Poetry
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January 17, 2019 |
Greg Jordan, “Moth, Glass, Hand,” Sept. 2009 / Flickr Before there is sausage and bread And blood-red wine Like the light Over the great lake Are you a ship Or a sequin Something so tiny It c... -
December 7, 2018 |
Elephants in Etosha National Park, Namibia / Photo by Richard Jacobs on Unsplash for Reinaldo Arenas I have seen a land of regal elephants, you wrote some years ago, not many really, back w... -
November 26, 2018 |
Photo: Marion Ettlinger [Meena Alexander, February 17, 1951 – November 21, 2018]for David, Adam & Svati Name me a wordGreat, simple, vast as the skyA word that has,... -
October 30, 2018 |
Statue of Gandhi along San Francisco’s Embarcadero / Courtesy of Ilya Yakubovich / Flickr To the farmers who braved the police on Gandhi’s birth anniversary The farmers left their f... -
September 21, 2018 |
María Verónica San Martín, from In Their Memory: Human Rights Violation in Chile, 1973–1990 (2012), silkscreen, digital print. San Martín is a Chilean born, Brooklyn-based artist currently w... -
September 4, 2018 |
Photo by Andrew Neel / Unsplash Journal, or Story Without Words And I follow the hand copying what it had written years ago,never knowing it would... -
August 10, 2018 |
Photo by Sabah El Basha heirloom Ninety thousand men, women and childrendragged their dust to rivers,dams were never built for. Under six cataractslie the bones of my ancestors.Under my bed is the c... -
August 7, 2018 |
Sunset on Ithaka by T. Zengerink / Flickr Once on Ithaca Walking the harbor that day, I saw a cronesitting at a loom on her front porch.Was this Penelope, I wondered, weavingin midda... -
August 2, 2018 |
Photo by Paul Streltsov / Unsplash Grief that is now old, I ask it to come and sit near me today.I’m sitting, there’s my shadow, and if grief indeed comes and sits beside meI will feel quite good;... -
July 26, 2018 |
Photo: Peter Dressel Protective by defaultaffectionate by design apron, youare my mother:sweet bread bakingblue veins racingdown white expansedotted with delicioussplatter and spill. My mother woreyo... -
July 18, 2018 |
Photo by Michał Mancewicz / Unsplash Bathing with Tender Care And not this time the body of my child,but my own skin, loving the wrinkled kneesand the scars dealt t... -
June 26, 2018 |
Photo (left to right) - Translator Rowena Galavitz (courtesy of Emerson Richards) and author Paula Ilabaca Núñez He’ll hang the heartsBlack and dull as the... -
June 19, 2018 |
Lifecycles I was chatting with your executioner,a sweet, tidy man.He said because it’s me,I could choose the way you go out.He said when Eskimos get old,they wande... -
May 30, 2018 |
Photo by Atlas Green / Unsplash Boy for Dorsen Never seen him in a school uniform.Instead, each day, he wore clothes,bearing time’s hands. Hea... -
April 17, 2018 |
Mürtüz Yolcu (Enver) and Mansou Ciss (Otello) producing the radio play Blumen für Otello, April 9, 2014 / Photo by Sandro Most courtesy of Deutschlandradio Author’s note: Flowers... -
April 5, 2018 |
Courtesy of Natalia_Kollegova/Pixabay Ibis The Ibis, in Egypt, was not a bird,he was Thoth, the god in the pyramidwith my heart in his scimitar beak.We are not j... -
January 8, 2018 |
Photo by Inhabitat/ Flickr Happy New Year Everyone’s waiting for the ball to drop. The President’s son-in-law is going to jail. Or maybe not. Inform... -
October 3, 2017 |
Mural in Cochabamba, Bolivia / Photo by proyecto mARTadero For more on the poetry of Valdivia, read the companion essay by Margaret Randall. Aullido poema octogonal En el graznido de mi... -
September 26, 2017 |
Samoylov as a soldier in the Red Army in the 1940s Translator’s note: In June 1944 David Samoylov (1920–1990), an important Russian-language poet who was then a soldier in the Red Army, was... -
September 20, 2017 |
This view of Saturn’s rings from the “ringscape finale” series was among the last images Cassini sent back to Earth (September 13, 2017) / Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institut... -
September 13, 2017 |
Gillie Rhodes, “Log pile,” November 7, 2009 Late Autumn A butterfly searches our garden plants for blossoms I don’t see. Flitting, almost lurching, it lands at last on a barren branch as if exha... -
September 7, 2017 |
Grave at the US/Mexico border taken at a cemetery near Anthony, New Mexico, July 19, 2015 / Photo by Lanie Elizabeth The following is an excerpt from part 2 of a four-part poem called “T... -
September 6, 2017 |
Liu Xiaobo, 1991 / Courtesy of Wang Ya Translator’s note: This photo of Liu Xiaobo swimming surfaced on the Internet after the sea burial in Dalian, China. Those of us who were hear... -
August 30, 2017 |
Bury Me tell me wet limestone flinching coral reefs what’s it like to alwaysbe night tell me what is it to be rooted in shadow ... -
August 23, 2017 |
John, “Fallen Angel,” August 29, 2010 Here and Now Here he is sitting across from the balcony door;the wind will blow – a wound. The rustling lightblushes and fades in the rectangular mirror – th...
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