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by Hannah Ferber
I saw him there
Bare toes curled into black earth
Hunching over the infected gutter
Where water runs the color of injustice.
I saw him there, so small and beautiful
Eyes heavy as the stifling tropical air
So small and beautiful, unnaturally aged
Tiny fingers gripping the plastic cup
He knew he had no choice
But to drink
Hannah Ferber is currently a student at Berklee. This poem was written for the Poetry Workshop .
Tags: Hannah Ferber
translated by David Hinton
Listening to a Monk’s Ch’in in Depths
Carrying a ch’in cased in green silk, a monk
descended from Eyebrow Mountain in the west.
When he plays, even in a few first notes,
I hear the pines of ten thousand valleys,
and streams rinse my wanderer’s heart clean.
Echoes linger among temple frost-fall bells,
night coming unnoticed in emerald mountains,
autumn clouds banked up, gone dark and deep.
Li Po (701-762)
Tags: David Hintonby Pireeni Sundaralingam with accompaniment by Colm O’Riain
LETTERS FROM EXILE
These are the letters I leave behind me,
dull lines written for the censor’s eye.
There are no stories here, only headlines,
statements of fact, shielding the truth.
But how can I write my life without politics
when each word placed is part of an equation?
Talk of my income will be translated
into an exact amount for blackmail or ransom;
Talk of our culture will be interpreted
as a covert call to arms.
Tags: Colm O'Riain, Pireeni Sundaralingamby Parisa Roohipour
A torrent of white
noise affiliates,
Pressing firmly
against my
ears.
Feel the pressure as
silence floats
by.
Parissa Roohipour is a Berklee alum. This poem was written for the Poetry Workshop.
Tags: Parisa Roohipourby Jan Rosenfeld
The years fall from you all at once
I know that now. we spent a season
watching the cat shed, after all
and she licks her paws the way I wish
I could sing: full of confidence,
a luckless success.
And so:
I’ve written about
what it’s like to be denied
but I don’t really know what it’s like.
I’ve walked into traffic,
not thinking
and found myself
in the wake of death
she pulled me by the arm
away from the light
and threw me into some
lurid highway park-and-ride
and that’s the closest I’ve ever gotten.
Jan Rosenfeld is currently a student at Berklee.
Tags: Jan Rosenfeld
by Ben Backus
Little rule of
Thumb
Flailing and failing
Magnetic Depolarization
Because she
Was right
About
Us.
In my chest
Lies silent protest
Through glinting green
Eyes that
Seared their way onto Read more »
Tags: Ben Backus