Poetry
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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... -
June 16, 2020 |
Photo by Marco Arment / Flickr Sunday morning on the parquet Sunday morning on horseback Sunday morning picking lice from her hair . . . with a rosary and prie-dieu... -
May 13, 2020 |
Carlos Estévez, Self-Fishing, 2006, collage on paper, 39½ x 27½ inches / Courtesy of the artist Now the beat (there is always a beat). Now the drums and the darkness within. Now the dance.... -
January 6, 2020 |
Humayun's Tomb in New Delhi. Photo by VED on Unsplash On an evening stroll down my street, the azan echoes, stops my feet, reminds me it is time to pray, but I start musing on that day: Bha... -
December 17, 2019 |
Photo by T Foz / Unsplash Alphabets of My Heart Because I am from East and West a mother with two alphabets and I must not love one more than the other if they are to grow up and love eac... -
December 11, 2019 |
Photo by Kea Mowat on Unsplash Dear WLT Readers, I am thrilled to offer the following translation of “Eagle Poem” from English to Arabic in honor of poet Joy Harjo who, this year, was... -
November 21, 2019 |
Photo by Ervins Strauhmanis / Flickr 1 We maintain antiquity and elegance on paper; inside we are full of shame. We present heaven and hell on paper; our self-disgust resul... -
November 7, 2019 |
Photo by James St. John / Flickr Fences I will never think of this in the same way, watching the woman in her daily brown skirt throw her own body against the fence and try... -
October 28, 2019 |
Photo by Bryan Kuwada Aunty says She climbed a ninety-foot cliff in the dark Traced the scars of a long-forgotten waterfall Cried as she felt the green disappearing under her fingertips An...
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