Blog Description:

Join Peter White Public Library in celebrating reading, literature, and the diverse people who make up our home in the Upper Peninsula.

March 27, 2025: Lynn Domina, "Gandhi is everywhere,"



Gandhi is everywhere,

by: Lynn Domina

I thought, lost
in Rio’s Centro district. A vendor
hawking snacks blocked
my view, until, stepping into the street, I saw
his wire-rimmed eyeglasses, bare arms,
his disproportionately large
sandled feet, this black statue
twice as tall as he ever was. The high sun
flattened his features.
I wanted to touch him, it, the smooth black
stone formed into his image.

A boy’s Portuguese confused me, something
about water, something about thank you.
Taxis loitered behind buses. The familiar body
emerged from their exhaust,
walking toward the sea
or toward Parliament
or toward his assassin. Later,

I opened a map and saw
his name there among metro stops,
the Lapa steps, the Cathedral of St. Sebastian. I found
my way back to my hotel, then home again
to English, flat accents,
potable water, cold winters,
our fear of brown men
teaching peace.

(originally published in The Glacier)




Lynn Domina is a poet living in Marquette. She enjoys traveling just about anywhere. Her favorite sandwich is cudighi with the works, and she prefers her pasties with gravy. She is a Yooper.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

March 17, 2025: Beverly Matherne, "Aunt Alice"

Image
  Aunt Alice by: Beverly Matherne Aunt Alice chooses a strand of pink floss separates it slowly. She snips a piece puts its tip into her mouth pursing her lips drawing it out priming it for easy passage into the needle’s eye. Aunt Alice shows me how to hold the embroidery hoop in my left hand   drive the needle up from the back with my right pull it through the fabric lifting the thread all the way up then driving the needle down reaching for it from the back and pushing it up again over and over running stitch back stitch chain stitch my little fingers tired my little fingers pricked and pricked again. Aunt Alice shows me how to tongue my little wounds ease the sting stop the blood its smack of salt and iron lets me take a break after each mishap boosts my courage. When Aunt Alice thinks I’m ready she chooses two strands of floss cornflower blue for blossoms forest green for leaves. The petal of a small flower guides my d...
Read more

March 4, 2025: Beth Roberts, "V" & "Spotted Deer"

Image
V In just a minute I’m going out in the boat. A census enumerator drives up in a rusted Prius, glad he has work during the pandemic. I hear my grandmother in the white-throated sparrows. In just a minute I’m going out in the boat. And my grandfather in the red pines he planted, taller than four pickups end to end. A census enumerator drives up in a rusted Prius, glad he has work during the pandemic. And my father in the red pines he planted, now taller than he was. In just a minute I’m going out in the boat. And my mother in the memory she’s losing. A census enumerator drives up in a rusted Prius, glad he has work during the pandemic. I tell him I came up here to quarantine, the only one. In just a minute I’m going out in the boat. Excerpt from “June 2020,” On Natural Things by Beth Roberts, Harvard Square Press, 2024 Spotted deer What do you call it when you drove with your dad out to the forties so he could see if you could see deer, and you balanced coffee in teacups while the truc...
Read more

March 3, 2025: Martin Achatz, "Joy to the World"

Image
  Joy to the World by: Martin Achatz Joy is elusive. I have a poet friend who’s been chasing it for years.    Hers is an albino whitetail that haunts the woods and cemeteries and trails around our town on the shores of an arctic inland sea.    Ever since she moved here, she’s longed for a close encounter with this scrap of winter, its marble haunches and swan neck.    I often wonder if, when she sees it, she will burst into blossom, shudder into glory like a peacock.   Another friend, a physicist, searches the heavens for joy, magnifies with binoculars and telescope the shadows of lunar craters, blurs of comet tails, flashes of Geminids flinting through December stars.    When he finds it, will he blaze like an aurora, an emerald waterfall at the birth of night? Still another friend listens for joy in the green cantatas of birds, The whistle of Black-capped Chickadees, rubber-ducky squeaks of nuthatches,  weirdo-weirdo-weirdo  ...
Read more