Helsinki Love Song
Tonight (love night) I’ve married this city. A crow priest blessed us shouting words of power into her megaphone while we clapped and sang. Tonight I’m yours, my city, and everyone’s. Tonight I’m in love with all the wedding guests, my far-off flame and the priest, too.
Read MoreWaiting for Signs
My mother believes in signs. A bird that alights on a branch near her kitchen window possesses the spirit of my dead grandfather, listening to us, guiding us forward. Pennies found on the street are good luck. God is here among us, she says, blessing us with His presence, dropping small miracles at our feet. I want to believe in these signs, but something stops me — the fact that I can never feel God no matter how hard I try. Staring at the ceiling from my bed at night, my prayers are all yearnings, wishes, poured out like coins into a cosmic slot machine. I always make the same request:...
Read MoreThe Incredible Melting Man
MELT ONE They arrived at the check-out line at the same time. Oops. Awkward, empty thought balloons. She pushed a full carriage; he held a quart of milk. “Go ahead,” she said with a quick gesture. “Oh no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “You go.” “No, please,” said the logic of her overflowing cart vs. his one-handed purchase. “Uh, ah…” And then he melted to the hard, scuffed floor, reduced to rivulets of green goo, and oozed under shelves of candy and tabloids. MELT TWO He was at work, standing at the time-clock, watching the minute hand. She was fanning...
Read MoreWild Violet Featured Works: Week of Jan. 20 (Beauty)
As this week’s contributors show, beauty is all around you, should you only look. Donald Gaither’s haiku, “Duet,” provides a succinct look at a luminescent moment. David Filer’s prose poem, “Mine,” reflects on everyday poetry after a chance discovery. Ho Cheung Lee’s concrete poem, “Follow the Flow,” pays tribute to a master of...
Read MoreFollow the Flow
(On the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi) Click image to view larger TEXT ONLY VERSION How hard is it to reproduce the work of such a piece of gem especially when the original sleeps with none but the royal man who was simply absorbed by the sinuous traces of incomparable beauty and skill. How hard is it to surface the buried? The tip of this brush on the old track; the vibrant paths, the much mistaken routes. One needs to repeat the errors for they form parts of the entity. Sometimes words even fall apart to give one the nous of spontaneity. I know how it feels to step on each of the old steps...
Read MoreMine
April is National Poetry Month, and there I was, April 13, 10 a.m., reading a poem by C.K. Williams, the one about how he would like to write a poem for every girl in the world and how everyone — children, congressmen, men in the woods, workers on the assembly line — should have a poem, should see one swing by on the hoist, should have one float down to them like a feather, find one written out on the underside of a turned stone… just the surprise of knowing that there are, out of nowhere, poems that are their poems alone, that their poems can be held inside of them and...
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