i have lived to discover a city, an open road,
a bucket of milk, and two gentle doves.
i have discovered in myself
two frightened birds with miles of dirt road to fly.
in the forest hills spiders and black dogs clamoured.
in the corpses of yellow flowers
a rainbow spun across a darkened sky.
i lived in a street where girls with dark eyes sang,
birds with their wings welcomed a harsh rain.
Mxolisi Nyezwa is founder and editor of Kotaz, now in its fourteenth year.
STEVEN LEYVA
Get down to the smallest birthright / I cannot claim: say beignets / and doesn’t the stutter of hot oil start / to sizzle the small plates of memory? / Faces powdered with sugar, no thought /
to whose ancestors cut which cane, sing /
a hymn of “mmm, mmm, mmm.”
LOREN GOODMAN
In these last hours / Of the Passover Seder / It is said by the higher / Chasidic Scholars that time / Loses its essence and that /
We are at least once, with /
The help of memory (at this /
Time “even the future can be /
Remembered”) able to defeat / It. Something to do /
With the wine.
MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER
The chunk of the ball / On the cracked blacktop / And our torsos so covered / In sweat nearby the sea / Swells and the smell seeps / Into our hair and the air / Turns into night all around us / And the pebbles of the ball / Still tickle our palms as smoke / Trickles into our lungs...