RESISTANCE

by Kim Drew Wright

The lady beside me drips
drops from the bridge of her nose,
runnels from her forehead

A lithe blond in the back makes
it look easy, head pressed to mat
bending as told

Sweat collects in towels, clothes
I am a bottomless pit
of fluid, the rain water of continents spill

out of me, one bead at a time,
like the first burst of rain in the Garden
of Eden. I hear how it lands on a leaf,

how the apples glisten.


Kim Drew Wright has fiction and poetry in numerous journals. The Strangeness of Men, her debut collection of short fiction and prose poems won both a Silver IPPY and Finalist in USA Best Book Awards. She is a human rights activist and lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and three children.

ABOUT APPLES

by Rick Gray





Yes, I heard about your bombing today.
Another improvised scrap of death
Planted inside a truckload of apples.

This isn’t about your success.
It’s about apples, driven by ordinary men
into this raped and hungry city every day.

Round, delicious things glowing yellow, green, red,
A traveling circus nourishing even beggars
Quick enough to lift the fallen.         

I have spied blue angels
Slip these wounded below burqas
And carry home your civilian dead 

And all along the muddy roadsides
People you cannot control pile them in little pyramids
Like temples to the God you hate

Who needs no prophet
or book
Only her sweet juice

And a mouth with a few real teeth
Willing to bite down hard
and chew.


Rick Gray was a finalist for the Editor's Award at Margie. He served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and currently teaches at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul.