GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT Left in the grey air as unfulfilled desires smoke of cremation * Hankering for dawn but it won’t rise for them corona victims * The blackbirds wonder why the streets are so empty sorrowful their songs * A…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE 13 February It’s snowing again, a lazy tumble hiding not a thing, dropping a delicate web over tree and field, garden and wall. My husband says he’s done with winter, and this half-hearted effort seems to show…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE With November comes la nebbia, the fog that rises from Piemontese valleys and blankets the plain of Lombardia. On the day before the United States presidential election I watched it form above our prato, the damp air of a chilly afternoon…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE October has been kind from beginning to end—sunny days, cooler nights and early mornings, leaves of red, gold, flame, and russet filtering the incomparable light of autumn afternoons. As the month ends, I have taken my car…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE September is over. I’ve written next to nothing, but our cantina is filling up nicely with potatoes, onions and winter squashes, apples for cider, jars of salsa, fruit preserves, pickles. Any thoughts that might have been worth…
GABRIEL ROSENSTOCK Letter to India (On the imprisonment of Telugu-language poet Varavara Rao) India! Does the goddess Saraswati smile When you imprison your poets When, Covid-stricken, they hallucinate Sitting in a puddle of urine? India! Is Saraswati pleased? Varavara Rao,…
MALCOLM HEBRON I once read a good story – whether real or apocryphal, I do not know – about four artists in the early twentieth century, on a painting expedition in the countryside. All had been trained in the academic…
