Photo: Himanshu Nerurkar
The Ant
Let it go back to the anthill.
If it brushes inattentively against your fingersclimbs themand daydreamsin the furrows of your hand,don’t chase it away or squash it....
What One Leaf Tells
In the wind, questions to heaven bang the white poplar. Answers fracture –
a thousand white leaves. A thousand blameless mouths. A thousand. Ten thousand colorless excuses;
I pi...
Photo by Renate Dodell
These are the closed doors of a hotel hallway. What once were dreams, what life will one day be.
She dares to ask. Room 217 looks like a sunny Caribbean isle, like a shipwr...
Photo by Kenneth Dellaquila
Language Barrier
“When you tell them about their own bodies,” My mentor told me, “realize Their anatomy is Greek to them. Their pupils dilate, pulses rise
With all th...
Photo by Benjamin Jakabek Photography
alone
i will live alone in a room with two birds, a cat and three flowers. in the mornings we will wake with blue eyes. in the...
Photo by Zvika Melamed
Song of the Younger Brother
1 I can think of nothing but the little one, the younger brother.
He holds his father’s hand. Peering into the camera, h...
A simurgh (a monstrous mythical bird with the power of reasoning and speech). From Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing, by al-Qazwīnī (d. 1283/682). Courtesy...
Photo: Clarissa Bell
To the Children of War
Mornings, they run from the dark along the length of the seashore.Like an iron sword beaten by a blacksmith, the sun reddensas their feet strike the ground...
Photo: Robert S. Donovan
A Man’s Confession
This is not simply loneliness. Your absenceis a terrible and bitter thing.Every night when I return, throwopen the front door, leavebehind all other amus...
Photo: Unsplash
We Shall Manage
for Rabiqe, who doesn’t like to read sad poems
our teardrops will drywe shall forget even the easiest of rebellions – rebellion against God
we shall for...
Bronze statue in Baku’s Fountain Square of a young woman in contemporary attire talking on a mobile phone, erected in 2014. Photo: Alison Mandaville
I have broken a cup
There is an ache in every corn...
Photo: Stefan Schweihofer
I Scatter Bread Crumbs to the Sparrows
From my palms spills the joy of sparrows.I call them to the crumbs, Come quickly! and Who will be first?Their frozen bills wa...
Photo: Kris Williams/Flickr
Archipelago
The enigma is some other thing – no gods live here Just men and the sea, immovable inheritance.
Undeniable
By dowry I received you at birth and I recognize...
Photo: Vincent Brassinne (Flickr.com/vainsang)
Sand Woman
A woman was lifted from the sand. She was perfectly intact, not even a split hair.
When he left they say she didn’t eat or sleep. She didn’...
Editorial note: The Swabian versions of the following poems are read by the author. The English versions are read by Tegan White-Nesbitt.
Abwesenheitsnotiz
Aushäusig dahei...
Photo: Public Domain/Pixabay
Untitled
The wildflowers don’t bloom on command nor can their seeds be sown rebellious winds whirl at dawn winnowing seeds toward the ossuaries of the fields...
Photo by Fiona Baxter/Flickr
i
He once sold a portion of himself to a fish packing plant, slipped in the crates of the headless and dressed when all eyes were blu...
Jeremy Miranda, Salt Marsh, 2014, acrylic on panel. Courtesy of the artist.
How Much of Yourself Remains Within the Walls of a Home?
after Jeremy Miranda’s Salt Marsh (2014)...
Photo by Ryan Godfrey
X Days After the Amnesia Epidemic
We set out on this road knowing we would discover nothing amazing. We didn’t expect to find a new route to Mercury, we didn’t imagine we woul...
Antoni Tàpies, Porta metàl·lica i violí, 1956, 200 x 150 x 13 cm.
Back then I learned that the painter’sgesture contains both the movement of the planetand the blade of grass on the mountain...
Photo by Andrew Toskin
Still Life with Toy Gun
for Tamir Rice and John Crawford III
after the after-party empties both of its fists the seven of us gather like a murderof crows to loose...
Adam and Eve,by Gail Caulfield, Villa Montalvo (Italy)
Genesis 2: 18–22
After a while, the glitter began to fade, the way a bright star, regarded full-...