All work
The fineness of the line draws you in: /
ink made from the soot of charred bones, /
furred shadows soft beneath the trees. …
There has been plenty of musing aloud in the camp /
but little conversation. No one has ever accused /
a gymnasium of ambiance. …
Everybody’s enthralled by the mermaids, silken breasts like plums /
dropped from the heaving branch and lost forever to the green sea. /
Believe me I understand the attraction, having swum with several. …
I was waiting for a possible bus. I wasn’t certain of its arrival, /
but the stone wall and the small birds seemed enough for now. …
More from The Journal
- Postcard Prose
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Trying to wrap my mind around living on a tropical island for thirteen years and never once seeing the ocean, I stumbled through my Indonesian vocabulary to say, It’s good. It’s big.
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A dinosaur dangles over my grandson at the Field Museum near a pink thumb that pops into the prom picture of my granddaughter dressed in strapless red leaving her house in Medina …
- Travel Notes
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The bill in question is actually a 2,000 West African franc note, and it’s the equivalent of about four U.S. dollars. A helpful sum, really, but as I clutch the weathered crinkle in my sweaty palm, its value feels as dirty as the grime that is undoubtedly being transferred to my fingers.
- Poetry
to Egg and Berry brewery, to the pack / of Czechy words I made but didn’t work / in this pink town. I’d readily go back / to your best spots, the unfired gun, that perk //
- Poetry
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And if the neap tides of my beauty / sadden him, I cannot help it: / I hang high, the waxy night light …
- Poetry
By Anastasia Vassos
Three thousand ancestors ask how I straddle / the sea, a foot on either shore. //
Read more Poetry or Postcard Prose