Dickinson said, “Split the lark and you’ll find the music.” I’ve tried with men, but they’re denser than hell. Osmium, platinum, gold, these men are solid; the kind of thing that’s easy to skip across a lake, a little fun until they sink. These men are on gag order, petrified that what escapes beak might […]
Melissa Willis
MELISSA WILLIS comes to writing creative nonfiction late in life. After raising her two disabled children in Los Angeles and learning to navigate the Regional Center and Dept. of Public Social Services systems, she relocated to the Coachella Valley to care for her ailing mother. She writes and paints to process her own struggles with the fractured communication that comes from loving people who have autism, heroin addiction and schizophrenia. She earned her B.A. at the U.C.L.A. School of Fine Art in 1991, and continues to draw and collage daily.
ONE SONG
Kaddish
by Matthew Isaac Sobin
In “Kaddish”, Matthew Isaac Sobin considers language’s limits in both prayer and poetry as the speaker delves into the difficulties of myriad types of translating: not just meaning, but also spirituality, ritual, intimacy, grief. What suffices? When grief calls us, what language becomes enough?
“Let us bless transliteration
and chant
congregate right to left
to crest cold wind
[..]
Is one enough
to reach
the ear of God?”
