"My Father's Nest" by Dunya Mikhail

Today four little robins
left the nest and flew away.
I turn time to a month ago
and see their nest growing
over my home’s lamp
stick by stick
beat by beat
song by song.
I turn to yesterday
and see their sunlit wings
lifting from the nest
leaving shadows with open beaks.
Today I missed them
as I did my father
when he left us and never returned.
Death didn’t give him a chance to get older.
I’ve passed his age.
He didn’t even finish the story he told me
about the orphan child
who walked on Earth
looking up at the sky
because he heard the dead live there.
He saw their faces in the clouds
and when he cried
the clouds rained with him.
I turn time back
so my father brings me toys
to share with the neighborhood girls
pausing that moment
while time takes the shape of a robin
who doesn’t seem to hear my calling behind. 

Louis Fratino

"American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [“Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk”]" by Terrance Hayes

Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk
Of musk, muster & deliberation crawling over reasons
And possessions I have & have not touched?
Should I fail in my insecticide, I pray for a black boy
Who lifts you to a flame with bedeviled tweezers
Until mercy rises & disappears. You are the size
Of a stuttering drop of liquid — milk, machine oil,
Semen, blood. Yes, you funky stud, you are the jewel
In the knob of an elegant butt plug, snug between
Pleasure & disgust. You are the scent of rot at the heart
Of lovemaking. The meat inside your exoskeleton
Is as tender as Jesus. Neruda wrote of “a nipple
Perfuming the earth.” Yes, you are an odor, an almost
Imperceptible ode to death, a lousy, stinking stinkbug.

Joan Miro

"Green Mountain" by Li Po

If you were to ask me why I dwell among green mountains,

I should laugh silently; my soul is serene.

The peach blossom follows the moving water;

There is another heaven and earth beyond the world of men.

Wang Hui

"The Farmer" by W.D. Ehrhart

 

Each day I go into the fields
to see what is growing
and what remains to be done.
It is always the same thing: nothing
is growing, everything needs to be done.
Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray
till my bones ache and hands rub
blood-raw with honest labor—
all that grows is the slow
intransigent intensity of need.
I have sown my seed on soil
guaranteed by poverty to fail.
But I don’t complain—except
to passersby who ask me why
I work such barren earth.
They would not understand me
if I stooped to lift a rock
and hold it like a child, or laughed,
or told them it is their poverty
I labor to relieve. For them,
I complain. A farmer of dreams
knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams
knows what it means to be patient.
Each day I go into the fields.

Vincent van Gogh