Category Archives: Poetry

Tell Me, Is the Rose Naked? – Pablo Neruda

Tell me, is the rose naked,

Or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal

The splendor of their roots?

Who hears the regrets

of the thieving automobile?

Is there anything in the world sadder

Than a train standing in the rain?

As Long As You’re Out There Somewhere Shining

Lines Off My Mind’s Shelf


He cut off Hunter, talking about something as we sat around the bar table—

“Will you stop that?” he said to me, smiling.

I was bopping my head as I responded to a text message on my phone. Without looking up at him, I grinned, stood up and continued dancing, spinning around to the music of the room until I pressed send. He laughed and got up too.

“Now, you’re both embarrassing me,” Hunter said.

“You have to come join us,” I said.

He stood up and we all danced solo in the empty room of the Jazz club. We were the only guests besides the man fixing the stage in the corner. The waitresses behind the bar laughed casually at our sparse entertainment. The only light in the room streamed through the front door, white, propped open to remind us of the absurdity that was us hiding in the dark during such beautiful daylight. It was 4:30pm on a Sunday, and it was happy hour. 

“All I Need” – Lines Off My Mind’s Shelf

One hand clenching a fistful of bed-hair at the back of her head. Her right hand aloft in front of her like a limp wing for balance. Her steps follow a rhythm. It is steady. But it also changes from 3/4 time to 6/8 time. Her right hip places an accent on a different quiver. 

A horn blows from the traffic flowing past.

She picks up her skirt so that her ankles can ascend the staircase. One two three, and two three. The groove changes. 

Her heel slips from her flat brown shoe and there is a rest. She quickly shifts her foot back in, slides into it and catches back up to speed.

A raven soars ahead, unmoving. Suspended. The wind picks up her hair. Limp and winged. The breath never leaves—like the beat can never leave.

“I Lick the Froth” – H. M. Scheppers

My tongue like bark,

I lick the froth from

my steamed soy milk

like the taste of Mom’s pinecone crafts.

Unlike the sap of my early days

of 2% that Mom had filled for my

jelly jar glass each dinner 

in the dining room with crystals.

Like cardboard, soy steam pours

over my tongue’s tip—

scrapes the buds, like the way 

Dad scraped buds in the backyard, 

the lawnmower chasing us 

in diagonals and cupcakes.

My mouth a dry scone,

I sip more, sipping mean,

until my tongue chars like

the night I reached for the switch

and realized Dad no longer

tucked me in.

The grand bland lather of Silk

rushes over my tongue of shingles 

until the foam slopes at the bottom

like shampoo slopping below my ear.

My tongue of pinecones, bitter and

arching for froth,

for the kitchen sink after midnight,

for a venom of milk,

for the sap of my early days.

Lines Off My Mind’s Shelf: Una poesia di mio

“I was intricately woven in the depths of the earth” – Psalm 139:15


Of the earth

The snow is an illusion 

masking         my youth

below it.

I wish I could hold it

and behold— 

               I’m old from it.

The labyrinth, latent behind—

my forehead— 

my eyes         donning 

sheets of an unmade bed.

My sister says you are the white and black


I face myself

an injured pigeon

woven in the depths

This is how you were made:

w[hole]

Lines Off My Mind’s Shelf

The other day, despite my desires, I was thinking perpetually of her hair. At the same time, it was long and short. Her fingernails could run through it,  just thick enough to carve ridges that would stay for a moment too long. 

She invited me to her apartment, and, naturally, I arrived there. I was thinking still about her hair, about her name, her motives. Despite my desire to let loose and enjoy myself, my mind rattled like an engine struggling to start.

Thinking as I was, the door opened to show her face. On the couch she sat smiling. Now, I would have gone if it weren’t for a pair of persuasive hands. 

“Are you relaxed?” she said. 

“Would you like a back rub?” she said. 

Thoughts percolated through my eyes; they could not see peacefulness. To where is this leading? Who is she, really?

She answered few of my thoughts—by no fault of her own—for she was not telepathic. However, I melted to her touch and I breathed to her thrust.

It came time to leave, “Good night,” she said. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

“Mmmhmm,” I said. Tense. 

Home was empty, no roommates around. I walked through the dark bedroom to switch on the lone bedside lamp. It was cold until I slipped into my pajamas and huddled underneath the duvet. I saw a blinking red light, a text from her, on my phone. The blink echoed into the vacant room, exposing the emptiness with each pulse. I let it beat in the space until I decided I wanted to be in my own company. I turned over the phone to smother the flashing red light and turned my mind to the pictures on the wall. Paintings and photographs smiled overhead, and I sunk low into the bed, in good company.

Lines Off My Mind’s Shelf

Before the thought formed in her head, the words split her lips, “I am not  broken.” There were two dalmation dogs tackling each other in the distance. The older lady dragging a leash on the ground a distance behind them. The dogs were jumping and clawing. The dogs were angry, or was it the girl?

The girl sat on the curb. “I am not broken.” If she brought these words into the air maybe it would become real. “I am not broken.” The words fell on her ears and she listened. Then she said it again. She had to believe this was true. “I am not broken.”

The mantra helped her stand up. She firmly balanced the middle arches of her feet on the curb. “I am not broken,” she spoke. This is my earth, she thought. I am strong enough to live here. I need not do anything other than breathe. If only her breath weren’t so broken.

“I Won’t Abandon You” – Rivka Miriam

I won’t abandon you, the land said

clutching me

tight

the same way she spoke clutching the sea

just before being torn from it by force

“With That Moon Language” – Hafiz

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a
full moon in each eye that is
always saying,

with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in
this world is
dying to
hear?

Translation by Daniel Ladinsky