Photo by Terry Kearney / Flickr
There should have been roses . . .
Instead, I clutched red and white
carnations my aunt bought
from a street vendor
outside the courthouse.
I shoul...
Daniela Yohannes (UK/Guadeloupe), Black Oil (2019), Acrylic on Linen, 116 X 89 CM / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art
What we do not say to each other
bites speech into ultimatums
a guillo...
A detail from Dereje Demissie (Ethiopia), Psychscape (2009)
In Krio, there is a word with Atlantic Ocean spray still swirling in its gut:
Freeborn. I heard this word often after dinn...
Dereje Demissie (Ethiopia), Psychscape (2009)
On my mind daily with the insistence of a metronome
is that thin granular layer, rich humus, spare humility,
black earth daily lifted a...
Detail from Girma Berta (ETHIOPIA), Moving Shadows XI (2016), digital archival print, 40 x 40 cm / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art
after Inji Efflatoun
Sarah Hegazi Malak al-...
Girma Berta, Moving Shadows XI (2016), digital archival print, 40 x 40 cm / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art
after “A Walk through Intimacy,” by Theresah Ankomah
Under the auspices...
Daniela Yohannes (UK/Guadeloupe), Subterranean (2019), acrylic on linen, 116 x 89 cm / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art
there are flowers you can’t touch outside someone’s house
at night,...
Merikokeb Berhanu (Ethiopia/US), Untitled XLVII (2020), acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in. / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art
You always serve coitus with a side of cheese
silkworms squirming...
Dereje Demissie (Ethiopia), Psychscape (2009)
This poem is written in response to a news story in Spotlight (South Africa), headlined as follows: “What the Charlotte Maxe...
Ch’ol embroidered shirts / Photo by Diana Laura Montejo
I Am the Alphabet
They say, grass born in the forest,
my body holds the freshness of mountains.
I have absorbed the garden’s blossomin...
Don’t just aim the telescope
at the night sky’s swarming
to discover one more planet.
Turn it also toward the earth,
toward the bottom of the sea,
see the fish in between the rocks,
a flicker of...
Poetry is not solace, it is not a
song of joy and of sadness, it is not
a haven in the mouth of a blind
man, it is not a museum. Poetry is
not an almanac of meanings on
t...
Photo by Nathan Bang on Unsplash
I brought mum and dad an old quilt –
It’s nice, only it came out of the wash with funny splodges on it.
They can stick it on the sofa bed out at the allotmen...
Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash
On the hilltop
A woman said to me
This fruit is called kam
Kam I take the word as it comes
I write it in my memory
Like the three letters in the...
Photo by Marcel Ardivan on Unsplash
I propose, my love, to be for you the surface
to be but body for your eyes
to be but rhythm for your tongue
and information for your net.
– Myriam M...
The children see trees bending bending and then they are broken coconutless frondless. The children see roofs in various states of disarray metal sheets lifting eaves pulled away. There’s Takaro’s ho...
Last Tuesday
I wasn’t enough of a poet
to note how the falling rain
would split the sky
It doused the fires in my heart
till its casing cracked
It hammered the pyramids of my mind
and washed a...
Photo by Ajeet Mestry on Unsplash
The Alarm
The television had announced the imminence of an attack. Would it be a bomb? Bacteria? A weapon previously unheard of?
Everyone had long known...
you come and go checking on those figs
your eyes scanning the eyelets among branches
you leave the slums of the city
the rain’s hand-pan roofs above the ruins
you come and go checking on those fi...
The audio recording of “Simi” can be found here on the Musuq Illa website.
Simiby Olivia Reginaldo
Kay simiy ruwasqaykita atipanchu
qilla qalluy
qulluypaq qillqan
Kay s...
Photo by Artur Kraft / Unsplash
Golden rice stands in sheaves
in the freshly cut autumn field.
I think of many exhausted mothers and see
beautiful, wrinkled faces along the road at dusk.
T...
We created the Palestinian Kufiyah to be your
symbol of elegance and flames of resistance.
We centered it with Net of the Sea,
To remind you of staying one united, strong nation....