The view excavated any hope of escape. “Ha ha!”
the trench, that sunken fence, seemed to say
with its furrows dug deep enough for despair.
One of several names given to a ghost island that appeared in July 1831
When the buried volcano erupted,
sulfuric smoke leapt from the Sicilian sea,
seeped through locked, felt-lined chests,
blackening the silverware.
With burning eyes
she rose before dusk
the mountains beneath her
and all the hills
filling like window panes with liquid suns
If I forget you Jerusalem, may my right hand wither away. . .
If I do not remember you . . .
—Psalms 137:5-6
To write in Jerusalem
in a garden
with a wind that comes from the mountain
under a canopy of grapevines
By HONOR MOORE
Of sheets and skin and fur of him,
bed of ground and river, of land,
or tongue, of arms, the wanton field,
Waterfalls of curtain like spray –
Pine needles–flame–shimmer.
The curtain has no secrets from the stage:
You are the stage, I am the curtain.
1. LAMENT
Hippolytus! Hippolytus! It stings!
It sears… my cheeks blaze…
How pitiless the hell, Hippolytus,
Concealed in your name!
*
Daily land for the craving landlubber
givest us this day,
art the way. Stars and Mars
inconsolable shine,
sway,
entwine
in the trite.
Salvage cars, salvage cars in the night.
Ignite.
By RAFAEL CAMPO
The neon strokes of Chinese characters
exclaimed the ancient city’s endlessness.
Beijing at night: how much we cannot know,
how little we will ever understand.
By RAFAEL CAMPO
“A state of mind,” my grandfather would say,
the sun as fierce as Mr. Cossimo’s
critiques of everything, from his wife’s sauce
to Senator Bill Bradley.
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