Poetry
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October 12, 2021 |
Photo by Wayne S. Grazio / Flickr In spring of the year I turned twenty I looked for a river river calm and wide that I believed to be my past incarnation. Since childhood, I’ve seen it man... -
September 8, 2021 |
Photo by valkrye131 / Flickr I kiss her & death is the shadow of that loving bird shaking on the pool yet when she turns to look it has flown. * She’s gone, sleepwalking with her... -
September 1, 2021 |
Photo by Megan (Markham) Bucknall / Unsplash It is easy to be a mother. Childbirth was nothing. Marriage and divorce only crack the plaster a little like when the S-train goes by. It is... -
August 31, 2021 |
Photo by Basetrack 18 / Flickr The trees outside my balcony, Remind me of the trees of Afghanistan They are big green clouds that land on the ground to lift our spirits and take them for a jo... -
August 25, 2021 |
Photo by michael_swan / Flickr Alternatives could or should be basin or lagoon or pool or puddle or small body or was there a motive or I got here by myself iterating through conversions or... -
August 24, 2021 |
Photo by Sylvie Mazerolle / Unsplash Assembly Dear fellow carpenters and woodworkers, I come with greetings of solidarity from the metaphysicians. Among us the situation has... -
August 10, 2021 |
Photo by Alexander Sinn / Unsplash The hour of hooded crows when cleaners fly for the night all carrion is eaten all bones picked and all skins farewell you unlucky trail explorers! only... -
August 3, 2021 |
Birds over Jerash / Photo by Omar Chatriwala / Flickr The poets’ voices sing in my head across distance, sing to reconcile to make peace through counterpoint but can’t work as they should.... -
June 10, 2021 |
Photo by NCinDC / Flickr He said: Why must they destroy and destroy again? Why must they forget my face my gestures my voice? Why must they believe in my absence even as I stand in front of th... -
June 3, 2021 |
“A Fisherman at Lake Dian.” Photo by Yu Jian. Reading Glasses I am no longer young, a half-blind Homer, wearing reading glasses to see the world. The calendar shows that it... -
April 27, 2021 |
On the Yangtze River, through the Wu Gorge / Photo by Perfect Zero / Flickr Summer Elegy for my father From June to June, as though uninterrup... -
February 18, 2021 |
Photo by Russ Morris / Flickr Some may live just a block away, even nearer: the Walmart clerk who’d coolly hook a hot wire to your gonads, the grease monkey keen on beheading, the cleaning... -
February 9, 2021 |
The seacoast at Mykonos / Photo by the author In Andros, I Watch a Goat Run to and away from My Father’s Hands He opens his eyes. His eyes the color of its... -
February 3, 2021 |
Photo by Jes Timms / Unsplash for Vishnu Khare How to convey one’s well-being over the phone, It’s going all right, All that is there is good or nothing is good. The main thing to... -
January 6, 2021 |
Photo by Matt Artz / Unsplash I write with words that have shadow but don’t shelter no sooner do I start this page insomnia burns it not the words but what they consume is what reality start... -
January 4, 2021 |
Photo by George Kourounis / Unsplash [I ask everybody] I ask everybody have you noticed today when the time passed with its voice of silence with its common appearance I... -
December 10, 2020 |
Photo by Patrick Robert Doyle / Unsplash Four Scars for a Nameless Town 1 I come from a town with no name, no smiles of children under the trees. My town h... -
November 18, 2020 |
Tonalmeyotl is from Atzacoaloya, Chilapa de Álvarez, in the Mexican state of Guerrero / Photos courtesy of the author My Náhuatl They say my tongue Náhuatl has had her head cut off... -
November 17, 2020 |
Detail of Robert Aitken’s Samuel Gompers Memorial, 1933, Washington, DC / Photo by takomabibelot / Flickr What book he was reading – we still don’t know, For Shakespeare doesn’t tell us. Just... -
November 11, 2020 |
Käthe Kollwitz, Pietà (Mother with Dead Son), 1937 (enlarged by Harald Haake in 1993), Neue Wache, Unter den Linden, Berlin / Photo by deadmanjones / Flickr / Original sculpture in the K... -
November 10, 2020 |
Photo by Dave Phillips / Unsplash We heard the trucks pull up, the barking voices, a woman in the street –Irina? – putting up a fight. Each night, the bell’s insistent buzz, the foot-stomps... -
September 21, 2020 |
Sheep’s Head Lighthouse / Photo by John Finn / Flickr Author’s note: For about seven years now, Kwame Dawes and I have been writing long poem-dialogues that have so far appeared as fo... -
September 8, 2020 |
Photo by Kawan Nahaee Both a poet and novelist in Kurdish and Persian, Kawan Nahaee has a significant audience on social media, where the poems he posts often engage with... -
July 7, 2020 |
Photo by Richard Lee / Unsplash [A flock of cranes] A flock of cranes crosses an ashen sky the prophet is first to rise black lines cleave through the black ai... -
June 29, 2020 |
Photo courtesy of the author for Rachelle 4/27/2020 Our moms were widows before they met our fathers. Their hair blue-black, their hands already chapped, caressed by Inglis die-cast...
WLT Weekly Categories
Recent Posts
Photo by Wayne S. Grazio / Flickr
In spring of the year I turned twenty
I looked for a river
river calm and wide
that I believed to be my...
Photo by andy lapham / Flickr
Whether he is recounting his nighttime drive with a late colleague and poet around the beltway of the pulsing...
World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, will host the 2021...
Photo by J. Triepke / Flickr
Series editor’s note: The speaker in Nick Makoha’s poem is an unexpected one: Icarus, coming back to...
Photo by Kari Gunter-Seymour / www.karigunterseymourpoet.com
Kari Gunter-Seymour (b. 1955) is having a moment—soon to become...
