Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography
All my being is a dark verse that repeats you to the dawn of unfading flowering and growth. I conjured you in my poem with a sigh and grafted you to water, fire...
Photo by ~dgies/FlickrBilingual recordings by the author and Lyn Coffin
9
Death is when the heart does not beat and the clock beats. Love is when the heart beats and the...
[Click here to read the lyrics in Farsi.]
The whole of my being is a dark verse of Scripture which in its repeated recitations will take you away to the dawn of eternal buddings and bloomings.
I...
Misrak Terefe (far right) with fellow Ethiopian performance poets.
This says the meaning of country is sitting in the balance.In order to say, to be able to see,the balance, the leader must...
For a group of art performances in July 2013 called Wax and Gold organized by the Netsa Art Village, visual artist Mulugeta Gebrekidan presented “Invading Samsung Square” to protest the corp...
Photo by Brent Pearson/Flickr
Negative Space
I
I was born on a Tuesday in April.I didn’t cry. Not because I was stunned. I wasn’t even mad.I was the lucky egg, trained for gratitudeinside the belly f...
Photo: Kristina Sheppard/Flickr
A Young Horse
I’ve never figured out what world I live in.I rode on a horse as young and as happy as I.When he galloped I could feel his heartbeatAgainst my thighsAnd...
Photo by Alberto Varela
Bio
How unlike a dead fish a live fish is – Maxine Hong Kingston
Kiedy byłam rybąKosmos jak zawsze okrągłyMiał przytulne ściany
Śniłam o boskich pł...
Todd Stewart, “Fence Line, Tule Lake Relocation Center, 2001,” from Placing Memory: A Photographic Exploration of Japanese American Internment (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008).
Eating No...
Swallows. Photo by Kenneth Cole Schneider/Flickr
The Swallows
G. Mend-Ooyo
Returning from afar, swallows in flocksEmbrace the tales of the gentle, tranquil steppe.The waters of eter...
Photo by Katerina Cheiladaki
Translator’s note: Arvanitika, or Arberishte as it is called in the Corinthian mountain villages, is one of the many languages in the world facing extin...
The Gardener
I learned to plant trees with my grandfather.“The willows need more water than you, Andrés,and their rootsin the beginning aren’tvery deep.Sometimes they grow so fastand sometimes they...
How tenderly the stream flowsamong the numberless blossomswhose heads dip and weavein the tepid east wind, how warmthe insect tune, and multitudethe ripe green grasses, rank on rankthrough which i...
Wishes
Wish I could still laugh with the lotusOn the bank of the Nile
Take off my clothes And dive into the Zambezi
Join spirit dancersIn the middle of the Ganges
Romp with the RioTo the...
Photo by Gwaga
Little Men
Animals no longer speakDrums refuse to beatTanganyika slowly retreats From her shoresBloodied by the nightmare of menWhose pettiness piercesThe deep slumber of the ancient...
Translators’ Note
Juan Hernández Ramírez describes both Nahuatl and Spanish as mirrors for his writing: “sirven de espejo, kewak se teskatl.” He does not write solely in one...
Photo by Kables/Flickr
Their language rolls out, soft carpet in front of them.Strolling slowly beneath trees, men in white shirts, belts, baggy trousers,women in scarves,glinting cigarettes in the d...
Clay Tablet Bearing the World’s First Alphabet
That had comemuch later –
After everythingalready had happened –
Without witnessthe first stammered
wordthis atomic flash
forevercontaminating
the oblivi...
The first time I saw your father,I stared back into the pool at your reflectionwhile he waded through,the water moving in gentle circles away from us.
The first time, I thought it was the Nilewe’d dip...
I
Before what happened happened,I mean, before the towers became a stairway to the dayof reckoning, and the world split into twocamps, water and sand,I used to wish that I’d be among the poetswho woul...