For the incarcerated Americans

.

Time must pass

really

slowly

for you.

You must be

Black Belts

in Time

by now.

.

I didn’t know what to write you.

I just imagined

being here

in this room

with you.

.

I am

more terrified of

these guards

than I’ll ever be

of you.

.

If I finish this poem,

they’ll have my head.

Because I know the truth

and you know the truth.

But we can never speak it

aloud.

.

So here is the truth

in Story (my child):

.

This is the story of Time

and why

I, the broken poetess of salt,

am deeply

in love with him.

.

He built the world.

The freight

all on his back.

.

His Life

upholds his brother, Death.

Because he loves his brother.

.

I love his brother, too.

And for some reason, they love me.

.

Though

I am no one

.

To them, I am everything.

.

They teach me how to fly.

How to dance, dream and speak.

They gave me these eyes and

this mouth

for poetry.

The twin brothers

are my guides.

.

I tell you

the best lesson Time

taught me

that

I will never forget:

.

You can count the passage of Time

in the comings and goings

of the spiders in your universe.

.

So, my loves.

Here is what Time and and Death

assure me

about you:

.

You are the mound builders.

You are the ones who re-open

the gate,

the gate that once was open,

before class and colony.

.

Between the octagon and the circle.

Where the brothers once

could meet.

.

That is whose blood runs

in your veins:

the octopus, starfish, whale, hawk.

.

In a place

where no one

is allowed to steal Time from you

except you.

.

(The day I completed this poem, I discovered an identical spider (or is it her?) had returned. She changed from my left field to my right.)

If you are able, please consider donating to this amazing Land Back movement happening in Los Angeles!

My gift to myself this Winter Solstice was a donation to Ohioans to Stop Executions. Please join me in donating to their organization, or one in your state/region.

By: Rasha Abdulhadi

Even the trees are not blameless here—
they choose sides, shelter conspiracy,
and lend their limbs to massacre

on this green knuckle of mountain
made retreat for writers and fiber artists,
potters, lapidarists, and some of history’s
most famous racists—folks so deeply dyed
it’s not clear anymore what they’ll break for.

And I would be ready sure to steady burn
this sturdy cabin so clean, tendered
to me for shelter, for there is
no place in this good green earth
safe from its own history’s hollowed-out horrors.

Who among us can take a retreat from horrors,
who seeks to beat a hasty one from consequence or scrutiny,

and how do we make any peace
when even our retreats choose sides:
            fostering peace and unity
            recruits starched southerners to sponsor 
            apartheid in some land hallowed
            by war to hasten the end times,
            because in the beginning, this place housed travelers
            merely means meetings
            for the organizers and fundraisers of b’nai b’rith.
            and supporting his brethren 
            funds youth militias to clear houses and empty villages

In this gracious confrontation
under the sweet breath of branches
on land reclaimed by zion from the hands
of a clansman propagandist and a friend of presidents:
            Here we are supplied with a partial archive
            in a refuge built against two reckonings:
            so which lines are pointed enough
            to pierce the open copping to crimes—
            left unlocked on library shelves, 
            framed on the wall, celebrated with a graven plaque?
            Every shelf is dreaming two nations’ glory.
            Every shelf is a recruitment, ahistory,
            every shelf complicity among the ruins.

My words endure in the frayed spine.
Peel back the coversheet and find:
I’m in your retreat, righting where the pages
of the deep south touch palestine.

Have I not come here to find safe harbor
at the point of a knife, daring respite
or the remediation of ill-gotten spoils—
and spoiling for a fight, am I not reminded
no harbor is safe and every port is the point of a nation’s knife.

_______________________________________________________

It is 0656 and I’ve read this powerful poem twice, listened to it once, and e-mailed it to my 72-year-old father.

Listen to Rasha read it here.

By: Khusal Khan Khattack (the national poet of Afghanistan)

Translated by: C.E. Biddulph

Know thou well this world its state, what is, is; what is not, is not:
Whether Rake or Devotee, what is, is; what is not, is not.
Whether much or little thine, count it all as passed away;
Be thou of the Prophet’s nature, for what is, is; what is not, is not.
If for life thou grievest, what cause if thyself thou knowest;
Alive to thy grave thou goest, what is, is; what is not, is not.
Of sea and land the Monarch thou, if wet and dry alike thou countest;
Be thou then the Monarch of the age, for what is, is; what is not, is not.
Whether pearls or jewels, whether flowers or trees,
Take no account of all, for what is, is; what is not, is not.
Ill thy wishes, bad thy actions, causeless grief and envy thine;
In patience be thou wealthy, for what is, is; what is not, is not.
Weep thou not, nor yet rejoice; leave alike both grief and joy;
Be acquainted with this secret, what is, is; what is not, is not.
Alas! what though it collects, with no one does it here remain:
Of gold and silver be thou free, for what is, is; what is not, is not.
Of thy loved one seek for kindness, and thou find it not, then weep:
Do thou as thy loved one wills thee, for what is, is; what is not, is not.
Whether Union or Separation, to me they both are all alike:
Be thou at ease as thou art, for what is, is; what is not, is not.
Why dost thou strive and struggle, and day and night art full of concern?
Be thou the same whatever betide, for what is, is; what is not, is not.
Short is life, and many its troubles; why so anxious in your heart?
Be thou satisfied with wet or dry, for what is, is; what is not, is not.
Consider thou thy special talent, while alive make good use of it,
O Khush-hal! a Lion be thou, for what is, is; what is not, is not.

By: Barbara Jane Reyes

I believe in my mother, the mother almighty, 
             mover of heaven and earth, 
             creator of daughters and dinner, 
             all that is always unseen, 
I believe in my mother, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Pulmano, 
             who dreamed an American dream, 
             who suffered barely making ends meet, 
             who suffered giving everything unto everyone, 
             who suffered, died, and was buried; 
             she descended into this American earth, 
             while wailing women recited novena, 
             she ascended into heaven, 
             and is seated somewhere comfortable now, 
             she’s watching the Niners game now, 
             she’s wearing her Jerry Rice jersey, 
             she’s got a Diet Pepsi and a plate of Panda Express, 
             she’s watching reruns of Murder She Wrote and Matlock 
             if the game isn’t going the way she’d like,    
I believe in my mother, in the most sacred of sisterhoods, 
             in kapwa with the kumares, the forgiveness of fear, 
             her transcendence from a tumorous body, 
             her pink jasmines and rose bushes in bloom. Amen.

By: Angelina Weld Grimké

Little grey dreams,
I sit at the ocean’s edge,
At the grey ocean’s edge, 
With you in my lap.

I launch you, one by one,
    And one by one,
      Little grey dreams,
Under the grey, grey, clouds,
Out on the grey, grey, sea, 
You go sailing away, 
From my empty lap,
      Little grey dreams. Sailing! Sailing!
Into the black,
At the horizon’s edge.

By Langston Hughes

We should have a land of sun, 
Of gorgeous sun, 
And a land of fragrant water
Where the twilight is a soft bandanna handkerchief
Of rose and gold, 
And not this land
Where life is cold.

We should have a land of trees,
Of tall thick trees,
Bowed down with chattering parrots
Brilliant as the day,
And not this land where birds are gray.

Ah, we should have a land of joy, 
Of love and joy and wine and song, 
And not this land where joy is wrong.

By: Margarita Cruz

5 AM—the world is silent save for the heater 
in the hallway, the cars wooshing
down the main road, the vibrato of
every single driver. Every creak of a settling
house. Lay my head down, press it into pillow.
On the window sill a jar of coins,
sunlight crawling through the
water in an empty spaghetti jar.
A spider settles itself into the warmth
of my house. Inside the body: ghosts
of IVs, needles, feeling
breathless in a hospital bed. 
Somewhere inside my brain aware 
of the machine pumping oxygen,
beeping, attached by wires to the chest.
In the chest, an animal. The animal
forgetting how: to howl, to crawl, 
to find the words.

By Paul Tran

Whether it’s true
that the moth mistakes the candle’s flame 
for the moon or the bioluminescent 
pheromones of another moth,

I can’t say.
I was the candle. 
I was the flame

conceived in and by reason of 
darkness, nibbling on a darkening wick. 
When moth after moth after moth 
swarmed me with their powdery wings,

I asked why. 
I asked how. 
I asked if

I could survive knowing
that not everything has a reason, 
that not everything is capable
of or interested in reason.

Nothing answered. 
Nothing spoke
my language of smoke.