ACCOUNTING

by David Radavich

Image credit: gemenacom / 123RF Stock Photo

A culture’s values
lie in its treasure chests.

What people spend
money on day in day out.

Rock concerts, sporting events,
hairstyles, boob jobs, four-wheel drive,

airline tickets
to the Caribbean .

What we buy we love,
and that loves us,

breath of life
and song and sight.

These coins I hand
to the beggar

before me
is small pittance

for a world
that doesn’t care.

We can even
sell our blood
and zygotes

for a big new screen.

The better to see
ourselves

in a good story

full of racing death.


David Radavich’s recent collections include America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007), Canonicals: Love’s Hours (2009), and Middle-East Mezze (2011). His plays have been performed across the U.S., including six Off-Off-Broadway, and in Europe. His new collection is The Countries We Live In.

AWOL

by Rick Gray

Kabul sunrise. Image source: Panoramio

In a locked-down house of disconnection,
this is the hidden room of yellow exclamation.
Outside its mirrored windows dawn explodes the targeted capital
And strikes a starving boy on the corner waving a smoking tin can
Begging for a fragment of fresh luck.

Deserting an endless war of circling thought
I walk away from the blue face of my frozen screen
and step AWOL passed dreaming guards cuddling Kalashnikovs.
Digging down into the animal heat of my thigh
I grip metal jangling against a shriveled coma on antidepressants.

Oh, it’s so nice to stroll in the Kabul Sunrise!
“Give me muddy!” the boy on the corner orders me,
his English broken as my abandoned laptop.
I release my fist and watch Afghan coins drop 
Flaming into the yellow cracks of a hungry human hand.


Rick Gray teaches in Kabul. He has work forthcoming in Salamander and the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock.