Witnesses
By Ellen BassToday is gray, drizzling,
but not enough for drops to pool
on the tips of the silver needles
or soak the bark of the pines at Ponary—
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To the Black Virgin Mary on a Steeple in Greensburg, PA
By Destiny O. BirdsongOr maybe you weren’t. Whenever I’m frightened,
anything can become a black woman in a granite dress:
scaffold for what’s to come: blue lights exploding
like an aurora at the base of the bridge;
Dominion
By Claire HermannGod separated the light from the darkness,
but I have a light switch.
Once there was morning and evening,
but now someone has torn the heart out of a mountain,
L’Chaim
By Nesha RutherL’chaim to my rabbi who gets red in the face during prayer
and sings off-tune
we can always hear him.
Saraswati praises your name even when you have no choice
By Purvi ShahYou had a name no one
could hold between their
teeth. So they pronounced
Cedar
By Anastacia-Reneethe cedar tree could not comprehend
the crime could not comprehend a leaning
a lynching a love gone wrong
Deported
By Ellen KombiyilWe are on the plane now
crossing ocean. The pressurized
air is sweet not stale never
stale, the cabin set for
Do You Speak Persian?
By Kaveh AkbarSome days we can see Venus in mid-afternoon. Then at night, stars
separated by billions of miles, light travelling years
to die in the back of an eye.
Eagle Feather Prayer
By Linda HoganI thank the eagle and Old Mother for this prayer
I send to earth and sky
and the sacred waters. I thank Old Mother
and the golden eagle, the two who taught me to pray