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Lullaby
Huan He

For I. Noguchi and the Interned
grown up the sky, take steady aim

of the clouds

with pellet holes, Japanese maple

holds firm

onto its root, erect and fed

by sheer will,

in an exchange of oxygen for

dignity, for

photosynthesis speaks only in

laws of this

desert, smiling towers smile with

their eyes,

bow down to soil, nutrient starved

in all but

its beauty—the man in uniform asks

if this land

is beautiful, deaf to a crowd of farm

sprites who

see only the rouge make-up hidden in

the burial

ceremony, Obaasan offers body to

the Navajo

in slow increments of tea ceremony,

what more

can a body give? In sand whirls raised

by a scuffle,

feet chafe the earth, irrigation pipes

rattle to mark

a life—there is life? The night rests

in a dust bed,

hushed asleep despite the dull thud

of Nakaya

cutting firewood, a lullaby in a dream

in a wish.
from the book SANDMAN / Diode Editions
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This poem is awash with the mundane wishes, hopes, and dreams buried by racial violence. Exploring the episode of Japanese-American incarceration as part of a legacy of anti-Asian cruelty, the lines waft through the landscapes and peoples that find curious company in the histories and places out of sight. How do we recognize a life in the choked telling of our collective past?

Huan He on "Lullaby"
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San Diego's New Poet Laureate

"Jason Magabo Perez’s work as a writer and teacher has prepared him for what he wants to accomplish in the role: finding voices and offering people the tools to tell their own stories....'I have a lot of love for the city and the communities of the city, and that’s what I’m excited about with this position,' he said. 'But I’m not the voice of San Diego.' The voices, he said, are already here."

via THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
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Andrew Zawacki on Sébastien Smirou's "The Lion"


"The orthodox part of the evening once completed, we turned to our current project—very much under construction—namely, the English translation of Sébastien’s sophomore book, a bestiary titled Beau voir....The plan was Sébastien’s, inspired tangentially by the so-called 'torture test' that Olivier Cadiot and Pierre Alferi had devised, which involved translating Robert Duncan’s falconer-mother back and forth between English and French, so the original would bloom anew through its successive degradations."
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