My grandmother used to take my hand and lead me beneath the kadam tree She would make me a garland of Spanish cherries around her neck. Every morning she would wake me up Come, precious grandchild, the puffed rice treats are almost ready In the afternoon, when I returned home after playing outside My grandmother…
Me migrant Live overseas Thousand thousand miles away Me migrant Beyond borders Mislaying smiles Dawn to dusk then dawn again Bearing sighs and a cry Inner heart Love, compassion, kindness Lose their meaning Be careful: no one here And nobody To see and know such pain Me migrant Live outdoors Outside from you Md Mukul…
He’s eighteen, escaping conscription, abandoning France. On the open sea here’s Earth’s rim like he’s never seen it, a blurred brush-line of purple on aquamarine. ‘Sorrow. Deep melancholy. My affections still with those I left behind. The world seemed a great wilderness.’ Haiti at three, the forest at Nantes, and now this. He can’t remember…
We journey towards a home not of our flesh. Its chestnut trees are not of our bones. Its rocks are not like goats in the mountain hymn. The pebbles’ eyes are not lilies. We journey towards a home that does not halo our heads with a special sun. Mythical women applaud us. A sea for…
The country will tell you it is vast. The Seas will tell you there isn’t a passage that makes the entrance easy. Not even fire on the borders If the winds were to bark over your face. .. Let the days and your sad refuge roll on! This is the spike of the land, this…
El Olvido by Judith Ortiz Cofer It is a dangerous thing to forget the climate of your birthplace, to choke out the voices of dead relatives when in dreams they call you by your secret name. It is dangerous to spurn the clothes you were born to wear for the sake of fashion; dangerous to…