Montreal Serai

Accordion I passed a man playing accordion on a park bench filling the thick afternoon sunshine with strands that made me homesick  Read more…

ROMA In the last heat, little puffs of fog lift off the marsh like white birds, and although she is  Read more…

In november, flocks of birds fly in spectacular changing formations over the botanical garden of the downtown roman sky. Les  Read more…

Partial submission I thought of mailing you a paper-clip then thought again for surely you must have some in a  Read more…

TO BIG BILL BROONZY OF MISSISSIPPI it’s moving and it’s quiet in mISsissipI, MISSisSIP pi, miSSSSiSSSSi pI! and she cries  Read more…

The photograph, of the wall of a tunnel that takes pedestrians under the railway on Lucien L’Allier near the Bell  Read more…

TIME AND AGAIN   Out of the curse of his exile, there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms and  Read more…

  Sexual Inequality   Walking home from the metro she sees shadows on the wall of a building to her  Read more…

    “I’m not Christian” “you mean you don’t believe in God? …then, what are you?” “I have a lot  Read more…

  (Inspired by Robert Frost)       If only I had enough pens, enough to write ghazals in my  Read more…

  Reprieve Back again in Brooklyn, where it’s hot. Coffee upstairs in McDonald’s with A.C., at eighty-sixth and twentieth. Music  Read more…

  Budapest Suites, I (from Grand Gnostic Central:  DC Books, 1998)   “Apply what you know to what you feel  Read more…

  I love Montreal, tu sais because English  here is charmant and French  c’est cool because locals  know that a  Read more…

  32nd Ave., Lachine Now night, and off the curving yellow arches, the light, usually so harsh, glows dull in  Read more…

*** Editors note: Gabrielle Mathews has just won the junior category prize for this poem in the “Act NOW! International  Read more…

These days I can’t but remember Gamal Abdel Nasser.  The Arab people are now finding unity in demands, hopes and  Read more…

The Journey I marched through thick snow until leaves began to reappear on deciduous trees, pine needles protruding from toes  Read more…

De Maiz… Everyone is igualdad Said the man of the wise mind And the old hands He told me We  Read more…

SAND PLAINS, 1848 When deer are mating: The clatter of antlers. Sound of the drum beating- Log house where the  Read more…

What will the traveller see on the horizon? – From the meaning of Inuit place names This place is not  Read more…

My hands can still plough the fields. He was a teacher, my younger boy He taught me to write my  Read more…

  Intro: Speaking in Montreal, David Shulman, an Israeli activist, described the luxurious, yet windowless, houses of the illegal Jewish  Read more…

  In Gaza breast milk for two years a well-spaced brother organic baby food furniture safety-checked growth carefully plotted then  Read more…

[from my Iraq suite, “Howl to the Dying of the Moon”] * A lean desert wolf howls… A child is  Read more…

It is perhaps inescapable, my being born and raised in a North American suburb in the latter half of the  Read more…

  lines for qi baishi (1864-1957) dear qi baishi your neat little cottages worry me a lot are those just  Read more…

       FAR AWAY     to the south     bayous—      ruptured oil well tar balls soiling protected wetlands  Read more…

  Where? Somewhere. She walked some more to reach the unknown. Some more, another mile to go there, where? Somewhere.  Read more…

  This morning I plunged into the arms of death. I immersed myself in wisdom.   In the silence the  Read more…

  In the small, dark hours, I perceive frozen chunks set loose in me:                        jagged blocks of icy skin above  Read more…