On a train ride back home from a rehearsal last month, I discovered that the jazz drummer Roy Haynes passed away at age 99. Roy was one of the greatest drummers in history, a pioneer in modern jazz who played…
The art of dance is the most
Intricate of them all.
It reveals truths we never
Planned on facing.
Blistering feet,
Hidden by a smooth silk shoe.
A simple leisure;
Turned to restraint.
Judging eyes daggering
Her painted on smile.
Stage lights beating down
Upon her skin.
Her body racing to keep up
With her mind.
She is the most vulnerable
Of artists.
Two tiny wooden boxes;
Holding the weight of years
Of struggle.
Beautiful lace leotards ...
A character in Ferida Duraković’s poem “Cosmos blossoms, Sarajevo” gestures to a building destroyed in war and says, “Still, this city is incredible.” Three Sarajevo-based or -born artists have contributed to this package of work, exploring themes such as home, isolation, loss, love, wartime, migration, and aftermath. Ferida Duraković co-founded Bosnia and Herzegovina’s PEN chapter in 1992 during the siege of Sarajevo and served as its executive director for more than twenty years. She is a major voice in the region’s literature and has mentored and encouraged a wave of younger writers, including Selma Asotić. Literary translator Mirza Purić provided new translations of several of Ferida’s poems written before, during, and after the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Along with his translations, the feature includes the original Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) texts. Selma Asotić, a bilingual poet from Sarajevo now based in the US, released her award-winning ...
Wartime HaikuA mortar breaks its fast
The bombs are mum now
In the sole tree-crown
A sparrow chirping
Pitch-black night how dark you are
No more chestnuts left
Behind the blind window panes
How long is the night ...
Ratni HaikuMinobacač doručkuje
Granate šute
U preostaloj krošnji
Vrapčić cvrkuće
Tamna noći tamna li si
Nema kestena
Pod slijepim oknima
Duga je noć ...
My father’s skin looks like the surface of the moon
They told you shrapnel made men
celestial, that’s why you joined
the army. In midsummer, when weathervanes
carousel, you pull your silence
taut over our house. Nothing bad
will happen to us now, not with you
standing sentinel at the edge
of our sleep, guarding
against the peacethieves. ...
Baba, open your mouth so I can see your uvula,
the three-year-old granddaughter keeps saying.
And I don’t want to display my crowns to the one
calling me Baba which, strictly speaking,
means Old Hag but was easier than Obaachan
for a one-year-old and maybe I am, given the dental issues.
And maybe she’ll keep up her investigation so
I hand over my mobile: Take selfies of your own uvula!
And that works until she gets another great idea:
How about you find a picture of a whale's uvula? ...
I wake with a start at midnight. A nightbird striking the window? A bat in the eaves? Maybe someone in the theater of my sleep gave me a nudge—someone I don’t know in waking life. It is cloudy and warm…
The One That Ran
I see you in the park,
in the darkness of a night
filled with quietness.
I fall in love every time you look up
with the way your eyes stare amazed
you keep forgetting there are stars.
To admire, to aspire, ...
