Poetry

Three Poems

By Sherko Bekas

July 2018
Sherko Bekas

Photo: Ismail Khayat, A Girl, 2015, Sulaimani, 40 x 27, acrylic paint and colored pencils on paper. Answer After Halabja* suffocated,I wrote a long complaint to GodBefore...
Three Poems

By Abdulla Pashew

July 2018
Abdulla Pashew

Ismail Khayat, Sleeping, 2013, Sulaimani, 33 x 33, pencil on paper. Soccer I see Kurdistan as a soccer field, independence as a ball, plump with air. From the beginning of our existence, run...
Two Poems

By Yu Xiuhua

July 2018
Yu Xiuhua

Still from Still Tomorrow (2016), dir. Jian Fan, produced by Youku Tudou, Inc. Crossing Half of China to Sleep with You To sleep with you or to be slept, what’s the difference if there’s any...
Two Poems

By Zoltán Böszörményi

July 2018
Zoltán Böszörményi

Photo: Public Domain Pictures/Pixabay Empty Trains The mornings departand arrive without you.Empty trains.Your spirit flashes now and thenon the hem of a sky foundering in light.Sentences fog the ste...
The Norman Chronicles

By Chantal Bizzini

July 2018
Chantal Bizzini

The cemetery as seen en route to Landes, Canappeville, Eure, France. Photo by Chantal Bizzini Author’s note: With this somewhat old-fashioned title, I actually intended to talk about the...
“The Mandala,” from Amor sin fin (Forever Love)

By Claribel Alegría

May 2018
Claribel Alegría

for Bud ¡Sí, es azul, tiene que ser azul! – José Gorostiza I can’t free myself from my boredomalways completing circlesswallowing myselflike the serpentswallows its tail.I’...
Two Poems

By Lamia Makaddem

May 2018
Lamia Makaddem

photo: Jason Trbovich/flickr Poetry was created to solve family problems Let me just say:this is why poetry was createdto solve family problems when neededand sometimes to wash the dishes and polish...
A Dedication Poem

By Mohamed Metwalli

May 2018
Mohamed Metwalli

Piburger Lake, Austria. Paul Gilmore/Unsplash To an ordinary manWho couldn’t care lessAbout disasters befalling him,To some modest happinessThat this man finds in a bar in wintertimeWithout a fight,T...
Three Poems

By Juan Bello Sánchez

May 2018
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...
Six Poems

By Mahtem Shiferraw

May 2018
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...
Tito Randy, the Building’s Night Watchman, in Winter

By Jake Ricafrente

March 2018
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...
Two Poems

By Oliver de la Paz

March 2018
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 ther...
Two Poems

By Janine Joseph

March 2018
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...
Pilifino Efitaps

By R. Zamora Linmark

March 2018
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...
Thirteen Dreams and One Duterte

By Eugene Gloria

March 2018
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 ...
Tesseract (excerpts)

By Jason Bayani

March 2018
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...
Who Is Speaking

By Samira Negrouche

March 2018
Samira Negrouche

photo: chezbeate/pixabay Our dream paths crossand come to nothingburied in heretic fog Impenetrable silenceburns in your eyes Even speakingyo...
I Brushed the Dust off an Intoxicated Poet

By Jóanes Nielsen

March 2018
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...
Four Poems

By Haydar Ergülen

March 2018
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...
The Aunt

By Hannah Lowe

March 2018
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...
Two Poems

By Kim Stafford

March 2018
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...
Two Poems

By Liu Xia

January 2018
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...
Three Poems

By Martín Gambarotta

January 2018
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...
Nausis

By Eleni Kefala

January 2018
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...
Two Poems

By Fady Joudah, Golan Haji

January 2018
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...