Author Archives: Eva Petross

One time, after he had killed my neighbor and chased the screaming women and children towards the river, a soldier sat under a small tree behind my kitchen and smoked a cigarette. His brothers were retracting back across the dry flood plain, Ak-47s now slightly relaxed, a few isolated war cries still whooping across theContinue reading “Cigarette”

To be fair, they didn’t promise     the chimpanzees, and bush elephant sightings      weren’t even in the brochure. But the tremor in the trees     and trace of manure drew us into the forest like vagabonds     trailing the lure of incense through an unattended cathedral door. .  Haze of winged things and sporesContinue reading “Kibale Forest in September”

It seems to me that the art of poetry is much like the art of sex. . Inspiration favors those who faithfully fill notebooks    with so many scrawled lines, late-night-pages sated with threadbare simile, our metaphors as familiar to each other now as    nursery rhymes – agreeable in their predictability. . Every onceContinue reading “Monogamy”

When we breathe only dust under a sky that is bleached bone white, . when the ground is cracked open like the heel of an old woman’s foot, . when in our collective memory, water from heaven has begun to smell faintly of mythology, . like the stories old men weave along familiar patterns lateContinue reading “Rasha”

Today we trimmed the Mango Pine    at the request of a new neighbor who needs a bit more sunlight in the    lower left corner of his yard. There he has planted tomatoes and sukuma,    thirsty rows between the legs of the banana family clustered at the fence,    watching us while weContinue reading “Today We Trimmed the Mango Pine”

From the heart of this sunlit cemetery I can hear my sister crying at the stone. Beneath her rests the body she knows like her own, bones of certainty now broken, muscle and veins wrapped in liturgy laced skin, all pulled from her grasp in a single slow-motion    fire of a Friday. . WeContinue reading “Sunday”

Hi friends. It’s been a while since I have done this…written publicly that is. I’m still not completely sure what all will make its way here into this space to be read or who may stumble into this space to read. But in a world that finds itself increasingly disconnected – or perhaps more accurately,Continue reading “Dipping My Toes Back in”