Eyes

Compare your eyes to the summers day.

Even though the shivers that do maintain,

Shall always be avail,

For you to maintain.

You are a sight for sore eyes.

To always excell in the darkness that you came.

A Blessing

BY SAMYAK SHERTOK

After Li-Young LeeTwice a year Apa cooked his “monk’s half-moon” dish: pumpkin blossomlamb curry—first crackle the fenugreek seeds in ghee, stir the thinly slicedbaby pumpkins translucent, add a concocted paste of wild herbssoaked in buttermilk overnight, drop the smoked fatted lamb pieces,pour bone stock, let the fat begin to melt, then spread the flowers wholeon top until they’re dreaming—but before offering it to us over steamed rice,even before his gods, he’d serve those who were not home, place the filledclay bowls on the edge of the smoldering hearth in a half-ring,always bigger portions than for those politely waiting around himwith clean wet hands, which made me wish I were not therebut forgot all about it as bite after bite dissolved in my mouth,each mouthful lusher than the last, more ravenous for the next:salt, cliff-forged flesh, aged smoke, foraged fragrance, rain-honeyed dark,earthed moonmilk, petrichor pistils, butter gossip of the butterflies, fireof the fireflies, summer, sweet summer, sweet impossible summer—Source: Poetry (January/February 2024)

Howl

BY HUMBERTO AK’ABAL

TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL BAZZETT

The wind

trails the evening’s cry

over the flowing river.

A coyote drinks:

his sad howl

is all water,

water,

water.