the compassion anthology
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  • Archives
    • Spring 2019, Letter from the Editor
    • Winter 2018 Letter from the Editor
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    • Winter 2016 Letter from the Editor
    • Summer 2015 Letter from the Editor
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    • Exhibits/Fundraisers 2015
    • Poetry, 2019 >
      • Robbie Gamble
      • Robert Okaji
      • Nicholas Samaras
      • Gabriella Brand
      • Sarah Wernsing
      • Jen Karetnick
      • Cindy Veach
      • Seres Jaime Magana
    • Fiction, 2019 >
      • Ruth Mukwana
      • Andrea Gregory
      • Olivia Kate Cerrone
      • Rebecca Keller
    • Essays, 2019 >
      • Review of the movie GIFT
      • Jalina Mhyana
      • Stephen Dau
      • Alexandra Grabbe
      • Olive Paige
    • Art, 2019 >
      • Krisztina Asztalos
      • Rute Ventura
      • Laura Gurton
    • Winter 2018 Art >
      • Dawid Planeta
      • Liliana Washburn
      • Ellen Halloran
    • Winter 2018 Fiction >
      • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
      • Herman Melville
    • Winter 2018 Essays >
      • Nikki Hodgson
      • Ciara Hall
      • Sara Roizen
      • Review of Claudine Nash's The Wild Essential
    • Winter 2018 Poetry >
      • Parker Anthony
      • Crystal Condakes Karlberg
      • Julia Lisella
      • Cynthia Atkins
      • Claudine Nash
    • Essays Summer 2017 >
      • Interview with Gail Entrekin
      • Patricia Reis
      • John Nelson
      • Mary Baures
      • Monette Bebow-Reinhard
      • M.J. Iuppa
    • Fiction Summer 2017 >
      • Jean Ryan
      • Daniel Hudon
      • Ray Keifetz
      • Anne Elliott
      • C.S. Malerich
      • Sascha Morrell
    • Art Summer 2017 >
      • Sara Roizen
      • Jill Slaymaker
      • John Mark Jennings
      • Janel Houton
      • Brandon Gorski
      • Tara White
      • Nancy Dudley
      • Elisabetta Lucchi
    • Poetry Summer 2017 >
      • Megan Merchant
      • Joey Gould
      • Claudine Nash
      • M.R. Smith
      • Kim Aubrey
      • Vivian Wagner
    • Winter 2017 Poetry >
      • Dan King
      • Kathleen Byron
      • Sam Bresnahan
      • Olivia McCormack
      • Danny Romanovitz
      • Kyle Quinn
    • Winter 2017 Art >
      • Elliott Grinnell
      • Olivia McCormack
      • Brendan Brown
      • Lauren Waisnor
    • Winter 2017 Essays >
      • Kathleen Byron
      • Eddie Marshall
      • Sofia Colvin
      • Ishita Pandey
      • Mohsin Tunio
    • Summer 2016 Fiction >
      • Jyotsna Sreenivasan
    • Summer 2016 Art The Women Artists and Writers Exhibit
    • Summer 2016 Poetry >
      • Colleen Michaels
      • Jennifer Markell
      • Tara Masih
      • Holly Guran
      • Heather Nelson
      • Bahareh Amidi
      • Alison Stone
      • Julia Travers
      • Amy Jo Trier-Walker
    • Summer 2016 Essays >
      • Olivia Kate Cerrone
      • Katelyn Gilbert
      • Kim-Marie Walker
      • Bahareh Amidi
    • Winter 2016 Fiction >
      • Blue Vinyl, Green Vinyl
      • The Cresting Water
    • Winter 2016 Art >
      • San Giovanni D'Asso Landscape Paintings
      • It's All About the River
      • Jellyfish Sculptural Drawings
    • Winter 2016 Poetry >
      • Poems from Songs in the Storm
    • Winter 2016 Essays >
      • The Gleaners
      • The Aliveness Project
      • Named
    • Summer 2015 Fiction >
      • The Cloak
      • Sanctuary
    • Summer 2015 Art >
      • Environmental Art
      • Compassion in the Midst of Violence
      • Burn Myself Completely for Him and Souls
      • Eye of Oneness
      • Stepping Forward
    • Summer 2015 Poetry >
      • Poem With a Question From Neruda and INDICTMENT
      • The Humans
      • Afghan Boy and other poems
      • Reparations
      • Transference and other poems
    • Summer 2015 Essays >
      • The Ineffable Aspects of Forgiveness
      • He Was Better Than I’ll Ever Be
      • A Voice in the Desert
    • Winter 2015 Fiction >
      • White Heron
      • Freeing a Little of the Madness
    • Winter 2015 Art >
      • Cascade of Care and Life
      • Sentience
      • A Paternal Instant
      • Aurora, Paloma, and the Melangolo Tree
      • Seated Pose
      • Antigone's Map
      • Ladder
    • Winter 2015 Poetry >
      • Dissolution of the Soviet Union
      • Nicknames
      • Stopped at a Light,
      • Why mate for life? Red crown crane
      • The Prisoner
      • Stigmata
      • "Oh don't," she said. "It's cold."
      • Convene
    • Winter 2015 Essays >
      • The Forgiveness Project
      • A Stranger on a Subway
      • A Journey to Compassion
      • The Question of Compassion
      • Reflections on a Childhood Deforested
      • Click, Click, Click
Scent of Qahwa
by Tara L. Masih
 
Because desperate men fight always to control something--
this time it is ma’a, the water as it disappears--
this girl will fight through leech-filled swamps,
forge the vast White Nile,
watch sisters go down in crocodile jaws.
 
She will survive on rainwater,
green flesh of shea nut,
salty porridge of tree leaves,
while skin swells with ticks and
shreds in Kono thickets.
 
This girl will reach the refugee camp on petrified feet,
find neither food, nor water.
 
She will stay, fight a kind of death
behind the camp’s truck barriers,
wrestled down, voice smothered in tall grasses
by three militiamen.
 
She will not sleep,
must listen, listen for sounds of
helicopters, MiG’s, and approaching janjaweed.
 
Under a Sahara-stained tent,
this lost girl will fight to remember
the scent of qahwa,
the vision of a mother’s desert-dry hands,
dusted in grindings of clove and fried coffee beans,
offering her family their daily drink
in tiny clay cups.
 
 
Walking Through Fallen Berries
by Tara L. Masih
 
“Walking Through Fallen Berries” was previously published in Red River Review online (Aug. 2001) and reprinted in In the Arms of Words: Poems for Tsunami Relief (ltd. ed. by Foothills Press, 2005) and in In the Arms of Words, Poems for Disaster Relief (Sherman Asher, 2005).
 
Plimouth Plantation, 1992
 
Distant daughter of Hobbamock,
paid to stand watch over remains
of his past life.
Hut, line, clay pots, baskets—Homesite--
rebuilt for us tourists,
pilgrim land now walked by the world.
I want to know how they survive today,
the Wampanoags,
the rest,
in such hostile territory.
I have to break through character,
through script,
through recitations on clay
and corn
to get to this woman's
heart.
Her war mask slowly cracks
and opens
like a gift,
and I receive
her answer:
"Because we love the land."
 
How rich, to love so surely it carries you through the death of
tradition,
self,
soul--
or not . . .
 
And I imagine it is like walking
through fallen berries,
trying to shake free
the heavy, rotten deeds
of past and present
that cling to
a great spirit.
 
 
Tara L. Masih has won multiple book awards in her role as editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction and The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays. She is author of Where the Dog Star Never Glows: Stories and Series Editor for The Best Small Fictions. Awards include The Ledge Magazine’s Fiction Award, Wigleaf Top 50 recognition, and a finalist fiction grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. www.taramasih.com
 
 
 
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