Poetry

  • A photograph of a two windows on a two story apartment building. A face (oversized) fills one and a giant hand emerges from the other.
       By Piotr Florczyk
    March 13, 2023 | Piotr Florczyk
    Photo by Lava Lavanda / Unsplash First Language Not sure what to make of the title             (titles can be misleading, like                         Chinatown or Popiół i diam...
  • A somber black and white photograph of a boy standing on a beach looking at the ocean
       By Saadi Youssef
    February 16, 2023 | Saadi Youssef
    Photo by Alex Arbelaez / Flickr Martil It’s okay to veer toward Tetouan, to stay a while, to be released from a pair of pliers, the two mountains that have gripped Tetouan...
  • A cropped photo of a Greek statue against a white background
       By Enrique Lihn
    June 1, 2022 | Enrique Lihn
    Photo by Vlad Kutepov / Unsplash Echo of Another Sonata                 In your opinion one love erases another and so it is, dear, yet in love not everything belongs to the...
  • A black and white photo of a group of people, with its back to the viewer, walking toward a female figure, who stands in front of graffiti of a pair of angel's wings, painted on to the wall nearby
       By Linda Maria Baros
    May 18, 2022 | Linda Maria Baros
    Photo by Luis Fernandez / Flickr I go out into the street with the angel by Linda Maria Baros I go out into the street with the angel.                 Like a chain c...
  • A photograph of a rural landscape, blurred by rain drops
       By Todd Fuller
    May 2, 2022 | Todd Fuller
    Photo by OakleyOriginals / Flickr — after BLP Where is it I end? Is it just past the last echo of my fingertips or tongue? Is it where the ink dries on this page— is that my fina...
  • A photograph from inside of an archway that looks toward a balcony in the courtyard outside
       By Juan Lamillar
    April 18, 2022 | Juan Lamillar
    Royal Alcazar, Seville, Spain / Photo by Gary Campbell-Hall / Flickr December in the City December in the city. In the tower, the frail angel, radiant in sunlight frailer st...
  • A photograph of a rundown room, mostly shrouded in shadow, with light streaking in an open door on the right
       By Andrée Chedid
    April 12, 2022 | Andrée Chedid
    Photo by Nathan Wright / Unsplash proofs of the living Engraved in the nation of the body That fetters or sets free Unto implacable absence Our lives Will pave Life’s Way....
  • A photograph of a downwardly spiraling staircase, shot from above
       By Sergio Mansilla Torres
    March 30, 2022 | Sergio Mansilla Torres
    Photo by Chuttersnap / Unsplash List of Totems in the Air A broken wine glass, a Chinese radio, trees looking on undaunted as I grow old, scraps of bitter lemons, a stairca...
  • A tomb, built from clay, with rounded shapes suggestive of a mosque, sits in a sparsely covered grass field outside the walls of a city
       By Munur Mambetaliev
    March 28, 2022 | Munur Mambetaliev
    A Kyrgyz Soviet tomb / Photo by Evgeni Zotov / Flickr Consider Friend, when you visit cemeteries, don’t be afraid. All the dead are Kyrgyz, and most of them you know. Over h...
  • A children's school desk painted blue, sitting in front of a wall painted similarly blue
       By Eli Eliahu
    March 21, 2022 | Eli Eliahu
    Photo by Carli Jeen / Unsplash Epistles to the Children I am writing to the copiers, to those who whisper to each other in fear, to those who scratch their loves into the ta...
  • A photograph of a statue of a female figure clinging to a wall
       By Vasyl Stus
    March 16, 2022 | Vasyl Stus
    Lychakivskiy Cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine / Photo by Jennifer Boyer / Flickr So many words; they are like crippled ghosts! They strike, like bullets, far and close by But always miss the essenc...
  • An abstract painting of a circular figure on an aqueous field
       By Raquel Salas Rivera
    March 14, 2022 | Raquel Salas Rivera
    Benjamin Murphy, 100 Years of Progress (2021), oil on canvas, 72 x 48 in. / By permission of the artist but the day arrived when exhaustion broke my face and i was more than bad, i...
  • A photograph of sunrise coming up over Lake Baikal
       By Jean-Baptiste Para
    March 8, 2022 | Jean-Baptiste Para
    Sunrise over Lake Baikal / Photo by Arseniy Chekmarev / Flickr My name is Iaromira Forgive me if I speak of sad things When my footsteps echo in my bones A silence saved me from the word Ano...
  • A photograph of a skein of barbed wire against an icy blue background
       By Michael M. Naydan
    February 24, 2022 | Michael M. Naydan
    Photo by Steve Evans / Flickr A longtime scholar, translator, and promoter of Ukrainian literature reflects on the existential crisis confronting Ukraine—and the West—today. In Pavlo...
  • A photograph of figures on a beach. The photograph is heavily colored in red and orange tones.
       By Natan Zach
    January 31, 2022 | Natan Zach
    Photo by Steven Weeks / Unsplash Completely at random, the world ended. Trade in shares was lively, the weather splendid. Lovers lay in beds and some on the sand. Artists painted nature, if...
  • A photograph of a recently clear-cut forest with a solitary tree left standing toward the left edge of the frame
       By Kalpna Singh-Chitnis
    January 18, 2022 | Kalpna Singh-Chitnis
    Photo by Adam Cohn / Flickr It did not weep did not plead for mercy nor complain. It fell silently, the tree. ~~~ My hands, yellow as its flesh dripping white blood, shuddering with th...
  • Water from above overfills the steeping basket of a tea pot
       By Ana Marques Gastão
    January 4, 2022 | Ana Marques Gastão
    Photo by Sergey Norkov / Unsplash Iron-Red Tea Were your body a teapot, sleek and slender, face unseen and hands like iron-red stems, were your mouth to release a roofless...
  • A black and white illustration of a woman in profile
       By Luis Correa-Díaz
    December 15, 2021 | Luis Correa-Díaz
    Comic by Pavel Ortega like no one can successfully push away the sea waters —it has been said in a love poem—nadie could make me obey what my living make-up doesn’t obey, it’s not a ques...
  • Bubbles darken the ocean as they rise to the surface
       By Sudeep Sen
    November 18, 2021 | Sudeep Sen
    Photo by zig0004 / Flickr for Derek Walcott & Sigrid Nama At the end of this sentence, rain will begin. — D.W., “Archipelagos,” Map of the New World  1...
  • A photograph of a derelict factory
       By Zhang Er
    November 4, 2021 | Zhang Er
    Dacheng Flour Factory, Shekou, Shenzhen / Photo by Chris / Flickr Every day, educated youth of the erstwhile industrial zone ride the sightseeing elevator, up and down, crowding into the sky...
  • A detailed black and white illustration of a bird of prey directly facing the viewer
       By W. J. Herbert
    October 18, 2021 | W. J. Herbert
    Illustration © Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation Fragile Eagle The La Brea Tar Pits’ Page Museum displays fossils of extinct & extant species....
  • A black and white photograph of a building surrounded by water at night
       By Du Ya
    October 12, 2021 | Du Ya
    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...
  • A photograph of dark crimson pomegranate seeds delicately laid out on snow
       By Hasan Alizadeh
    September 8, 2021 | Hasan Alizadeh
    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...
  • A photograph of six pastries on a white serving platter from above
       By Tove Ditlevsen
    September 1, 2021 | Tove Ditlevsen
    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...
  • A woman veiled from head to toe, holding a child, as she looks at a stone wall with a flag flying above
       By Ibtisam Barakat
    August 31, 2021 | Ibtisam Barakat
    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...
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