neutered
your own desire to return
to the arms of the present
instead you too begin to bark
your desire unyielding