When Winter bares the long deception, I try to capture images of Spring when for barren surge of reelection comes forth in song, the scythe will surely ring. I take it to the everlasting limit where new-found shadows cumber in...
Read MoreIn 1991 I was sharing a five-thousand-square-foot loft with a friend of mine in downtown L.A. The building was located in an industrial area on the outskirts of town. Most of the buildings in the neighborhood consisted of old...
Read MoreI like climbing stairs I have always liked climbing stairs I like climbing to the top of the stairs From the very top step I can just touch the edge of the crescent moon If I grab one of its two corners I can pull myself up and...
Read More(definition: a humiliating or scornful insult) Say it with me: Con-TU-me-ly. Such a beautiful word, it should mean something aesthetically elegant — maybe a mahogany rocker with carved swan arms and pale yellow brocade. Or maybe...
Read MoreDon’t write about your grandparents, say the poet pundits. They complain. Which means I can’t describe my grandmother lying there on the flowered davenport in perpetual grief, a crocheted afghan over her long dress, her skinny...
Read MoreDaily miracle: I turn the faucet and water happens. All my life. In a small dusty village in Kenya where the road doesn’t reach, kind foreigners installed a pipe. The women miss their daily walk to the river, together. Is this...
Read MoreDear Ken, Do you remember Violet’s laughter? Storm’s thunder muted du Pré’s cello, in transmission. And in it I heard Violet’s laughter; distinctive, explosive chortle, joyful eruption. Contralto, never shrill, somehow...
Read MoreAt the start of my 70th year I bought the latest camera, a startling, surreal machine, not easily transported but one which, at the push of the shutter, “photographs” in bas relief to a depth of some few inches, contours to...
Read MoreWe protest dawns by fiat clocks which shriek and then are echoed all day by bitchery, fretfulness, sneers. And welcome dawns which slowly idle out of long dark nights, restless, wakeful, damp with red wine and colorless tears....
Read MoreCraters. Weathered scars Sealed smooth-tight. Ebony tar Heals our gaping wounds. Marta Holliday is an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and Literatures at Alabama State University. Dr. Holliday earned her...
Read MoreRipped continuity Blood-red Alabama clay Paves over lost love
Read MoreShirts, drawers—starched, stiff flags— Necklace through the humid rooms, Sulk in humid air.
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