Photo by h heyerlein / UnsplashField at Night On a night without you I descend into hell streetlamps become enemies Solitary I walk the salt mines my footprints are salt measuring fate salt like the f…

  Illustration courtesy of the author Julius D. Jones is a talented and thought-provoking artist who cares deeply about humanity, justice, and peace. Despite being incarcerated for more than twen…

Photo by said alamri / UnsplashImmigration, detention, unequal pay are modern words for slavery again. Dictatorship, borders. Any imposition of one’s will over another is a form of s…

Photo by Natalia Dimitris X (2007) / Flickr… And instead of despair before your own cracked skin instead of drowning in memories of him instead of hopelessness as you face the scorched plain of your f…

Photo by throgers / FlickrIn what follows, I have created three heteronyms to render Pablo Neruda’s “Oda al actor” into English. They are presented in chronological order by date of birth. Their views…

Photo by NancieLee Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we’re free at last. “[O]n the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons…

Photo by Lucas Calloch / UnsplashJapanese Garden I curve like a wooden bridge over a lake lit up by red carps I am hard and dry and barely adorned like a sand garden (though there are stones that blos…

Photo by Evelyn Paris / UnsplashNational Anthem This is my room, it is called Iceland. A sea cable fastens it to Europe and to here and from here fly airplanes with their ink cartridges full of people…

Jewish Museum Berlin / Photo by Davie Dunn / FlickrMommy, mommy repeated Tyre Nichols with his last breaths kicked by the boots of five policemen under his mother’s window in Memphis Plea…

Photo by Sofya Badkhen“We Live Without Touch” is a found poem. Composed of fourteen English translations of the first two lines of a famous 1933 poem by Osip Mandelstam, it is a timely meditation…

Photo by Lava Lavanda / UnsplashFirst Language Not sure what to make of the title             (titles can be misleading, like                         Chinatown or Popiół i diament or that blue–white…

Photo by Lava Lavanda / Unsplash First Language Not sure what to make of the title             (titles can be misleading, like                         Chinatown or Popiół i diament…

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 since T…

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 dart a…

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 coiled a…

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 finality?…

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 still, lo…

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.  …

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 staircase pati…

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 here is…

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 tables.…

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 essence of my…

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 was da…

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 Another si…

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 Tychyna…