Word of the Week: flummox (FLUM-uks) Definition (verb) Confuse In Context "The reason for math's bad rap is that the very same teachers and parents who have psychic scars from their own inability to correctly memorize their multiplication tables in the fourth grade are today completely flummoxed by elementary school kids' homework." — Esther J. Cepeda, The Record (Bergen County, New Jersey), 26 Apr. 2018
I Could Be a Whale Shark Aimee Nezhukumatathil Bolinao, Philippines I am worried about tentacles. How you can still get stung even if the jelly arm disconnects from the bell. My husband swims without me—farther out to sea than I would like, buoyed by salt and rind of kelp. I am worried if I step too far into the China Sea, my baby will slow the beautiful kicks he has just begun since we landed. The quickening, they call it, but all I am is slow, a moon jelly floating like [...]
Diving into the Wreck Adrienne Rich First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I [...]
Hurricane Yona Harvey Four tickets left, I let her go— Firstborn into a hurricane. I thought she escaped The floodwaters. No—but her Head is empty of the drowned For now—though she took Her first breath below sea level. Ahhh awe & aw Mama, let me go—she speaks What every smart child knows— To get grown you unlatch Your hands from the grown & up & up & up & up She turns—latched in the seat Of a hurricane. You let Your girl what? You let Your girl what? I did so she [...]
On Children Kahlil Gibran And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children. And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house [...]
The Country in Which I Was Born BY ATAR HADARI The country in which I was born cannot be seen anymore you can smell it sometimes turning a corner, crossing a sewer or underneath the trees that take the power-line between their flowers; sometimes crossing drainage ditches between streets you can hear it sing and the abutments of city blocks rub together like chafed skin on a cobbler’s wheel trying to make chamois out of cow tongue; and the children running in between the cars where I was born do not know there was ever any earth between these two rivers of [...]
What I Believe BY KIMBERLY BLAESER after Michael Blumenthal I believe the weave of cotton will support my father's knees, but no indulgences will change hands. I believe nothing folds easily, but that time will crease— retrain the mind. I believe in the arrowheads of words and I believe in silence. I believe the rattle of birch leaves can shake sorrow from my bones, but that we all become bare at our own pace. I believe the songs of childhood follow us into the kettles of age, but the echoes will not disturb the land. I believe the reach of the [...]
Rider by Naomi Shihab Nye A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him, the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell.
Traveling through the Dark By William Stafford Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; she had stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. My fingers touching her side brought me the reason— her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still, [...]
Rootless Jenny Xie Between Hanoi and Sapa there are clean slabs of rice fields and no two brick houses in a row. I mean, no three— See, counting’s hard in half-sleep, and the rain pulls a sheet over the sugar palms and their untroubled leaves. Hours ago, I crossed a motorbike with a hog strapped to its seat, the size of a date pit from a distance. Can this solitude be rootless, unhooked from the ground? No matter. The mind resides both inside and out. It can think itself and think itself into existence. I sponge off the eyes, no worse for [...]
