Ivy for Holly,Michael and you.Garland for Grandma,a sprig for Santa with cookies two. All God’s blessing for world renewed. Read More "Ivy for Holly (a children’s poem)"
The Holly Grows Green (a children’s poem after Shakespeare)
The holly grows evergreen.The ivy does too.Through long winter’s blast they blossom holy and truelike God’s love for you. Read More "The Holly Grows Green (a children’s poem after Shakespeare)"
Read More "The Holly Grows Green (a children’s poem after Shakespeare)"
Going Up the Stairs She Heard
She heard her children going slowly up the stairs of the old grand house draped in linen solitude. On the peacock treadsthey chanted discoveries,whispered mysteries she intimately knew. Read More "Going Up the Stairs She Heard"
Mask
The soul’s happinessis uncovered when the beautiful white death maskslips off the face. Read More "Mask"
Chop Suey
(Ekphrasis on the Edward Hopper painting.)In the white tablespace between themshe thinks only of theodds and ends danglinginside. The hissing tea kettlehushes the words in front, the love chatbehind.Note: choppy suey comes from the Chinese tsap sui for “odds and …
The Green Gown
The green gown rippled downin the breath and shadow of the willow branch, invisible noon and nightto all searching ships. Read More "The Green Gown"
The Last Tree
Image credit: http://www.jacques-garnier.com/ The last tree sheds its leavesin the barren dry knowing the breezewill breathe its revival. Read More "The Last Tree"
Sheltered, I Am Now
No terror seedsin my soul. The gentledust of my mother remainsall around me. Her old comfortssnuggle away any regretsuntil our heavens meet. Not soon,but soon enough I will remain with you.Why will I decay in the crypt when only smoke …
The Singing Honeyeater
Image credit: https://jennypapalexandris.format.com/7318596-projects The Singing Honeyeater fell following the shadow of my hand on the wall.Right wing coveringits breast, it fellin full song.In a splash of last rain,the shadow of my handit knew was not sky, it fell.And,in the speckled …
Nourishment
The buried placenta knows not the suffering of the womb,only that it once nourished. Read More "Nourishment"
A Short History of ”The Troubles”
Image credit: Michele Zousmer https://www.michelezousmer.com/ Jack held his da’s old black revolverhigh in his hand, even with his face.His fingers barely reached the trigger.In time, it would be an easy squeeze,a proper squeeze for a proper Doherty,but for now, he …
Song for My Departed Sharma
Sharma named in honor and memory of my last two little good boys: Shakespeare and Marvin You were held close to mommy’s cheston that last day full of walks, belly rubs,and lingering in the rays of perfect sunshineand us delighting …
Last Day
Image credit: Chelsea Darter. http://www.chelseadarter.com/ She exists a clam shell folded in the middle of the bed, her bedspread forming a waterfall of somber gray tears. She hears her daughter shut the door, probably for the last time, and step …
Walking Along the Seashore Without My Mother
Image credit; Michiko Chiyoda The old negative of her with her hair pinned backI hold up to the horizon and see it fade into the waves.It was the one taken through the filtered window of her black car,her face half …
Lifeblood
Image credit: John-David Richardson. The new blood runs over the old scars on her wrist,the unforgiving crucifix held tight in her palmwhile the unwrapped fish stinks on the table. Read More "Lifeblood"
Phorcys Claims Medusa for the Sea.
Image credit Melis Manav. https://www.melismanav.com/ Medusa’s soma falls into the Aegean,almost into the fatherly arms of Phorcys,almost close to the sobs of her sister gorgons,their monstrous grief now deformed into the cursed shriekthat is human terror, that is the horror …
The Road to the Sea
Image credit: Zoltan Vancso http://zoltan.pictures/en/ When I was a young boy my mother drove us in a white Plymouth to a road that ended even with the sea. The last tenth mile was paved seashells mortared with beach stones, the …
Mirror Images
Image credit: Jerzyna Pauwels. https://georgie.pauwels.photography/ Today, in the car, you see the moving imagethat always traveled with youand was really always with you. Do you squint beyond the image of yourself reflecting back to you in the glass to see …
The Slaughter
Image credit Nick Meyer. https://www.nickmeyerphoto.net/ After 5 years Fatima hugs her sister Almaunder a gray sky.The wind whips Fatima’s kerchief backforming a mask that matches Alma’s dull stare into the browning field all around.Alma feels only the roughness of the …
City Noir
Image credit: RITVA SILLANMÄKI. https://artbyritva.com/ The caged birds of unrealized dreamshang heavy from steel and glass skiesstooping the walk of pedestrians.They think it’s a heavy rain but it’s their anodized desire fracturing into a thousand feminines/masculinesin the windows all around …
Riding the Bus at Night
Image credit: Travis Huggett. http://www.travishuggett.com/ The night bus cradles the weary and those waiting for the dayonly those who know the city’s cocoon can appreciate the hustle and ritualof its morning butterflies orthe way speed blurs tenement lightsinto a stained …
Christina’s World Knows the Ocean
Christina’s World: Andrew Wyeth Christina imagined the ocean beyond the withering grass, the yellow hilltop, the gray house just above her vision. On the shore she would lift herself up without the fear of falling. Her hair was swept back …
Things Just Caught Up With Her
Image credit: Patty Carroll https://www.pattycarroll.com/ It wasn’t all the popcorn, hotdogs, candy eaten in the dark that killed her.Those things just caught up with her.It wasn’t all the boxes piled highand then tumbling on her that cracked her head and …
Knowing the Face of the Land
Image credit: Bernhard Lang. https://www.bernhardlang.de/ If you wish to know who really owns the landlook at the faces the windhas carved into the mountains. Knowing the Face of the Land read by Jonathan Moya Read More "Knowing the Face of …
The Red String
Image credit: https://www.yoshikatsufujii.com/red-string?lightbox=dataItem-iuj9uu9z Her mother’s tale of the red string foretold that Miko and Makoto would be together, tied little finger to little fingerby a taut invisible blood line.What she didn’t tell her was that the line would fray, break, …
The Fitting
Image credit: Anne-Sophie Guillet. https://annesophieguillet.com/ When her maman died Marie flew ten hours to the ancient French village where the houses steepled the church,their mansard roofs brown from neglect. The Weeping Willow in front of maman’s weathered hovel did not …
Three Parables Stretching for Dignity
Image credit: Pierrot Men. http://www.pierrotmen.com/index.php The blind do not need blindfolds.They wear shades just for useven as we turn our eyes away.We give them a stick to see.The one-legged woman stands just as tall as the two-legged man.The blind man …
Shadow Geometry
Image Credit: Laurence Bouchard https://www.instagram.com/laurence__bouchard/ at what point do shadows becomenumbers and numbers become dustis it when sunlight and moonlight crossthe eye into our anatomical darknesswhen the zero circle helixes into shortexistence a rose, a cell, a dying memorywhen raindrops …
Life’s Moments
Image credit © Hugh Fox https://www.hughfox.co.uk/overview The child looks out her toy windowand imagines her adult self sailing on the blue ocean of the old hat box that holds her communion veil. Her childhood dances alone along the berm’s dawn …
Irreversible
Image credit: Martin Buday https://www.martinbuday.com/portraiture The oceans recede,its pylons exposed.The great elephants rust in the junkyard they fell when Chukwa shifted.Even his severed legs can’t hold up the earth-sky.The sea grass stiffensto a verdant wave,curl exposing the horizon.The ivory house …
I See Only Silence
Image credit: Pascale Cholette. https://www.pascalecholette.com/ it’s easy to know where the leaves were before they fell,what her lips tasted after the caress of the loving hand,what was in the crib rusting in the forest of the night.Only the twins know …
A History of Dying Spaces
Image; Famine (1997), sculpture by Rowan Gillespie commemorating the Great Famine; in Dublin. Only my grandmother came home to die.Her centuries old home was built with a birthing and dying room,two small bedrooms, a library and as was custom, no …
Paramythology
Image credit: Kostis Argyriadishttps://www.kostisargyriadis.com/ If you accept the appleyou must accept the bite,the lips that bit the flesh,the legs that climbed the tree,the eyes that looked and lustedfor what was in between and abovethe white cleft rising in the speckled …
Adhesion
Image credit: Image credit: Luca Paccusse. http://www.lucapaccussephoto.com/ In Vatican City a cardinal walks resolutely forward, his red trainflowing behind longer than a bride’s.It’s silhouette passes by the open windows of the atelier reflecting crosses over the bodices of thetailor’s latest …
Two Wheels
Image credit: Lukasz Palka. https://www.lkazphoto.com/portfolio#/two-wheels/ Jonathan Moya reads Two Wheels Two circles, two triangles locked in against a railexist as geometries of mobility in immobility,movement stuck in a silence never intended.The front wheel swings in the direction of desire,forward progress …
Night Beach Couplet
Image Credit Caesar Lima https://www.caesarlima.com/juquehy When the color goes away for the daythe night beach revels in the shadows play. Night Beach Couplet read by Jonathan Moya Read More "Night Beach Couplet"
At Sunset
Your death must mean just enough not to curse the day you were born,to stand by the water’s edgeand not want to swim with stonesuntil the first dark wave takesme under in a fetal pose,sinks me down in the last …
The End of the Journey
My grief sails through joy refusing to tack the line of others-straight, plain, flat and so so still-the reason why I love it so.No haven of pine and sand,just mangrove rootsgnarled but knotted strong,holding the beach against the hurricane .That …
Quotidian Life
Image © Daniel Castonguay. A bicycle splashes over a puddle and its aurareflects down the streetlightspraying halos on the umbrellasof the pedestriansthat pass under.Down the blocktwo stop signson opposite streetsboth signal WALK,letting the crisscross of the quotidian begin.This moment it’s …
Stage Directions for the Theater of the Absurd
Act One (The one and only act of which there is no other.)Vladimir and Estragon having waited for Godotlong enough decide to stand up and walk home. They dust themselves off. A boulder rolls on stage.It stops in front of …
The String is not the only Thing that Holds the Kite in the Air
Image credit https://www.marcijustomislav.com/ Jonathan Moy reads The String is not the only Thing that Holds the Kite in the Air If kites are nothing but a cross on a sailthey can only rise.Yet, the child running with all his joyin …
Read More "The String is not the only Thing that Holds the Kite in the Air"
Getting It Right
Jonathan Moya reads Getting It Right I try on my death suit regularly, and even after my cancer surgery, it’s still too long in the arms and legs..This year I did manage to find a comfy pair of shoes in …
Living With the Fog
Image credit: Magda Chudzik Jonathan Moya reads Living With the Fog The fog covers the bridge all around.Above the day blurs night. Belowships prowl slowand uneasy lines.Thosedriving or walking throughwill remember the cry of the sky,the sobs of those tiny …
The Lone-some Cowboy
Image by Ingeborg Everaerd Jonathan Moya reads The Lone-some Cowboy His horse whinny’s while waiting outside the church with the blue cross and tin roof.The loyal herding dog panting on the corner,listens to the lulling cows in the pasture,heels for …
Facing the Stars
Facing the Stars read by Jonathan Moya I see the starsand feel I don’t exist,that my grief is the only thing that has meaning. The grief that welcomes my own eulogy, reading my headstonein the decaying light,reminding me that I …
The Box That Holds My silence
Jonathan Moya reads The Box That Holds My Silence At bedtimeI sit in my chairand turn offmy long lived hearing aids,putting them in the pine box with the gold leaf claspand a brown phoenixcharred into the lidThe traffic outside dies,the …
Celestial Fission
Image © Daniel Munteanu Jonathan Moya reads Celestial Fission Stardust, the hardest thing to hold on to,forms our guardian angels,the ones that sway us to our favorite tree,settling each branch in a sugary light.We scamper towards it, all the dust …
The Lesson of Our Puddles
Jonathan Moya reads The Lesson of Our Puddles Oceans are formed from the dropping of our tears.and in it we must all drown,knowing only the cold and the slow driftingaway of our flesh.We watch our fathers live extraordinary livesbut die …
Lallo Dreams in the New Ways
(I liked the word baize so much that I created a poem entirely around it. Lallo Dreams in the New Ways read by Jonathan Moya Lallo assembles the town in his head all in shades of green, white and gray—grass, …
We Need to Look Longer
CREDIT: EVGENIY MALOLETKA/AP/ We Need to Look,Longer read by Jonathan Moya The eye feels the light, the lens knows the truth:The children silentunder a blue tarpamongst the rubble— their little backpacks still on their backs offering the hope they still …
Pact
Pact read by Jonathan Moya I make a pact with my younger other self, my familiar in the crosswalk, the boy staring back not longing to be me,wondering where all that nice black hair went in our shadowed time and …
KAROSHI (Death by Overwork)
Photo Credit: Emmanuelle Firman Jonathan Moya reads KAROSHI The boxes pile high above his head,beyond his ability to count them,beyond his ability to move them.He will work them. More twelve hour daysfor not enough pay. No days off until KAROSHI-death …
Losing Track of Time
Photo by Luca Sorato Jonathan Moya reads Losing Track of Time The childless widower in his third age sits beneath the frame of the toy store window looking away into the street while three Teddy Bears, one in a just-right …
Getting Married in the Shadow of Iztaccihuatl
Jonathan Moya reads Getting Married in the Shadow of Iztaccihuatl She dreamed that shooting stars would stream the palaba roofson the night of her honeymoon,that Iztaccihuatl would spark embers approving of her love,glistening her wedding dress in ashes and a …
Fallen Fruit
Fallen Fruit read by Jonathan Moya It starts with the apple falling to the earth,dropped after the bite.From the rotting hole on its flesh, the worm wriggles forth to the light.The stem dies.The leaf turns grayand floats away.The worm penetrates …
Side Effects
Side Effects read by Jonathan Moya In my dreams I ride bicycles. In life, I once knew how to ride them.Now I am old and side effects have my feet missing the pedals and falling down. Read More "Side Effects"
Smelling and Seeing the Brightness of the World
Jonathan Moya reads Snelling and Seeing the Brightness of the World I smell the freshness of uncut spruce un-trampled snowin the whiteness all around me.The hard freeze has piled high the world. I dare not crush it less it reekof …
Trying to Stay Even
Jonathan Moya reads Trying to Stay Even In the mild June heatjust outside my windowa mom with strollerraces by menever to be caught.My slow tingling feet envyher swift muscle flow.I imagine her heart beat rapid yet smooth like a robin …
Sixty Degrees and Clear
Jonathan Moya reads Sixty Degrees and Clear Sixty degrees and clear.She dies -morning hospice shiftwhile I’m getting ready to visit her.Waxen in her white bed,arms bruised and quiet now,mouth wide in a gaspas if in scream, as if sayingah, no! …
Our Last Suppers
Jonathan Moya reads Our Last Suppers They pass the plate between themmother to daughter, father to son,a communion stretching to foreveruntil the plates are fulland father and son retire to the living room to watch the game.The mother advises on …
The Promise— More and Less
Jonathan Moya reads The Promise More and Less After, the awe returns with less shock. A father lives in a quiet unannounced moment. At his celebration of life service all the children wear black leather. They refuse to die, be …
Everything Known Will Be Unknown
Jonathan Moya recites Everything Known Will Be Unknown Soon, all I know will die, be buried or burnt in the bonfire, lost to senses and thought, become un- known. I will fall to my knees and become a turtle carrying …
Bury the Children of War in Their Good Things
Jonathan Moya recites Bury the Children of War in Their Good Things Bury them with their Motanka,doll tight in their hands.Dress them in that yellowfleece wanted and put back on the shelf,two wreaths of roses and gerberasadjacent their crypt,filled with …
Ubasute: Carrying Life to Death’s Mountain
I listen to his wheezeand watch the machine ascendfor a full breathe thenfall back down againand know I must trek to the mountain once again.Like my mother, heedless of self and for my sake, will he snap twig after twig …
Mothers Can’t Live in Your Future
I treat the future as past,a bright yellow house I inhabited,filled with broken furnitureneeding repair, replacement, to bequickly put to the match or just all thrown out.There is a kitchen with pots and panseverywhere and much flour dusting everything— and …
Knowing the Spaces of the World
I wonder aboutthe life of spacesI have passed through.What songs have they heard that I have not? When did the stench of death pass through?The honey scent of life?The particles of the pastlinger in the air eternallykeen to the nose …
The Dick and Jane Primer of Parental Grief
I open memory to gut it. My dad empties out to a red sea. I can’t swim. He never taught me. The tide flows to the shore and I am saved. I now see my father floating submerged face down. …
You Can Never Return and Never Know
Even those who can never go back dream of returning back home, taking the long long way back on a rusty Indian motorbike belching white pass the whitewashed high school, the wounded buildings housing black lung renters choking in the …
Making Miracles
She’d get up early and secured the world for Milagro:Making sure the window latched and wouldn’t lose a dream,that the new bread would rise and be ready for tomorrow’s stove, that the kitchen would always smell of promise and hope, …
Buying Shoes in Five Easy Steps
IHe slipped on a pair of silver heels for my mom to try on, and though she was past the time for balls andpageants— she married him anyway. IIWhen I was three years past my first stepsmy mom bought me …
Everything that Matters
Is this howling coming from my soul’s basement from me?. Or them?The ones who betrayed life, death, me?I’ve done everything expected of a son. Outlived them. They taught me everything—but I’m not even sure I know the truth. I have …
American Sonnet for Spanish Aunts
Aunts sewed their lives bare.Their needle, thread made rich dressesthey dare not wear,ironed straight all the creases of great rich white silky minds.The Gringos wore their handiwork without praise. Aunts dreamed their small dreams inSpanglish, Castilian, Rioplatense,the unknown languages of …
Choices Too
I see sky from my window.Beyond the fence there are treesand a road that fronts them.Further, I know that there are mountains but I see only hatchlings tweeting from the topmost branches.A car flies by anda birdling falls below the …
Our Dead Fathers
Fathers seldom die in their own bed.They slip in the tub, choke on a machinein bloodless ways you never imaginedor hoped or feared.Neither a blessing nor curse,just a life cut short or one lived too long. The blood they no …
Cold Snap
A mother out in a cold snapstumbled on an odd little notehalf buried in the snow near her boot.It seemed a bloody torn clothbut opened to a small half wing.She almost, in shock, let it slip her grasp.Yet, it rang …
the tongue- knows only- sixty breaths before it lives, before it dies
The tongue remembers all the death it has tasted. It teaches us the name and memory of things. The aquae of the womb’s ocean as it dries in the first gasp of air. The vitae coughing out so the lungs …
Read More "the tongue- knows only- sixty breaths before it lives, before it dies"
Wide-hipped Mothers and Wives
My mother was a wide-hipped woman. So is my wife. They have cuddled me in the clouds of their bodies. All of my life exists in their bigness, broadness, grandness. All of my imagination cribs in the jiggle of their …
The Art of Graffiti Removal
I always believed until long after my mother died that she was the onlyperson who loved meand thatmy father was a shriveled man at heart.Once my mother fell hard on the floorand he never bothered to lift her up orgive …
Build-a House
I built myself a house to home my lonely bones,a house on a noisy-silent streetopening to a quiet skyin colors my wife loves—mostly a whiteso transparently clearit absorbs shadowsfrom dark yesterdaysand sick brown partschemically cured.I built myselfa house thatunderstands my …
Leaves Falling for the Fawn to Graze
Leaves were falling from the great oak at the meadows edge, falling from all the treesthis cold cold night.So many have fallen off,so many were torn off,that the new buds to come were but a memory of a sun that …
Dead Old Hearts for Auld Lange Syne
Dead love was the grief that brought her down.She buried him oft in her heart’s graveat night ‘neath the Noble fir near her front door.Dreams had him smiling wide-eyed in the morn. Her da followed rudely into her futureseized by …
Winter Solstice
In indifference comes my winter solstice—my life now groping more dark than day— just one less even second now—to a temperate gloom and a forever stasis. I neither want to live shorter than my mothernor any longer than my father—an …
Dia de Muertos Cancion
I feel my father’s ashes on my tongue.His strange death sitting on the edge of my teeth humming that oldSpanish balladthrough the night’s fog. The song you so hate,yet love.He sings it in his own perfect pitch.He sang it for …
The Gifts of the Magi: An O’Henry Christmas Poem
I don’t remember their names yet I witness their shattered tree being placed in the old bent stand.Its wind-shorn branches supplicate to the sky. Placed beneath its boughs area Red Cross box and stained pics, the bluegrass relics of father, …
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Living With the Disappeared
Each of their syllables floats into the ether leaving memories of little talks, of things not said, until the letters separate away. mother to other drifting away other, other- “Momi, donde esta?” Father ather falling further down at her, at …
Son of Monarchs
The monarch flutters above the ash and in its black and orange beautyexists all day and night. It flies up to meet the sun,the gentle maternal hand of life lived in the light.Only the scent of milkweedlures it down to …
Leaving Tranquility
Not far from the cove, the stones worn smooth from the tides weeping, the salted breeze, removedfrom all tranquility, is the grand windowed house. The ashes will be spread on the beloved soil,the October browning still green to cover this …
Palinode
pal·i·node/ˈpaləˌnōd/nouna poem in which the poet retracts a view or sentiment expressed in a former poem. My father stands in my memory seriousness, good intentions intact. He has shifted in my time from distance to closeness, shed his professional ambition …
House Ghost
My new home needs some ghosts!The ones that hover in memoryand find their way to the floorboards,a patina of cremains that creaks with old joys, hurts, triumphs and defeats—the bark of good boys sitting patiently in their mahogany box above …
Listening and Searching through the Rubble
They called off the search to wait for the winds to pass,the demolition to collapse the weight of concrete onto flesh to make it safer for the cadaver dogsto locate their scent amidst the rubble.They called their names out bothin …
Homeless
It’s hard to know home without rootsfirmly planted in the soil of stay, when cancer and cure move the lifeline.and a tornado the geography of property beyondthe winds of summer squalls and hard rains.My heart is not a sedentary plot.it …
I Know the Night and Sky
I have cried,I have grievedand therefore I have loved.I have twinned my existence:once in the joy of life and the other in the nacre of cancer.I have seen death, known it’s slow, sad and sometimes violent approachthrough the collapse of …
America: The Motion Picture- Doesn’t Let Alternate Facts Get in the Way of Its Own Inane History Lesson.
When filmmakers fall asleep and flunk high school American History, America: The Motion Picture is what’s created years later- an animated, anarchic, free association lunacy that mixes up the American Revolution with the Civil War and shows that it respects …
Wrestling With a Stained-Glass Angel
The Holy Ghost is freely pinned as sin is from the Devilamongst the broken back pews of a somnambulant congregationdreaming of the post church pot luck buffet.Release it to the wild,it flies to heaven,anointing a stained-glass angel peeled from the …
A Mother’s Bread
All life mother kneaded him from her ma’s-g’ma’s pain and joy,from the bodies who all knew her into the one she knew well,collected from all the raw bits lost, found, saved from breads baked-unbaked,while the yeast swelled her stomach and …
Mother’s Day/Mother’s Day Not
Is it so terrible to mourn a mother,to cry for the ones that shut the door and never returned,those never equipped to nurture a newborn from birth to death,the ones who desperately wanted to be mothers but couldn’t be,those who …
Pain Knows the Wolf
I should have broken my back by nowwith my lupine spine, feet screaming as if in a wolf trap. My outrage prowls the low valleysearching the arid land for water to slack the thirst,the howl inside.Once there was real silencebut …
A Visitor in the Target Moon
Brother, I await you outside the windowamongst the night traffic zoom and scent of pine,story sitting on the throat’s knife edge,the truth unable to roll out from blood fear. Mother, I feel your harsh breath outside my soul.Father, your praise …
Super Nova
I destroy the gold house inside my soul— the nova of light ongold archway, gold mantle,gold walls. The last bits of real places that once shined.l thought, forever in the aura of sun-shine on oncegold rooftop, gold windows, gold doors. …
On Seeing My Mother’s Clothes on Someone Else
It appears just weeks after the last tear,my mother’s sky blue dress on her life ghost:same walk, dove shape, soft voice, brown hair cut short-at least from behind, in the same love lightthat moved from donation bin, rack, to herin …