Issue 70

New Orleans, August 29, 2009 One last Katrina poem, the final praise for what I hated. I quit. No more a guard dog of damaged goods chained in the yard, drinking from tadpole puddles, dragging my doom and gloom down happy streets. I swear. No more damaged goods, watchdog groups, or Katrina’s white flags on…

They say statues wept when she passed—gypsy girl in the choir who spoke in tongues. I thought she was faking, but prayed, just in case, that I would never babble, or, during the peace, slump over and writhe. I hid behind my knotted hair to plot her exposé. Her and her clan of women, smoke…

BABE O’LEARY IS GIONG up to the ballpark and it’s probably going to kill her. Well, there are worse ways to die. Getting downstairs is slow torment, one step at a time so the kneecaps won’t scream. She shifts her weight as if it’s a sack of laundry. Before she deals with the subway steps…

En el Nombre del Padre   ON THE NIGHT of our grandfather Papa Tavo’s death, Tío Gonzalo was watching the midnight replay of that week’s Lucha Libre, the only kind of wrestling he would watch. Like she did on so many other Saturday nights, our Tía Victoria had gone to bed early because even though…

The following is adapted from a commencement address given for the Seattle Pacific University master of fine arts in creative writing on August 6, 2011.   I’D LIKE TO SHARE a few thoughts with you that I hope are appropriate for the occasion, words derived from two texts we’ve studied together, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets…