Currently Reading

Currently Reading

“Fire in Paradise” 

by. Alastair Gee

I Don’t Say Goodbye, I Only Say Ciao

Poem by. Gabrielle Octavia Rucker

What bloody lense holds firm between this mystery & us? Two shiny crows

tapping intelligently on the glass of a dream.

Please! Do not make me do the human things—

I must tend to my many plankton realities,

must be off with my better self:

One million faces lined

along a mirrored tunnel & in each that same tricky knot begging.

You couldn’t know how long I suffered over it, my long waiting at the end of the maze.

I can only guess what you think I’m after, stretching in the mirror

while you rattle on about sabotage,

an old tension springing in the body.

Art by Daniel Conway

Tell Congress to support real work for real pay!

People with disabilities live better lives when we are included in our local communities. That’s just as true when it comes to work as it is for education and housing. With the right supports, people with all kinds of disabilities and support needs can have good jobs that pay us well — but too many

All disabled people deserve integrated employment and payment equal to what abled people in those settings get. The Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act can help. Find out more and how you can help here.

My Bird

by Ingeborg Bachmann

Whatever comes to pass: the devastated world

sinks back into twilight,

the forest offers it a sleeping potion,

and from the tower the watchman’s forsaken,

peaceful and constant the eyes of the owl stare down.

Whatever comes to pass: you know your time,

my bird, you put on your veil

and fly through the mist to me.

We peer into the haze where the rabble houses.

Yon follow my nod and storm out

in a whirl of feathers and fur—

My ice-gray shoulder companion, my weapon,

adorned with that feather, my only weapon!

My only finery: your veil and your feather.

And even when my skin burns

in the needle dance beneath the tree,

and the hip-high shrubs

tempt me with their spicy leaves,

when my curls dart like snake tongues,

sway and long for moisture,

the dust of distant stars still falls

right on my hair.

When I, in a helmet of smoke,

come back to my senses.

my bird, my nighttime ally,

when I’m ablaze in the night

the dark grove crackles

and I hammer the sparks from my limbs.

And when I stay ablaze as I am,

loved by the flame

until the resin streams out of the trunks,

drips over the wounds and

spins the earth warm into thread

(and though you rob my heart at night,

my bird of belief, my bird of faith!)

the watchtower moves into brightness

where you, tranquil now,

alight in magnificent peace—

whatever comes to pass.

—translated from the German by Mark Anderson