Poetry

  • Summer 2019

    A blue parakeet looks at the camera from behind the wire of his cage
       By Myronn Hardy
    Photo: Simon Q/Flickr A patch of sunlight on the wall     thin shadows like worn nets or the snagged stockings  of a voracious lover impair that patch. Our shoes tap the marble stairs down-down....

  • Summer 2019

    A darkly lit shot from above looking down into a blooming cabbage
       By Aleksandra Tsibulia
    PHOTO: Scott Webb/Unsplash * Tulips and their capricious labia, their indecent appeal. The absolute shamelessness of the flowers, but also the sinlessness. The lushness of the earth, as before the...

  • Spring 2019

    A panoramic shot of Hong Kong
       By Xi Xi
    PHOTO: Florian Wehde / Unsplash you gave me a black silk chicken hoping I’d eat it and get better you gave me a black silk chicken because I’ve been unwell I cooked up the black silk chicken de...

  • Spring 2019

    A close shot of a name plate embedded in the street
       By Alexander Booth
    Lorie Shaull, “Stolperstein” / Flickr The story begins like this. No. It does not. There is no story. Or, they shoveled a load of speed and shuddered toward the coast. Saltpans. Sparse groupings of...

  • Spring 2019

    A shot from from a hill near Kukupalong refugee camp near Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh of refugees streaming in and out of the camp
       By Mayyu Ali
    View of the Kukupalong refugee camp near Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh. / PHOTO: Russell Watkins / UK Department of International Development “I can be killed here in Bangladesh. My body can earn a...

  • Spring 2019

    A shot from directly above of a red taxi cab waiting at a street light on a street marked by numerous parallel yellow lines
       By Jason S. Polley
    PHOTO: Ruslan Bardash/Unsplash The meaty gweipo complete slippery scolds assailant aplenty The meaty miasma of North Point’s postcard avenues, where Big-Leaf Fig bases are...

  • Spring 2019

    A bowl of rice, lightly colored by an application of soy sauce
       By Chris Song
    PHOTO: Jmoritz320/Pixabay But a bowl of rice with soy sauce was your breakfast yesterday. Colors of foods varied as fate played out with this resemblance on the table – Clay-pot sauce poured int...

  • Spring 2019

    A photograph of a white kite held by an arm that stretches into the bottom of the frame with the moon hovering just above the kite
       By Wawa
    Prelapsarian Bloom: One Day One Life, thread on kite, LED light. Photo courtesy of the author. [untitled] a day a life, between death and birth, under the moon, tw...

  • Spring 2019

    A photograph looking up the front of a colorful apartment building
       By Belle Ling
    PHOTO: Florian Wehde/Unsplash Tasting Karma Does the doctor prefer eating an apple before he announces death? The doctor says: “Just so—sorry.” Or, he prefers studying an apple? ...

  • Spring 2019

    A hand-lettered sign in Chinese with English words that read “To Yuen Long / Please Press Bell”
       By Eddie Tay
    Press Doorbell Please. PHOTO: Eddie Tay How I Impress Others with My Cantonese At a dim sum restaurant you’ll need to ask for la jiu jeong (chili sauce), la jiu yeow (chili oil), or dao b...

  • Spring 2019

    Small dishes of food in bamboo bowls on a dim sum cart
       By Arthur Leung
    PHOTO: Alice Cheung Dim Sum Cart Dim sum house in Mongkok, the crowded, traditional one with gleaming walls, red flowery carpet, you squeeze through waiters and eaters, tables and chandeliers to...

  • Spring 2019

    A shot from above as a throng of people cross a city street
       By Kate Rogers
    PHOTO: Siriwan Leowratsamee/Unsplash Lamma Island Tofu-fa On the broken trail to Mot tat a field of white ginger lilies  flags us down. We shrug off our packs. Huddled among rui...

  • Spring 2019

    A black and white photograph of human shadows on the pavement
       By Jennifer Wong
    Rainy Afternoon Hong Kong 2018. PHOTO: Joan Pabona @kuochuqu #historyofthebees  #gardenwall #blah #sowhat In 19__ I broke an expensive urn.  Since then I have been breaki...

  • Spring 2019

    Looking through a series of blue gates, each with a hole in the center. A red crossbeam can be seen just beyond the final wall.
       By Kit Fan
    PHOTO: Joel Fulgencio/Unsplash Hong Kong and the Echo What do we know but that we face One another in this place? – W. B. Yeats, “Man and the Echo” HK. I loved my mountains, rivers, and t...

  • Spring 2019

    Rohingya children in a school in a refugee camp
       By Rohingya Poets
    Rohingya students reading The Blossom in the Community Rebuilding Centre education facility in Cox’s Bazaar refugee camp, ​​​​October 2018. Photo courtesy of Mayyu Ali. Translator’s note:...

  • Spring 2019

    A collage combining old bacterial slides with other mixed media, organized in rectangles
       By Crystal Z Campbell
    Crystal Z Campbell, Friends of Friends (Six Degrees of Separation), 4x6x72 inches, vintage collection of bacteria slides circa 1940s, steel, LED strips, automotive paint, plexiglas, 2013 do...

  • Spring 2019

    A double-exposed image of the moon, tinged red
       By Xiao An
    PHOTO: Luca Iaconelli/Unsplash Watching the Moonrise Alone Watching the moonrise alone the silent moon is like the person watching They’re alone together No one utters a single w...

  • Spring 2019

    A close-up photograph of a wood match burning
       By Clemonce Heard
    PHOTO:  SkitterPhoto/Pexels considering the Upstairs Lounge Fire  We tipped our sticks to the gravel like the bent spines of men groveling beneath trunks of smoke to lure the barbed larvae...

  • Winter 2019

    Branches of a York gum tree intertangle against a blue sky
       By John Kinsella
    Photo: Casliber/Wikimedia Commons We have been away from Jam Tree Gully – now, reapproaching the name not on the gate. Working the categories, the signs, we fear the raiders? Fifteen minutes into b...

  • Winter 2019

    Two ripe plums hang from a tree branch
       By Blanca Garnica
    Photo: Domeckopol/Pixabay  6 His under- wear  white Armpits  spotless and collar neat From Monday to Monday he is like that because the drainpipe carries off the rest.   12 Before me their f...

  • Winter 2019

    A thrashing figure in shadow immersed in water
       By Ennio Moltedo
    Photo: Bash Fish/Unsplash   1 At what time must the birds lined up in gardens, trees, and cages sing? Look to the law.   2 Let’s appoint the village madman. Chief Justice on the Court of Appeals, wit...

  • Winter 2019

    A turbulent wave, capped with foam, from above
       By Khal Torabully
    Photo: Michael Olsen/Unsplash [Carry my metaphor] Carry my metaphor; I touched the sea before waves deceived me. Carry my dream; I saw it all without opening eyes of salt. Carry my soul; I met dea...

  • Winter 2019

    A fiery sunset pauses before dipping below the ocean's horizon
       By Sharmistha Mohanty
    Photo: Kordula Vahle/Pixabay * Granaries as long  and winding as the shores from which we look  at the lit ocean, behind us the fertile land, rivers coming to this sea, silt behind us thousands...

  • Winter 2019

    A purple flower against a black background, sitting on reflective surface so it appears there are two flowers
       By Namrata Verghese
    Photo: Foto-Rabe/Pixabay   Guide to Bharatanatyam  Your smile, shredded into silver shards across panes of mirrors lining studio walls.Tuck your sari, tight. Open your eyes, wide.  You lear...

  • November 2018

    A closeup of browned leaves on a tree branch
       By Xavier Bordes
    Photo: Claus Grünstäudl/Unsplash Maybe it will be like the end of a yearwhen you find yourself alone in a deserted roomlike a statue at the end of a public garden pathfaced with bare autumn after the...
more

World Literature Today
630 Parrington Oval, Suite 110
Norman, OK 73019-4037
405-325-4531

Updated by World Literature Today: [email protected]