As a Finn, to visit the Russian border on the eve of the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki – only slide film can save you there!
No sooner did I start than I had to stop, blown away by the welded drain covers, the seagulls in place of people long gone. The city was in lockdown and police lingered at every corner, weighed down by the pounding sun.
Illustration (made for the poem) by John Trefry
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I went to New Orleans when I was young.
Spanish moss hung from trees like bodies in the still air.
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I wore white linen because of the heat
and the only time I felt comfortable was at three in the morning.
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Her shoulders were bare, her hips narrow like a boy’s,
her skin pale and soft as moth wings in the monochrome night.
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By Youssef Rakha. Leukerbad, Switzerland
I will go to the spring
where you slip away to fill your jar
everyone at the market and me by the tree
we maintain twenty metres no more no less
and this before you catch on a stone or two
and before a foot slips and a jar slips
leaving me ahead
on our way to the spring again
by twenty metres and a slight smile.
тнє ѕυℓтαη'ѕ ѕєαℓ 