GISELE PELICOT, A Hymn to Life ~

 

R E A D   M E

   Penguin

    2026

RIDE THE NIGHT ~

 

   1990

BIRHAN KESKIN ~

 

Thick Consistency

i lost the mountains behind me the seas on my horizon

the animals i slept and woke with

it was as if the main river flowing out of me stopped

i lived as if nothing happened.  with a joyous spirit that passed

    through the world

i laughed for the very last time

green grass touched my feet.  a sky full of white clouds

walked over me.  between the two i slept

all this is now a sorrowful sentence in a romani song

____________________

Birhan Keskin

Earthly Conditions

World Poetry 2025

VICTOR HERNANDEZ CRUZ ~

El poema de lo reverso

In which everything goes backwards

in time and motion

Palm trees shriek back into the ground

Mangos become seeds

and reappear in the eyes of Indian

women

The years go back

cement becomes wood

Panama hats are seen upon skeletons

walking the plazas

Of once again wooden benches

The past starts to happen again

I see Columbus's three boats

going backwards on the sea

Getting smaller

Crossing the Atlantic back to the

ports of Spain    Cadiz    Dos Palos    Huelva

Where the sailors disembark

and do back to their towns

To their homes

They become adolescents again

become children      infants

they re-enter the wombs of their mothers

till they become glances

Clutching a pound of bread

through a busy plaza

that becomes the taste

of the sound of church bells

in reverberation.

_______________________________

Victor Hernandez Cruz

IN THE EYE OF THE WILD ~

 

R E A D   M E

        Nolwenn Brod

      New York Review of Books, 2021

        translated from the French Sophie R. Lewis

BUENOS HERMANOS TONIGHT ~

 

2020

JOHN ASHBERY ~

This Room

The room I entered was a dream of this room.

Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.

The oval portrait

of a dog was me at an early age.

Something shimmers, something is hushed up.

We had macaroni for lunch every day

except Sunday, when a small quail was induced

to be served to us. Why do I tell you about these things?

You are not even here.

_____________________________

John Ashbery

ELMORE LEONARD ~

      R E A D   M E 

   Mariner 2025

LUCINDA WILLIAMS TONIGHT ~

 

Black Tears · Lucinda Williams · Tom Overby · Doug Pettibone World's Gone Wrong ℗ 2026 Highway 20 Records marketed and distributed by Thirty Tigers

BODY HIGH ~

 

R E A D   M E

       Repeater 2025