Poetry

  • 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...

  • November 2017

    Bared feet standing on a cloth covered in a non-English script.
       By Kevin Hart
    Sam Roxas-Chua 姚, Pilgrim, 27 x 51 in., sumi-e and squid ink. www.samroxaschua.com Still of our world, dear father, in your graveOr at my winter window, looking hardInto a life you never kne...

  • November 2017

    Two flowers in a vase sitting between two walls embedded with lights meant represent deportees sent from France to Nazi concentration camps.
       By Nicholas Samaras
    The 200,000 lights in the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation in Paris represent the number of deportees sent from France to Nazi concentration camps. Photo by Zak / Flickr   Martyrs of the Deport...

  • November 2017

    The pink moon rises over a wetland and forest at dusk.
       By Rumi
    Photo by C.P. Ewing / Flickr   "The sky has never seen such a moon”   The sky has never seen such a moon, not even in its dreams,No water could ever extinguish the fire of its light, Look at my body,...

  • November 2017

    A statuary in the extreme foreground with the sea in the deep background.
       By Yoo An-Jin, Kim Seung Hee
    Valery's "cemetery by the sea," Sète, France / Photo by Mathieu / Flickr An Encouragement by Yoo An-Jin “The wind is rising!We must try to live!”So said Paul Valéry.How shall I adopt that Frenchman’s...

  • November 2017

       By Ted Kooser
    For more, read Daniel Simon’s interview with Ted Kooser, “Starving for Order.” The Constellation I was on my way home from a party,ten-thirty, a dark winter night, no stars,a few snowflakes drifting...

  • November 2017

    Two strands of barbed wire stand in the foreground against a backdrop of yellowish clouds in a wine-dark sky
       By Admiel Kosman
    Photo: Ath-Har Saeed / Flickr       I play on the water. It’s not completely necessary or required, but things flow under the treeslike a gentle melody. Day unto dayuttereth more lo...

  • November 2017

    A mixed media image by Mona Nicole Sfeir, the author of these poems.
       By Mona Nicole Sfeir
    Mona Nicole Sfeir, The Maps of Our Making (detail), 2015, acrylic, chalk, collage on canvas. Political maps are human constructs that have continuously changed since the first maps were scratched ont...

  • September 2017

    Snowy roads at a crossroads with trees. Photo: Daniel Ebneter/Flickr
       By Eli Eliahu
    Photo: Daniel Ebneter/Flickr Crossroads All winter I didn’t write a poem, and I didn’t remembereven one dream that I dreamt. I left a houseand a wife, rented an apartment, and everything I neededI fo...

  • September 2017

    Egret flying over blue water with it's reflection beneath it
       By Sasenarine Persaud
    Photo: Daniel Simon Egret The bird was just searchingfor food not metaphors –or taking rest from a day’s flight It was dusk after all and its ancestorswho might have crossed the MiddlePassage, crosse...

  • September 2017

    Satiro della Valle, Capitoline Museums, Rome
       By Maxim Amelin
    Satiro della Valle, Capitoline Museums, Rome Эти бездонные ночи в июле Эти бездонные ночи в июле,            О!Ты вопрошаешь: — Меня обманули?            — Да, — отвечаю, — но как! Лучше не спрашива...

  • May 2017

    Photo courtesy of the author.
       By Kimberly Blaeser
    Photo courtesy of the authorI.A mark across the body. The morning I watched my beloved uncle disappear down the alley. His car left sitting in our yard for thirty days. This tattoo we...

  • May 2017

    Norman Akers (Osage), The Gathering (2012), lithograph, 22 3/4 x 16 3/8 in / Courtesy of the artist (normanakers.com)
       By Jennifer Elise Foerster
    Norman Akers (Osage), The Gathering (2012), lithograph, 22 3/4 x 16 3/8 in / Courtesy of the artist (normanakers.com) Summers we lie out on the hot porchpalms splayed— raising flames from ra...

  • May 2017

    Tony Tiger (Sac & Fox / Muscogee), Intertribal / Courtesy of the artist (facebook.com/tony.tiger.5268)
       By Rain Prud’homme-Cranford, Carolyn M. Dunn
    Tony Tiger (Sac & Fox / Muscogee),Intertribal / Courtesy of the artist(facebook.com/tony.tiger.5268) I Mix cultures of homeWest Africa West Indies disrupted along slave tradeFrench and S...

  • May 2017

    Ice crystals on a car mirror
       By Linda Rodriguez
    Photo: Ruth Ellison/Flickr for someone who’s been delayedon a cold, gray, rainy daytakes me backto that little girl waiting in the cold car with the littler onesas the night took over the skywhile he...

  • May 2017

    Burning flame from a campfire
       By Tanaya Winder
    Photo: David Hepworth/Flickr i pull my brothers from words, stupid injun, shot like bullets. when people ask why my brothers hated school i say: the spirit remembers what it’s like to be lef...
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