Poetry

  • May 2018

    Three youths photographed from above, their shadows producing three upright figures trailing behind them
       By Juan Bello Sánchez
    photo: palon youth/unsplash We Learned to Pronounce Brooklyn in the Movies we learned to pronounce brooklyn in the moviesto undress in the backseats of carsto await chance with a roll of the dice we...

  • May 2018

    Juxtaposed photos of sand dunes through different color filters
       By Mahtem Shiferraw
    Photo: Meriç Dağlı/Unsplash Nomenclatures II Those which we are givenin the brink of sorrow,or joy – or both; those marked on our foreheadsthe curse of a generation,or more, marked on our abdomensbi...

  • March 2018

    A pen drawing of a man smoking a cigarette outside of a house
       By Jake Ricafrente
    Winter 97, by Maia Cruz Palileo Most nights, he takes his coffee black, rewindsAnd plays the slasher films he’s seen a dozenTimes, smokes packs of menthol cigarettesTo stay awake, and catche...

  • March 2018

    An image that looks like needlepoint utilizing burdock plants
       By Oliver de la Paz
    Burdock Needlepoint, 2017, by Janna Añonuevo Langholz.   Diaspora Sonnet 11   In absence of blackbirds I give you a diamond-studded sky. In absence of heat, let there be...

  • March 2018

    Two intricate geometric shapes on a field of black with organic matter falling between them
       By Janine Joseph
    Lacuna (7), 2017 by Sara Jimenez   New Patient Intake Form In the beginning, there was a window I pried the blinds to make lightof my losses I fished my hands into and sh...

  • March 2018

    Three veiled figures painted in an early modernist style.
       By R. Zamora Linmark
    Veils, by Maia Cruz Palileo   Here lies Macario “Mac-Attack” Dacanay, 53, who went into cardiac arrest after winning the chicharrón-eating contest. Don’t blame the pig. Here lies Prudencio A...

  • March 2018

    Three figures working in tandem to hold up an invisible wall
       By Eugene Gloria
    illustration: francis estrada   [Number1Dream] A wall diademed with broken glass    can tear the skinof anyone who dares to scale the wall Hot box for a house, a tinderbox of electric fans ...

  • March 2018

    A surreal collage mixing a pristine snowy mountain landscape with objects from an urban environment
       By Jason Bayani
    Moonrise After Adams, 2016, oil, acrylic, interior design magazines, nature calendars, Pioneer Supermarket bags, plastic tablecloth, linoleum, and gift wrap on wood, by Camille Hoffman...

  • March 2018

    Light streaming down through the canopy of an olive tree
       By Samira Negrouche
    photo: chezbeate/pixabay Our dream paths crossand come to nothingburied in heretic fog Impenetrable silenceburns in your eyes Even speakingyo...

  • March 2018

    Dust between a pair of hands that look like a small galaxy
       By Jóanes Nielsen
    photo : randi ward The first time I saw Aleksandur Kristiansen in personWas at the dance hall in the Tórshavn TheatreAt the time I was convinced that poets were some sort of demigodsThat maybe they t...

  • March 2018

    Looking down on a table that has two pomegranates on it, one cut, one uncut, with the knife that opened the one up laying beside it.
       By Haydar Ergülen
    photo: nathalie jolie/unsplash Two Small Pomegranates If you want a garden to grow lookinside a pomegranate look long look deepat the core there’s a school and a blue girlthey’re a g...

  • March 2018

    A photo of author Hannah Lowe
       By Hannah Lowe
    photo:  hayley madden The Aunt vanished one autumn. Left the house,the children, the Uncle with his twitching beard.If I wanted her, I searched in photographs:the Aunt, sublime in a Pucci wedding dre...

  • March 2018

    A grove of narrow, straight trees
       By Kim Stafford
    photo: pixabay Dastgah A wandering musician from afararrives on foot, dusty with the journey,and quietly performs while strollingthe strange city, steps lightly alonethrough crowded...

  • January 2018

    A black and white photo of a ball of aluminum foil, shrouded in darkness, except for a strip of focused light on its right side.
       By Liu Xia
    above Liu Xia prepared her goodbye for her husband, Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017), in a poem and a series of photographs titled The Lonely Planets (courtesy of the author). For m...

  • January 2018

    The steel frame of a dock, not covered and thus exposing the sea below, extends out from a rocky beach.
       By Martín Gambarotta
    [untitled] Vacations in the ice, the London Manifestotransformed into a heap of stupiditiesan ultimatum for the scum, the day moon. Inertia: from theclean shoreto the dirty...

  • January 2018

       By Eleni Kefala
      Photo by Eleni Kefala for G. D.   It was much easier to tell why it was called the golden grotto than to get into it. . . . It appears to have been used as a cemetery, for rows of tombs have be...

  • January 2018

       By Fady Joudah, Golan Haji
    Author note: These poems are part of a longer sequence that Golan and I collaborated on for my new collection, Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance. All the poems are ba...

  • January 2018

    Smoke drifting up into the air. black and white
       By Li-Young Lee
      God Is Burning Through an open wound in God’s left side,springtime enters into the world,sticky, green, with a taste of iron.That’s not the wound I hurt from. There’s a dull pain...

  • January 2018

       By Anna Maria Carpi
    [untitled] Dear Lombard fog maternal densesix in the morning, winter,espresso machines are steamingin the first bars to open in the square.The city of gravestones is quiet, each has a name:under the...

  • January 2018

    A kultrún, the quintessential Mapuche instrument, which is a drum played with a mallet.
       By Liliana Ancalao
    [1] feichi lali mülen ñi nontual katrütuleufün  feichi lali mülen ñi nontual katrütuleufünchem trewa ngiyulaenew, nielan trewatrongli trewa nümüalu...

  • January 2018

    A cobbled street, under street lamps at night, gradating in color from brown to grey.
       By Iossif Ventura
    Who are these people marching at noontide?Why do we hear these beating drums?What are the pigeons looking for on fluttering banners?What are the scattered words that stain the air? Sweat soaks the sq...

  • November 2017

    Photo: Daniel Simon
       By Elisa Biagini
    Photo: Daniel Simon [1] this ours that it be a unionof scissors: cutthe hair, the hems, the cord thatfeeds me worry withevery bite, my secret familyline. Cut itas i...

  • November 2017

    A photograph featuring many people that is blurred to create the effect of an Impressionist painting
       By Lee van Laer
    From Yousef Khanfar’s project Humanity at Large, in cooperation with the United Nations. Khanfar writes, “These photos are impressionistic images that show human beings as islands within the...

  • November 2017

    An oil painting of the silhouette of a girl rolling a hoop up a street between two buildings. An ominous shadow of a man, perhaps carrying a spear enters the scene from above.
       By J. V. Foix
    Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, 1914, oil on canvas, 69 x 85 cm, private collection My village sits on a circular platform. The gate of every house faces...

  • November 2017

    A pair of bared feet rest on a cloth covered in a non-English script.
       By Robert Bly
      There’ll be no more mother. We’ll have to live nowWith the looks on the faces of our friends,And half-open windows, and lamps that go onBy themselves, and an egg standing on a plate. Last night I dr...
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