Lost in Translation

Visa Delays Imperil Iraqis Who Helped U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/world/middleeast/13baghdad.html?_r=1&hp

Forty years ago

Hmong men, people of the mountains,

Clasped to helicopter landing skids
Dropping midair

Abandoned by the US government they supported

Left to death or imprisonment

Or to languish in Thai Relocation Camps,

Victims of their own loyalty

Now, Iraqi translators

Pack bulky suitcases and pray for visas that never arrive,

Burn their notebooks and wish they could forget English,

Victims lost in translation

http://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/?p=1337

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/26/070326fa_fact_packer

Homegrown

The Troubled History Of The Supermarket Tomato

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/09/137623954/the-troubled-history-of-the-supermarket-tomato

Do you remember standing in grandma's garden, 

Eating tomatoes as if they were apples,

Sunshine and rain dripping down skinny arms,

Covered with red nectar?

Freshly plucked from caged green vines

Aching only for salt:

Homegrown happiness

How many sparkling flavors
(Bright as elderberries; quirky as key lime)
Have been forever lost to our tongues
In the pursuit of the easy to transport fruit?

Waning Days

When S’Mores Aren’t Enough: New Economics of Summer Camp

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/business/summer-camps-are-facing-new-economics.html?hpw

Waking early to reveille at the flag pole

Mosquito-bitten and  hungry

Retreat to cafeteria of timber

For powdered eggs and blueberry waffles

Towering plates passed by sticky little hands

Bug juice in day- glow pink or electric blue

Days filled with rowboats and canoes,

Archery lessons and horseback riding through wooded paths

Swimming in a pond rimmed with lotus

Chasing throaty frogs and running from thin snakes

Weaving ropy bracelets and writing letters home

Singing camp songs

By the firelight

In the waning days of summer

Relative Kindness

For Hire: a Visitor to the Grave of Your Dearly Departed

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/nyregion/womans-job-is-to-visit-graves-for-loved-ones-who-cannot.html?hp

Clean marble headstone,

Paying careful attention to names

Pull away tangles of weeds

And long dead plants

Leave only a simple stone

Or fresh flowers, as desired,

Bow head in pose of remembrance,

Snap photograph, and go

Confession

Sticky Fingers, Hidden Hams: A Shoplifting History

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/07/137627302/sticky-fingers-hidden-hams-a-shoplifting-history

Once,  I stole lipstick from the local Osco,

Buff shimmer,

The case, slick black polyhedron,

Bespoke sophistication

To my guilty palm.

Eyes darting at convex mirrors

Praying for easy escape

Past aisles of Hallmark cards; wine and liquor; school supplies and barbeque doo-dads

Out electric doors,

Unused bills leaden in my pocket.

Search

Spain Confronts Decades of Pain Over Lost Babies

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/world/europe/07iht-spain07.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

Where are you now,

Flesh of my flesh,

Bone of my bone?

Child of shadow

Crib crocheted in cobweb

Stolen by nuns

In the name of God

Mexico Rising

Better Lives for Mexicans Cut Allure of Going North

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/06/world/americas/immigration.html?ref=mexico

Our sons will no longer die like dogs in your desert

They will not scuttle around your barbed wire

In blinding night

Or fear La Migra as they build your cold houses and

Harvest your loveless fields

Mexico is rising

Like a young man standing on the earth of his ancestors

Peace Corps

Peace Corps Volunteers Speak Out on Rape

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/us/11corps.html?_r=1

I came to breathe clean air

To live in a one room home with a thatched roof,

To sleep on earth,

To plant and harvest with soft hands

Women here carry water in clay urns

From dying creek bed to parched village

Faces placid as stones smoothed by rushing water

They looked away

When I crawled back

Sarong smeared with blood

Gathered babies in their arms,

Turned their backs to stoke dinner fires

As if to say

Our sons, brothers

Fathers, husbands

Act as men do

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/video/peace-corps-gang-rape-12613898

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42988397/ns/us_news-life/t/volunteers-peace-corps-mistreats-victims-rape-sexual-assault/

July 4

Wave little flags

Dress your children in stars and stripes

Drape your porch in banners

Celebrate freedom

Close your eyes to Afghanistan

Stop your ears to bombs falling in Iraq

Special ops in Pakistan,

Know nothing of Drones in Yemen, Somalia, Libya

Thousands of miles from main street

Our boys clutch guns in far off lands

Restored

Some With Histories of Mental Illness Petition to Get Their Gun Rights Back

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/us/03guns.html?pagewanted=5&hp

Voices hum in trees,

As you lie face down, in the prairie

Talking to bears

Discerning language in growls

Shot gun in hand

Demons in walls

Phone bugged by CIA

Guarding the perimeter in fatigues,

Bearing MAC 90

Longing to hang from the chandelier

Or free fall from a bridge

Gun rights restored

Discarded

The War Against Girls

Since the late 1970s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303657404576361691165631366.html

Ringlets, soft as eiderdown, will not be pulled into bows

Pink blankets will not be knit

Dolls will not be sewn 
Trusting eyes will not open

She will never feel the sunlight,
Or take a deep breath  

Daughter discarded

Slow News Day

Some days imagination,

Like a lazy teenager, wants no part in poetry

Scanning paper after paper

Lap top growing hot

Searching for a spark

In  a world of protest

And sorrow,

Rape and drowning,

Slain children

Tortured activists

Some days, I wish to read about

Late strawberries peeking under floppy leaves

Elderly dogs madly chasing squirrels and

Kids earnestly peddling lemonade.

Unspoken

Shyness: Evolutionary Tactic

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26shyness.html?scp=3&sq=shy&st=cse

Not broken or flawed

Just enraptured with silence

Profound quiet, the flight of thought,

Companionship of books

Or voyage of music,

Staccato dreamscapes,

Classical reverie,

On long drives through sandy dunes and twisting trees,

You conduct symphonies with knowing hands

Your privacy, a necessity

Your love, an unspoken gift

Release

In pictures: The art of Guantanamo's inmates

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13967341

Roughly hewn doors with battered lock

Brass samovar atop intricate tapestry

Skeletal trees of eggplant and evergreen

Full moon from a small window

Prison cell, luminous with sunlight

Tortoise

Madagascar's 'tortoise mafia' on the attack 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13799205

Whorls striate primeval shell

As if painted by master craftsmen

Prehistoric, they crawl from Indian Ocean

Ambassadors of another existence

Poachers wield machetes and rifles,

Stealing flesh for meat

Spirit for sexual potions

Forsaken tortoise shells litter beaches in Madagascar

Bare

Miru Kim Confronts Her Fears
http://weirdnews.aol.com/2011/06/24/nude-artistmirukim_n_883110.html#s297221&title=Nude_Artist_Mirukim_n_883110.html#s29722title=Nude_Artist_Miru

Naked woman
Poised atop a roof in Istanbul

Spine curved,

A featherless bird

Disrobed,

As we are in dreams,

She descends a staircase of stones

Into darkness

Bare, she perches inside a rusty clock’s machinery,

Folded as paper crane

Elemental as mineral

Exposed, she balances on a subway rail

Feeling cool steel and

Quickening hum of an oncoming train

Haunted

Year After a Drowning, New York Schools Chief Tightens Rules for Field Trips

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/nyregion/new-york-city-tightens-rules-for-school-trips.html?src=rechp

She thrashes through my dreams

Bobbing and weaving

Frantically waving small black hands

Riptide drags her tiny body underwater,

As the indifferent sun continues to shine

Stonewall Riots, 1969

A Sense of Euphoria Settles on the West Village

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/a-sense-of-euphoria-settles-on-the-west-village.html?hpw

Today's poem was inspired by a passing reference to Stonewall Inn, the tavern where many New Yorkers gathered to celebrate the legalization of gay marriage.  The Stonewall, the scene of a legendary riot in 1969, is considered the birthplace of the Gay Pride Movement.

Young hustlers

Black eyed boys

Beatnik beauties

Tired queens

Down and out 'faggots'

Raided by police

For being 'queer'/beat/lonely/thirsty for company

Belittled, arrested, spat-upon, abused

Until thousands came

Men in suits,

Architects and lawyers,

Shop keepers and construction workers

Rallying at Stonewall

http://manhattan.about.com/od/glbtscene/a/stonewallriots.htm

Incandescent

Out of Tiffany’s Shadow, a Woman of Light

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/arts/design/25kast.html?ref=arts

Her hands, once hidden by history,
Crafted cerulean dragon flies

Beating black filigree wings

Across iridescent oceans of glass

Her hands, once hidden by history,
Built dappled lavender wisteria vines, 

Blooming jewels

Her hands, once hidden by history,

Spun daffodils in vermillion and ocher,

Fluted and fluttering, incandescent

Her hands, once hidden by history
Transformed silica, soda and lime

Into sunlight and blossom

Institute of Living

Expert on Mental Illness Reveals Her Own Fight

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1&hp

Fading scars, like ruby bangles dearly bought, ring your wrists

Now hallowed expert

Once hidden in the bowels of

Institute of Living

Heaving head against unyielding floor

Thrashing indifferent walls

Thorazine.

Librium.

Electroshock.

Yet still seduced by suicide

Until, on knees bruised with bending,

Gold alighted the hospital chapel,
Deus ex machina,

Your deliverance

Sometimes, though,

Driving through brightly lit tunnels,

You’ll hear the siren’s song still,

Grip the wheel with palsied hands.

Undocumented

My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-life-as-an-undocumented-immigrant.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

Beneath official words

My truth stirs

Behind masthead and bylines

In white margins

Unfathomable

Mysteries of A Nazi Photo-Album

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/mysteries-of-a-nazi-photo-album/?hp

Tree stripped of branches,

A single black brush stroke.

Stone fortress fallen.

Bombed spires like broken filigree rise above

White crosses.

Prisoner wrapped in lumpen wool

Soldier in starched uniform

Share gaunt cheeks, unfathomable eyes

"Save Money. Live Better."

Justices Rule for Wal-Mart in Class-Action Bias Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/business/21bizcourt.html?hp

Groped in anonymous storerooms,

Earning $6.10 an hour,

Denied raises,

Mocked by yellow smiley faces,

Drowning until payday

Making jeans in El Salvador,

.15 cents a pair,

Surviving in shanties in Nicaragua,

Sleeping 12 to a room in China,

Sweltering in sweatshops in Saipan

You come each week to fill your cart

Save money. Live better.

http://www.now.org/issues/wfw/wm-facts.html

Remember

I remember

Blue eyes, squinted in laughter

Lined forehead, furrowed too young

I remember

Shiny gash on leg

Long scar across stomach

I remember

Convertibles blaring oldies

Ball games on the radio

Backyard and barbeques

I remember

Hospitals and waiting rooms

Chemotherapy, radiation

Eighteen years gone

I don’t remember enough

Dignitas

adapted from  Murky truth behind Swiss suicide ‘clinic’ Dignitas

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5006805.ece

At the confluence of Acheron and Styx,

He of keen gaze  

Demands a coin

To ferry bodies to oblivion

Death is furtive in dirty rooms,

Personal effects fall under bug ridden beds

Blue lights of the ambulance

Cast watery glow on chop shops and brothels

Trash bags of cell phones, car keys, jewelry

Sifted through, pawned treasure

Shards of bone and bits of grit

Float in Lake Zurich

Scant remains of dignitas

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/a-week-in-the-death-of-terry-pratchett-2299287.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_%28mythology%29

Recollection

Memory Implants Give Rats Sharper Recollection
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/science/17memory.html?_r=1&hpw

Electrodes alight
Images hover hazily then snap to focus

Apples, swarming with bees, rot beneath a picket fence
Freed from Kodachrome,
Mother and father climb from forgotten photographs
Dusting off shoulders, straighening hair

Her waist, trim in terrycloth
His forehead unlined, though eyes already crease in the glint of afternoon sun

Electrodes alight
Summoning Good Humor trucks and sprinklers,
Fireflies and empty fields
Streets of half-built homes
Smelling of promise and saw dust.

Lead

China in lead poisoning 'cover-up' - Human Rights Watch

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13779404

Words explode

Meaning unravels

Letters dance and twirl,

Liberated from each other

Facts drift

Like clouds, aimlessly floating across sky

Learning, complex puzzle with misplaced pieces

Growth slowed

Childhood  suspended

In polluted villages

poisoned homes

Lost and Found

Relic of Saint Disappears From Its Case Inside Church

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/us/15relic.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

Patron Saint of Lost Objects

Stolen

Golden artifact

Laced with angels

Gone for a joy ride in a beat up convertible

Smelling ocean air

Glad to be rid of burning votives

Free from the grotto

Finally found

Borrowing Limits

Share Your Story: Majoring in Debt
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/22/college-debt_n_471023.html#s73160&title=Jennifer_Dessinger_34

Jaws tight

Eyes unblinking

They clutch placards announcing student debt

With unsteady hands

$50,000

$85,000

$225,000

Twenty one and drowning 

Phone ringing deep into the night

Working two jobs,

Small apartment, modest meals, diminished dreams

Diploma, a terrible encumbrance

Education, a brutal miscalculation

Ancient Art

With 1.2 Billion People, India Seeks a Good Hangman

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/world/asia/14india.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

Harvest  jute, hemp or sisal

Spin fiber to yarn

Braid with sure hands

Into scratchy rope

Fell trees of

Rosewood and teak

Cut into planks

To build a scaffold

For the gallows

One must perfect

The art of dying

To live

Ova

Mysterious obelisk
Elusive ellipse

Shell and membrane

Microscopic moon
Pearled prayer

"Blood will have Blood"

Being Ernest: John Walsh unravels the mystery behind Hemingway's suicide

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/being-ernest-john-walsh-unravels-the-mystery-behind-hemingways-suicide-2294619.html

You left behind a winding path of bloodied lions, wildebeests and kudus,

A bread crumb trail through forest, leading home

Bull-fighter, fisherman

Bearded and muscled

Male

Haunted, perhaps, by weathered photographs

Of young Earnest in long white pinafore

Or of hiding in the wood shed from Father’s rage,

Clutching a rifle   

Courting death on safari,

In raging waves,

In fire and front lines

Spain, Italy, England, Key West

Scotch, tequila, martini, bourbon

Your own father’s suicide,

Double barreled shot-gun,

Demanded your own.

Ce n'est pas un poème

Smoke and mirrors: The surreal life and work of René Magritte

 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/smoke-and-mirrors-the-surreal-life-and-work-of-ren-magritte-2295262.html

Lovers kiss,

Heads cloaked in cloth

Faces obscured by apples, birds, sky

World inhabited with slivers of moon, naked breasts, open umbrellas

Miniature steam engine

Surges from a brick fireplace

Man in desert sun,

Ribs replaced by caged mourning doves

Blokes in mackintoshes

Fall from the sky as rain

Human condition,

A bowler hat suspended in blue clouds

Lost Warriors

Homeless Veterans Sue Over Neglected Campus

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/us/09veterans.html?hpw

Living in a tent

Deep in the forest

In the company of ghosts

Wrapped in dirty wool

Sleeping on heating grate,

Hands cupped into an empty bowl

On park benches and midnight buses,

In shelters and under bridges,

Lying as if wounded,

Platoons of lost warriors

Longing to return home.

Ache and Arch

Putting to Rest Fears that IVF May Be Linked to Cancer
http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/08/putting-to-rest-fears-that-ivf-may-be-linked-to-cancer/

What strange seeds sprout within,

Black tendrils twisting?

What warp and weft

Knit into darkness?

What words must ache and arch

To tell your truth?

Congressman Weiner

Weiner Admits He Sent Lewd Photos

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/us/politics/07weiner.html?_r=1&hpw

Cell phone images click

In quiet office

Photographs in frames behind my back

The only witnesses

In the sacred silence

Power overwhelms me

As I flex

For the camera

 

 

Tailsmans

adapted from Watching the Murder of an Innocent Man

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/magazine/watching-the-murder-of-an-innocent-man.html?pagewanted=8&hpw

Attacked by his own

With punches, kicks, and club

Medicines, pelts and bones,

Thrown into the Sabi River

Holy objects sink in rushing waters,

Powers leeched by rock and rain

Like Prospero,

The n’anja abjures rough magic

But he misses

The smoke of burning sheep fat,

Catching evil spirits in their plumes;

Conjuring ancestors,

Seeking their truth;

Longs for lost root and bark,

Horn and herb

30 Years Ago

As AIDS Turns 30, Scientists Reminisce

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/05/136972454/as-aids-turns-30-scientists-reminisce

Skeletons line the sidewalk

Beautiful, wasted men

Bruises blossoming on thin arms

Young men with strange sarcoma

Speckling skin like berries or blood

Mystifying doctors

Local news thick with obituaries

Gristly, brutal deaths

Bathhouses are closing

Freedom, like steam, dissipating

Mercy

Dr. Jack Kevorkian Dies at 83; A Doctor Who Helped End Lives

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/us/04kevorkian.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1&hpw

Efficiency apartment

Salvation Army clothing

My love, death,

Intolerant of luxury

In modest homes

Or rustic campgrounds

Saline drips

Potassium chloride floods

Heart ceases

Then silence

Photograph their eyes

Capture the vacancy

Flat like fish

My own final moments

Kidneys failing

Imprisoned in hospital bed

Praying for mercy

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/dr-death-jack-kevorkian-dies-at-age-83/2010/12/03/AGhktuHH_story_2.html

Rebirth's Price

Nigeria: 32 Pregnant Teens Arrested in Baby-Trafficking Scheme

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/world/africa/03briefs-Nigeria.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Belly swollen like

Egusi melon

He grows inside me

Swimming within,

Stealing my breath

At the sound of my voice,

He startles awake

He prefers plantain and cassava

Protests pepper soup

With small kicks

Soon he must leave me

I will cry and drink palm wine

With $25,000 naira

I’ll fly from this shanty town

To begin again

Unbidden

Locked up for reading a poem

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/locked-up-for-reading-a-poem-2292032.html

Poetry burst from your lips unbidden

Escaping through clenched teeth

Rising like dawn;
Like crocus in spring;

Like 5,000 fists,
Waving on the streets of Bahrain.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery  We are the people who will destroy the foundation of injustice Don't you hear their cries, don't you hear their screams?”      

Ayat al-Gormezi, poet                                                                

Starter Home

Minneapolis Housing Market: Busted, again 

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2011/05/minneapolis_housing_market_bus.shtml

Storybook cottage,

Homestead house

Built in 1900

Surrounded by plains

Cornfields and pasture burst  from earth

Soon eclipsed by miles of modest bungalows

Well tread parquet floors

Dining room walls kissed by crimson

Bedroom,  pale green of sage

Basement laced with wooden beams, smelling of mildew and time

Who's once strong hands planted

Your bleeding hearts and peony?

Lilac in lavender and white

Cranberry, a riot of soft pink blossom

Lilies of the valley sprouting by the rusty spigot

Another planted tall orange Tiger Lily near the creaky steps

Ornamental willow, like an over sized bonsai

Surrounded by bright yellow Blanket Flower.

Cottage yarrow, Russian Sage line the garden bed

Hens and Chicks pepper your flagstone path

I too left my mark

In dirt sewn by generations of owners:

Pink Echinacea, Black Eyed Susan
Conjure prairies of old,

Joe Pye Weed, tall man with stooped shoulders,
Guards the porch.

Morning Glory climbs weathered metal,

Hostas punctuate the deep shade.

Sweat and soil

Sunshine and snow

I remember
Cold winter wind stealing through thin windows,
your quiet corners,
The slant of sunlight in borrowed rooms.