Green Linden Press

Fire Season

the year on a leash drags us into the fire season
whose flag is that in flames

whose hat, whose heart in what ruined country
when no one comes to say, it's not real

you are sleeping, you are dreaming
you have only to wake to restore the world

but no one can recall the path to water
what a difference one degree can make

now we cross the arid plains, we ride
as if singing of hunger and burning baskets

of misery and blue crevasses
we sing of rain that drowns worlds

a fire starts in dry grass
a spark from a live wire or skidding tire

The Crowded Boats

The sea is not something upon which to embark lightly.
best not to disturb the water,
its bone-colored transparency,
its detritus of fins and spines.

In vast depths the dead travel, without rage
or sadness, beyond shores.
The sea accepts the smallest foreign body,
changing it into itself.

Stars hang in deep night above the boats.
Believe in me, the starlight said,
and the small waves became musical,
the people, more determined travelers.

Kathleen Weaver is an anthologist of international women’s poetry, and a translator from Spanish. Her poems have appeared in Chariton Review, Arts & Letters, Under a Warm Green Linden, Cimarron, Salamander, and Isthmus. Her biography of Peruvian feminist and social radical Magda Portal, Peruvian Rebel, was published by Penn State University Press. A volume of her own poems, Too Much Happens, was published by The Post Apollo Press.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2020