Lenore Weiss

Children’s book for middle-grade readers, ages 9-12, an urban environmental fantasy set at the edge of a condo development where we meet 10-year-old Leah who… Read More »The Glimmerine Ready for Purchase

Paper mill town closed down. Sporting goods store the big draw.Hunters shop for camouflage,a new barrel gauge. Deer season. Six months here,I’m in a red chair… Read More »Song for Guns & License

I tried to grab you chase
the cat’s eye marble 
clouding your eyes so startled 
as I pulled you back
from the edge of wherever you stood
the boy who refused to carry a standard.
Tried to wrap my arms 
around why you
remained an empty outline
a Morse Code of dots and dashes
a password of avalantic disaster.

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The new senior housing development on MacArthur Blvd just below High Street used to be a haven for prostitutes walking within shouting distance of a run-down motel called The Seasons. But prostitutes in leather skirts and thigh-high boots were chased further east more than ten years ago when a new mayor in City Hall tried to distinguish himself from the previous administration by “making the streets safe.” Crack cocaine users replaced the prostitutes and pushed the county hospital toward being first in the nation for emergency room care, which attracted medical students to do their internships here. I guess you could consider that a positive outcome. Owners of The Seasons who have seen the crack epidemic subside in the wake of gentrification are spiffing up the place as they look forward to visitors coming to visit relatives. I guess you could consider that another positive outcome, which I think is more about adaptation than anything intentional. Or is it? You tell me.

WGoldberg, Boulder: Have you ever known any one to do something intentionally? Sometimes people think they are doing things intentionally but it’s for all the wrong reasons.

Today I drove by the work site. The exterior of the buildings are grey with white trim, a 35-unit development which sits opposite a major freeway about 1000 yards away. As far as I can tell, there is no landscaping, but by the end of the year, I may recognize potted plants in windows and cars burrowed beneath the building’s parking lot. Residents who have filled out realms of paperwork to qualify for these subsidized one- or two-bedroom units that rent from $500 to $1400 per month, will put down roots in this unlikely corner of East Oakland. In the meantime, The Seasons has installed one of those inflatable WindyMen to welcome new visitors. But now it looks like a car dealership, not a motel.

AACummings, Oakland: My mother had to wait two years to get into one of these units. Her intention was to live there until she died. She did.

It’s possible to be intentional about the smallest things. Suppose for example, I want an omelette for breakfast, but have no eggs? My intention becomes frustrated. I might call a friend to see if I can stop by for coffee and hope that he’ll ask if I want to eat something like eggs maybe? At first I’ll say no, don’t bother, and he’ll say no bother, at which point, I’ll say, okay. Why not? So what started as the first meal of the day has become an evolved intention, which is my point about The Seasons and the housing development I mentioned above.

DarnellJ, Shreveport: Don’t get the point, budwinkle. Answer this: What happens if a law enforcement officer’s intention is to stop a crime, but he ends up blowing off your head instead? Like my friends in high school used to say, I really hope you get ahead because you need one!!

Didn’t ask you to agree with me or even read my post. How do we live together on this planet under one atmosphere? The Ten Commandments used to be the designer playbook. It’s been replaced by something I can’t understand. Did I mention? On my way to the gym this morning, crepe myrtle trees were being planted along the perimeter of the development. Pink.

All he wanted was to stop burning
–Dahlia Ravikovitch

she stands behind a kettle
ingera, poulet yassa, pupusa, plaintain,
cabbage, pasta, cassava, yams, rice and beans
food for migrants
migrants
from every country           continent
waiting days       months                         years
to cross a poor excuse for a river
a crook in a broken arm
a stinging slap in the face
starving rats
in a black rubber raft
along a zig-zag route
from Guatemala to Chiapas
where a lady stands
in pink flamingo earrings
stirring
stirring with a wooden spoon
stirring
her cooking pot

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Read More »Song of Tapachula

Sometimes I feel an underground river
forcing its way between deformed cliffs.
—Adrienne Rich

I’m on the elliptical
music streaming
eyes glued to the pall-bearer of morning news
three overhead screens
report another shooting
50 people
killed at Christchurch—

The Prime Minister
refuses to air the killer’s name
wears a hijab in solidarity
with the people of her nation
mourns New Zealand’s loss of innocence
the last place on Earth where
this was supposed to happen
and on the world’s tallest building
Dubai’s Burj Khalifa the word peace
shines across the oceans in Arabic and English—

I barely move
more like a puppet my legs up and down
on a machine I visit three times a week
to ward off heart attacks
and my own inevitable demise
increase the incline by several notches
work harder
and to my left and right
and to the row behind me
to the news anchor hanging above
speak a silent prayer—

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Read More »Kiwi Crying: Christchurch, March 15, 2019

 God is fettered in jail, in labyrinths of infinity   –Abraham Joshua Heschel As he sat with parishioners of Emanuel A.M.E. Church he almost decided… Read More »Charleston, South Carolina: June 18, 2015

You are one, the first number that is the beginning of       Arithmetic and geometry’s starting point–Solomon ibn Garibol I spoke to him last… Read More »Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: October 27, 2018

by Sinthop Katawanij

The end of a meal was our least favorite and for reasons other than the ones you might think–the moment when we’d all have to stand in judgment and decide which recycling bin to choose for our garbage. Neither Karen or I expected a hand to reach out from the slush pile and grab us, but still, it was unnerving. Lady and the Tiger stuff.

But Tammy never hesitated. She had recycling down pat. The kind of person who knew exactly in which green, blue, red, or gray bin to chuck her left-overs while the rest of us warily approached each designated station before leaving the cafeteria.  She tossed her coffee cups and soda cans with abandon, deposited her leftover dinner into each appropriate bin creating an avalanche of French fries as they met their bonded fate together with ketchup; the slide of paper plates, yogurt containers, Styrofoam cups, napkins rushing to meet their unmaker; beans, taco chips, and the dribbling of chef salad toward a different tributary. It happened so quickly. Who could keep track?

But Fanny was a girl who knew her stuff. A recycling monitor throughout middle school, she had attended a summer camp where campers pitched different items into their respective bins from 10 yards back. At  summer’s end, she returned home with a certificate. But in all other regards, Fanny had developed into a normal eighteen-year-old. She wore jeans with the correct number of rips and tears, had sports T-shirts that she’d inherited from two drop-dead gorgeous older brothers, and said disparaging things about her parents that any one of us would have loved to have traded for our own.

Karen and I relied on her expertise as we finished dinner and lined up with our trays in hand before we began the trek to our evening college classes. Fanny relieved our misery. She said, “Here, let me help you,” and dispensed with our refuse. We were grateful. But if ever she got sick, or on one occasion had broken her arm, immovable and useless in a plaster cast, we ordered soup and avoided the need to recycle altogether. Instead, we stacked our bowls near the kitchen and carried away any napkins deep inside our purses. We had to do something with the cutlery. On those rare occasions, she stood behind us and told us where to put them. “There! There! Not there!” Sort of a nostalgic Gertrude Stein moment.

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Read More »The Recycling Genuis