Author: Dona Luongo Stein
Dona Luongo Stein, a former Wallace B. Stegner Poetry Fellow at Stanford University, has been awarded writing fellowships, residencies, and publication awards. She has taught literature and writing at Tufts, Stanford, Santa Clara, and San Jose State Universities as well as the University of Northern Colorado and the University at Santa Cruz. Stein produced and hosted “The Poetry Show” on KRFC FM in Fort Collins, Colorado, for ten years. Publications in journals, anthologies, and online include three collections, plus Alice in Deutschland (Jacaranda Press, 2011) and Leaving Greece (Shanti Arts Press, 2018).
Immigrant
I used to breathe in water, somewhat salty. I saw dim shapes, felt wobble and jolt the constant companion of a beat, a soft mallet on a stretched skin I thought I wanted to evade until it became part of me and I panicked when it seemed to fade. Sometimes a long hum, a sigh …
BLOOD
has no formula; it’s a composition of too many elements: oxygen greed, lust, iron, despair, hope, water, and minerals cells exchange with their permeable membranes, envy, grief…. How many times have some cried silently wanting the little candles to be more than wax, fire, and smoke, that the small red cups not be among so …