My Poisonous Cousin the Pipevine Swallowtail

[Like the Japanese cherry blossoms wedded to the soil’s palm]

Like the Japanese cherry blossoms wedded to the soil’s palm
planted in front of the train station; or the yellow-black dance
of the tiger swallowtail’s wings as it flees; or the echoes that follow
after I thunder loud against the kitchen cabinets; or the summer fire
hitched to the air we breathe—the chuckle of ash sneaking into our lungs;

Luther Hughes

2022

Countdown as Slow Kisses

10. Here on my knees I look for the single animal: you left
ravaged at the edge of a meadow

9. Is everything accounted for? The fingers dipped
beneath the torso—to keep this body bright

Michael Wasson

2019

Sonnet V

I touch you as a lonely violin touches the suburbs of the faraway place 
patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle 
and, bit by bit, a tomorrow passing in poems approaches 
so I carry faraway’s land and it carries me on travel’s road 

On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves 
a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time. 
I am the son of what you do in the earth, son of my wounds 
that have lit up the pomegranate blossoms in your closed-up gardens 

Out of jasmine the night’s blood streams white.

Mahmoud Darwish

2007

Poems

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My Poisonous Cousin the Pipevine Swallowtail

[Like the Japanese cherry blossoms wedded to the soil’s palm]

Countdown as Slow Kisses

Sonnet V

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