Saving Face

Mauled by Her Husband?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/16/muslim-honor-crimes-rumana-monzur-allegedly-mauled-by-her-husband.html

His fingers dug into my eye sockets

Bringing aching darkness

Blinding me as he is blinded.

He bit my cheeks, my nose, my neck,

His mouth dripping with my blood.

He ripped out my hair,

Called me unfaithful

All while our daughter screamed in the corner.

I will not be silenced by sharam*

I will not 'save face' for him

*Shame in Urdu

Torn Apart

Ritual Mourning for Slain Brooklyn 8-Year-Old

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/nyregion/ritual-mourning-for-slain-brooklyn-8-year-old.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Black muslin drapes all mirrors

We look within

Sit on wooden crates and stools

Shun shoes

We rent our garments

Wear unwashed clothes the color of night

Burn candles

Seven days and seven nights

For our lost son

What man has torn apart

May God sew together

Shelter

The Shelters That Clinton Built

http://www.thenation.com/article/161908/shelters-clinton-built?page=0,1

Haitian children

Dark skinned, brightly clothed 

Sit at desks in a sweltering trailer

Donated by Americans

Walls laced with formaldehyde

Eyes burning

Minds aching, facts swimming by,

Gasping for air

Uriah Levy

The Levy Family and Monticello, 1834-1923: Saving Thomas Jefferson's House.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Levy+Family+and+Monticello%2c+1834-1923%3a+Saving+Thomas+Jefferson's...-a0102102658

Monticello in shambles

Proud flower gardens, now strewn with weeds
Ingenious vegetable plots gone to seed
Hand-laid parquet, grown dull and scratched
Walls once bright yellow as sunshine, dimmed with years
Jefferson’s grave defaced by looters

You purchased the plantation for a pittance
To save it from oblivion
With love for the great man who lost it
You brought back his pawned furnishings
Intricate carved chess set from France,
Austere portraits and marble busts,
Leather bound library and quills,
Breathing life into a once gracious estate
As they tried to wrest it from
Your Jewish hands

Explosions

Mumbai: Explosions shake India's financial hub 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14141454

Mumbai,

My memories of you are exploding

As terrorists destroy you, block by block

I remember your dirty streets

Crammed with begging children, oxcarts, fruit stands, fading murals

Thousands of bodies pressed into cramped, hot walkways,

Men chewing betel nuts, women wearing fresh jasmine

Everyone buying, selling in streets now in flames

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