If Only Immigration was a Fish
Martin Espada wrote of floaters.
Families thinking of life beyond water.
When the father looked back
he only saw the river. His child
like America wasn’t there anymore
The undertow dragged away
hope, laughter and their meager
possessions.
All this under a distant moonlight.
and a distant dream.
The Middle Passage
A ship with black sails
arrives before the storm.
There are no souls on board.
There are ghosts in cargos
in the hold.
Death keeps a diary filled
with the names of the dead.
Feral cats rub against the heavy
doors. The middle of the ocean
comes to an end.
I turn to Stone and my Pain goes on
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
some see paradise
the soul is a rugged cross
a cold velvet flame
at dawn a nun sweeps
petals of wisteria —
the wind turns westward
The State of Secrets
On page 4 —
I read secrets.
Little did I know I was
reading from The Manual
for Heartbreaks and Democracy.
Since the Russian invasion
the thesaurus is outdated.
James Bond kept secrets
from her Majesty.
For M,
an agreement is
better than a deal.
Somewhere the President
of the United States is
gambling and playing cards.
Democracy’s Rainfall
Breaking News!
Aurora is burning the skies
everywhere.
Our children turning into smoke.
We open umbrellas
to catch their ashes.
Hong Kong has disappeared.
The Coming of the Bats
We are losing
our innocence
like kites and balloons.
Like bats at twilight
becoming bolder
with blindness.
We are winged demons
of goodness no longer
held back by strings
or darkness.
Miho Kinnas is a Japanese writer, translator and poet living on Hilton Head Island South Carolina. She is the author of three books of poetry. Her poems, translations, essays and reviews are published in various journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, Poetry Tokyo, World Literature Today, American Book Review. The exhibition of her photographs, Awakenings is underway at the Hilton Head Town Hall. (Website: ) www.mihokinnas.com.
E. Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist and the author of two memoirs and several books of poetry. He hosts the weekly WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and hosts and produces The Scholars on UDC-TV which received a 2020 Telly Award. Miller’s latest book If God Invented Baseball (City Point Press) was awarded the 2019 Literary Award for poetry by the American Library Association’s Black Caucus. www.searcharchives.library.gwu.edu/repositories/2/resources/367.