David Allen Sullivan

David Allen Sullivan is the former poet laureate of Santa Cruz county. His books include: Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a book of co-translation with Abbas Kadhim from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. He won the Mary Ballard Chapbook poetry prize for Take Wing, and Tim Seibles selected Black Butterflies Over Baghdad for the Hilary Tham capital collection, Word Works Books. Salt Pruning, a co-authored book of poems with Ignatius Valentine Aloysius, was published by Hummingbird Poetry Press. A book of poems about his Fulbright year in China with his family, Seed Shell Ash, is forthcoming from Salmon Press. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, lives in Santa Cruz with his family.

In the Tibetan Autonomous Region

མིའི་རིགས་ཀྱི་མུན་ནག་དེ་  རང་ཁྱིམ་གྱི་མུན་ནག་ཏུ་གྱུར  The darkness of humanity  has become the darkness of my home.  —Kyabchen Deydrol སྐྱབས་ཆེན་བདེ་གྲོལ, translation by Lowell Cook and the author    A Tibetan professor sneaks us home   to share a meal with his family.   He does

Paired

I take off my gloves to pull my suitcase up the high steps onto the Tibet-bound train, then wheel my case down the aisle, hoist it into the overhead rack, help my family find seats, and there— out the window, as