Kandahar
By Zohra SaedBehave or the sleeping Alexander will reclaim your lungs.
Kandahar -
Was once a cube of sugar
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Before Your Arrival
By Ellen Haganthe ones who brought your father here, come. Bring
with them whole almonds, dried berries & clementines
wrapped in cloth. Their clothes & smart shoes too.
Loss is an art, traversing one world to the next
By Purvi ShahThe mehndi is leaving my hands,
brown swirls dissolving into brown skin.
Somewhere you are traveling
factory work: made in china.
By Meg EdenI look for a man's hand inside
the folds of my purse, and find
a pattern that recalls a finger print, the way
Rios Montt
By Nancy C. OtterThe soldier who stopped my father's truck
at the Chiapas border crossing in 1983
might have worked for that man
Migrant Earth
By Deema K. ShehabiI could tell you that listening is made for the ashen sky,
and instead of the muezzin's voice, which lingers
like weeping at dawn,
Laundry
By Alicia OstrikerJust finished folding laundry. There's the news. A slender prisoner, ankles shackled, nude back and legs striped by a brown substance you might take for blood but which probably is feces, hair long, arms extended at shoulder level like a dancer or like Jesus, walks toward a soldier with rolled-up pants and a gun, posed legs akimbo in the tiled corridor. I cannot say from the image if the soldier is smiling, too few pixels to tell.
Rubber Dollie
By Scott HightowerLike a dancer covered in nothing
but white powder, then sponged
with coarse brown makeup;