Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”

  WILD GEESE   You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine....

A Poem with a Gun Inside

  It beats. It hums. My heart— what else could beat so cold and low as this : make me a list. give me a kiss : Kalamazoo, I love you. Paris, Baghdad, and Beruit, I love you. What more harm can we inflict than gunfire on a summer’s day, a winter walk, what...

What They Did Yesterday Afternoon

  WHAT THEY DID YESTERDAY AFTERNOON   they set my aunts house on fire i cried the way women on tv do folding at the middle like a five pound note. i called the boy who use to love me tried to ‘okay’ my voice i said hello he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s...