Poetry
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May 14, 2019 |
Humpback whale / Photo by Wade Tregaskis / Flickr 7. For about a minute you spin and the world shifts galaxies. What germinates in your flesh is the viper’s dream. You slither through the underbr... -
April 25, 2019 |
Photo by Dennis Jarvis / Flickr Bema In Greek it means step. In church it separates me from the nave, where the quiet sit and wait. Behind the screen the altar boys, age twelve, a... -
April 11, 2019 |
Denisse Leon / Unsplash The Beginning Mother gave birth during an earthquake. She screamed, Mera bucha – my child. Inhaling, exhaling, withdrawing – Mera bucha mere pa... -
April 9, 2019 |
Richard Smith, “Piano Shadow” / Flickr A day without news. Left behind, last night’s lead story – a friend’s untimely death, his son surviving the head-on two miles from home. This evening, my n... -
March 26, 2019 |
Ellenm1, ice formations, Barton Dam, Michigan / Flickr Dismissed from some other duty the drawbridge attendant questions the stability of days. As in: how long until what we’ve been holding on to... -
March 14, 2019 |
A detail from Francisco Goya, The Drowning Dog, ca. 1820–23 / Museo Nacional del Prado I wish that I could find myself asleep tonight in a house on the banks of the Manzanares, ... -
March 5, 2019 |
Iain Broadfoot, “Epic abstract art” (coffee dregs) / Flickr The Storyteller by Ruxandra Cesereanu Just like that, we used to talk together in the café, not sitting down... -
February 26, 2019 |
Photo by Daniel García Peris / Flickr The Pounding of Hoes The pounding of hoes — don’t you hear them? Behind high stone walls, unceasing, yet slow, beyond the folds of time. T... -
February 21, 2019 |
Mercè Cañadell, The Young Minotaur and Ariadne / Photo by William Murphy Night Shift at the Globe I am the Master Leafblower, a.k.a. Tornado in Rags: Sopped, half dizzy, ears plug... -
February 19, 2019 |
Ty Nigh, “Atomic Liquor – Fine cocktails,” Las Vegas Desert View Overlook the chipmunk’s prayer hands & hunched tremble munch & swipe at whiskers bat-like in front of bik... -
February 4, 2019 |
Natalia Rifai, “Floating Carpet,” Srinagar, Kashmir, 1990 on Agha Shahid Ali’s 70th birth anniversary February 4, 2019 I In the post office, moored to the ghat, Secret g... -
January 29, 2019 |
Mike Schaffner, “Angel of Grief,” Glenwood Cemetery, Houston, Texas / Flickr In Which I Try to Imagine Justice without a thought to efficiency, without a thought to deadlines, wi... -
January 22, 2019 |
The bruise of ink on white paper. The words that line transcription and record. I know I am more than this thin sheaf. The written name of my village can’t say anything about the openness of its... -
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...
Recent Posts
Photo of Tétouan by Jean-Louis Potier / Flickr
An early novel, L’Écrivain public (The public scribe) is a surrealistic, semi-...
Humpback whale / Photo by Wade Tregaskis / Flickr
7.
For about a minute you spin
and the world shifts galaxies.
What germinates in your flesh is...
Ahmad Shamlou (left) | Photo by Hadi Shafaieh. Niloufar Talebi (right) | Photo by Devlin Shand
In Self-Portrait in Bloom, Niloufar...
Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash
May 8, 2019
to Daniel Simon, Editor in Chief, World Literature Today
Dear Daniel,
It is with great...
Tour guide at the Queen Mine in Bisbee / Photo by Scott Durgan / Flickr
Last summer, I spent July and part of August in a straw-bale house in...
