Tulane Review Digital

Passage Is All
By Risa Pappas
Women move through ruins single file
winding under veils of hornet swarms
shimmering the eves of towers crumbling
imperceptibly we grow old shoulders
and necks drooping weak stems toward
early frost
Healers only ever can intend
with weeds and drams for props the play
played out on the platforms once stood
as cathedrals for old gods painted on
rectangles guiding worshippers along
paths up and down the sky and around
like veins toward a heart that didn’t survive
a path men rode in boxes with wheels
many ride them still in their still way socket
facing north and south
But the women walk and mostly stop
when one of them ceases to rise and we take
each of her limbs and carry her to the nearest
water and leave her draped there on the edge
a hand dangling in for comfort a face become
young in the rippling
Who awaits the migrant?
By Pradeep Niroula
A migrant stares down
at the scars he made in the desert
when melting sand into gold.
Will the desert mourn him gone?
Gone home, where there are
only tawdry treasures of wood
that bored housewives
polish day in and day out —
the sand follows, but the gold doesn’t.
The migrants ascends,
like wispy fumes from a dying flame;
the palms don’t sway to bid farewell,
nor do camels raise their head to see him go;
the red waters stay motionless, idling,
fiddling with the silver laced coasts;
the oasis glitters like a young bride
The morning of her wedding —
unstirred by a suitor dropping,
another will soon take his place.