White Dog by Carl Phillips

White Dog

 

First snow—I release her into it—

I know, released, she won't come back.

This is different from letting what,

 

already, we count as lost go. It is nothing

like that. Also, it is not like wanting to learn what

losing a thing we love feels like. Oh yes:

 

I love her.

Released, she seems for a moment as if

some part of me that, almost,

 

I wouldn't mind

understanding better, is that

not love? She seems a part of me,

 

and then she seems entirely like what she is:

a white dog,

less white suddenly, against the snow,

 

who won't come back. I know that; and, knowing it,

I release her. It's as if I release her

because I know.

Under Limestone by Richie Hofmann

Under Limestone

 

It rained in fluted torrents,

the earth smelled of manure.

It was like desire

entering and possessing you quietly.

We undressed.

The sun through the windows made shapes

on the couch I lay face down on.

Our jeans were soaked

and wrinkled on the radiator, our socks heavy.

Then your eyes were opening a little.

Then you could hear the mopeds starting up again.

When it was dry enough, we found a small bistro

where we had prosecco and fries,

and took pictures of one another in our damp clothes

under trees and buildings

of the hated regime.

The Kurdish Musician by Mimi Khalvati

The Kurdish Musician

 

She is swaddled in pink, sky-blue and veiled

in a gold hejab that with every chime

of her santoor dangles its fringe where trailed

 

on her cheeks hang coins that bob in time

to her nods, throb in a pause, sway to tremor

and echo. Poised on thumbs, twin hammers mime

 

a flurry of wings, two thin furred tongues that stammer

at strings, streaming a swarm of rising notes

not through field and hedgerow, blossom and clover,

 

but through space and stars to the huge black throats

of gully and scarp where all music is stilled,

hived in a dome, as she is, rapt, remote,

 

impervious to the here and now, hands filled

with flightpaths winging home. Through her who knows

what trails might meet or where pollen has spilled

 

strange hybrids take, scrub thrive or desert rose;

groundcover prove alive, on five dark grounds

now train its greening shoots? Or who’d suppose

 

in a London sky, pink, sky-blue, that has wound

itself in the sun’s hejab, in fold on fold

veiled its own dark grounds, she too could be found,

head in the clouds, while ours are fringed with gold?