My Father Dreams of a New Country
by Ruth Awad

January 1, 2018 Contributed By: Ruth Awad

Lebanon, 1978

America, I see through your glass—
I reach my hand and my fingerprints
are everywhere. Like leaves the gust blows in.

I don’t have money to feed your fountains
or enough water that it’s never a wish,

but America, I can’t stop drinking you in.
Your trains, their freight like hours,
like the vowels cut from my name.

When will you learn my name?

I’m running to you but I can’t get there
fast enough. I’m strung up on gridirons
and city lights. Aren’t my arms tired of reaching?

Isn’t my back tired of carrying this night around?
Be good to me like a summer rain, I swear I’m burning.

Return to table of contents for Issue 12 Winter 2018.

WATCHING MY MOTHER BAKE
by Michael Meyerhofer

Strangest of all was the knife, how gingerly she pushed it through the soft raw crust of the pie freshly-formed on the oven’s surface, preheat already rising in waves, her glance warning me not to touch— the same woman who decided, a week before my seventh birthday, to have me circumcised […]

HOHENBURG by Georg Trakl (translated by Daniele Pantano)

No one is in the house. Autumn in rooms; Moon-bright sonata And the awakening at the edge of the twilight forest. You always think the white face of mankind Far from the turmoil of time; Green branches bend willingly over something dreaming, Cross and evening; The sounding one is enfolded by the purple arms of […]

My Father Dreams of a New Country
by Ruth Awad

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WATCHING MY MOTHER BAKE
by Michael Meyerhofer

HOHENBURG by Georg Trakl (translated by Daniele Pantano)

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