Featured: Week of Sept. 17
This week, Wild Violet goes global, with three writers providing international perspectives. “Village Women,” a poem by Slobodanka Strauss, depicts the life of rural women in the Ukraine. “Bridge Crossing,” an essay by Louise B. Bennett, tells the story of a 1970s good-will trip to China that changed the author’s life. “Smoke Invasion,” a poem by Agholor Leonard Obiaderi, vividly portrays the problem of pollution in...
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The balcony puffers with their squat bellies of gasoline out-number all our pores. Your skin and mine. Power generators plug their pipes into our narrow alley-ways, lined with hair. Exhale, inhale. Carbon-monoxide smoke lays eggs in infant lungs. Our faces, palms ripen into crimson fruits then, become black, the colour that enriches the fading into oblivion. The National Electricity Company crows a darkness, mid-way between Lagos and Abuja like an impotent rooster . Enter the balcony puffers invading lungs with locusts of smoke. For breakfast, we eat bread baptized with spongy spores of...
Read MoreBridge Crossing
When I walked across the Hong Kong border bridge at the Sham Chun River crossing on March 10, 1972, and boarded the shiny Chinese steam engine for Canton, I pinched myself. I was part of a Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) delegation, and we were making history. We were one of the first American groups to visit China after the freeze in U.S.-China relations following the Chinese Communists’ rise to power. Nixon’s trip had occurred only a few weeks before, Ping-Pong Diplomacy only a year. The bridge crossing was a turning point in my life. Listening now to the Chinese human...
Read MoreVillage Women
they carry water in pails on their heads dirty laundry in baskets to the spring sacks of corn and potatoes under arms they give birth after working all day in fields they paint their doors and windows a sea blue they sit at the loom at night so that they may have something to pass on to their children they wake before their husbands and they go to bed after their husbands they knead bread in the early morning they feed the chickens, pigs, goats they water the vegetable gardens they cook large meals on open flames they carry these large feasts to the fields they pick up, put down, wash up,...
Read MoreFeatured: Week of Sept. 10
As anyone will know who’s ever tried to find a romantic love poem, many love poems are really about death. This week, three writers take a look at our mortality through fanciful language and imagery. Erica Goss, in her poem, “Flowers,” imagines the secret lives of plants. Margaret A. Frey, in her flash fiction piece, “Rising Expectations,” chronicles a woman’s attempt to fly. Maurice Oliver, in his poem, “Refashioned, Using Sued Juxtapose,” subverts an ordinary morning with a surprising result. Please also check out Radmila Djurica’s...
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Marta was vacuuming the living room rug, sucking up dog hair, when her heels left the floor, four or five inches. The sensation took her breath away. She could have easily laughed the moment off as mere fantasy, but Skippy, the family terrier, was prancing wildly, snapping at her elevated soles. “Down, boy,” Marta said. Head cocked, the dog assumed a sitting position. Strange. Skippy was routinely obstinate, rarely following commands. The moment was over as quickly as it began. Marta’s heels returned to the Berber carpet, and Skippy barked and ran in...
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