Poetry

  • May 2017

    Orca diving out of the water
       By Laura Da’
    Photo: Mike Charest/Flickr That slick envelope of developed film is tumbled in a storage closet next to old seating charts and a stale granola bar in foil. In one of the frames, faces are locked in a...

  • May 2017

    Photo: George Moga
       By Dan Taulapapa McMullin
    Photo: George Moga No. Nothing. Nothing on a really tall chair; a chair with very long legs; up to the sky, which was empty.   And down fell fragrance; fragrance of flowers, although there were no fl...

  • May 2017

    December 5th 2016 / No Spiritual Surrender by Zoë Marieh Urness (zoeurnessphoto.com), taken at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, North Dakota
       By Trevino L. Brings Plenty
    December 5th 2016 / No Spiritual Surrender by Zoë Marieh Urness (zoeurnessphoto.com), taken at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, North Dakota there are persons who delight in human suffe...

  • May 2017

    Vets Stream into Standing Rock. Photo: Joe Brusky/Flickr
       By Karenne Wood
    “Vets Stream into Standing Rock.” Photo: Joe Brusky/Flickr for Zhooniyah Ogitchida, with gratitude He walked to the frontline in his Army combat shirt.On it, his sergeant badge, name tape, U...

  • May 2017

    Anila Quayyum Agha, Alahambra Nights(2016), acrylic and halogen bulb, 30” x 27” x 30” / Courtesy of the artist
       By Shadab Zeest Hashmi
    Anila Quayyum Agha, Alahambra Nights (2016), acrylic and halogen bulb, 30” x 27” x 30” / Courtesy of the artist Qasida of the Bridge of Teacups The soul cleaves into two somewhere along the...

  • May 2017

    Flowers
       By Gili Haimovich
     Photo: Tanya Hart   Go Thee And the way you gathered up your excess soulbefore it spilled to the floor.At the end of the Hebrew-Yiddish-English poetry readingand you went to eat shawarma. T...

  • March 2017

    Photo: Andreas Manessinger
       By Ghassan Zaqtan
    Photo: Andreas Manessinger/Flickr Old friend, when we meet, we will meetas two shelves of wings and many harsh years, as one imagination that won’t exchange toasts:there’s no one to stomp the grapes...

  • March 2017

    Umbrellas and leaves
       By Kiriu Minashita
    Photo: Susanna Hsing Rhythm Lucretius’s atomic rain falls graduallyabove daily congestion, wetting my earlobes with noise.I’ve swallowed the good parts of several dropssleepy dissonance. On one side,...

  • March 2017

    Gaza City. Photo: Getty / AFP photo / Mahmud Hams
       By Rachel Tzvia Back
    Gaza City. Photo: Getty / AFP photo / Mahmud Hams   History moves darkly and we are small, soft things.                                                                          –...

  • January 2017

    Photo: Claude Valette
       By Hagit Grossman
    Photo: Claude Valette    Evolution I was once a Paleolithic painter, a sensual hunterplundering the earth, living from hand to mouth.I painted at the cave’s corner, concerned only w...

  • January 2017

    a tram in Hungary creates a streak of blue lights at night
       By Gábor Schein
    Photo by Zsolt Andrasi/Flickr Glints of the tram. The nondescript housesdream numb underwater dreams. Faces aretransparent bubbles popping off from the windowswhere water used to break through. The p...

  • January 2017

    Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.
       By Carolyn Forché
    Photo by Todd Slagter/Flickr   A Bridge Behind us a sea-cliff, landfall, ahead the wind,tar-smoke, the sea, a carrick.We sway on a bridge between themabove a great shattering. We have leftthe verge,...

  • November 2016

    Swirl
       By Zeina Hashem Beck
    Photo: US Army IMCOM Body For Hassan Rabeh, young dancer displaced from Syria, who killed himself by jumping from a seventh-floor balcony in Beirut, Wednesday, June 22, 2016 & perhaps yo...

  • November 2016

    Green train passing platform outside
       By Lidija Dimkovska
    Photo: Train Photos/Flickr A Swap  At the market bus stopI’m waiting with a man in ragged clothes,unshaven, his hair greasy,swinging his hand holding a big plastic bagwith “The Big Shopper” written o...

  • November 2016

    Salmon colored cloth on a clothesline
       By Diti Ronen
    Photo by Kai C. Schwarzer/Flickr On recent nights   בַּלֵּילוֹת הָאַחֲרוֹנִיםאֲנִי מְחַפֶּשֶׂת אֶת הַבַּיִת שֶׁלִּינָעָה אַחֲרָיו בִּשְׁבִילֵי הַיְקוּםאַרְבָּעִים שְׁנוֹת מִדְבָּרמְגַשֶּׁשֶׁת בְּיָד...

  • November 2016

    Open book on a bed. Photo by Steve Petrucelli
       By Zsuzsa Takács
    Open book on a bed. Photo by Steve Petrucelli   9:40 a.m. / Venipuncture  The way they step on one another’s heelsuntil a spindle-legged woman with dyedhair trips in the queue, and all sticktheir nec...

  • November 2016

    Rohith Vemula
       By Meena Alexander
    Fragments of an Inexistent Whole  Inspired by Alison Knowles’s “A House of Dust” 1. Syllables sieved through floating gates, Metal clack of printer  Mortal rendition, Fortran...

  • November 2016

    Photo: visitmelbourne.com
       By Alison Wong
    Photo: visitmelbourne.com                dusk, Summerland Beach, Phillip Island here they come rush of learners jerky gear shifts and no idea about cruise control it’s  a wonder the...

  • November 2016

    Illustration: Amima Rizwan
       By Hera Naguib
    Illustration: Amina Rizwan                        after Tarfia Faizullah Here, by this tide of waste thatribbons black across empty fields,                parched grass a girl gnawsand fills...

  • September 2016

    A collage of two images by Alex Majoli, created by Daria Birang. Courtesy of Cherry Trees Gallery (Megève, France).
       By Alain Mabanckou
    A collage of two images by Alex Majoli, created by Daria Birang. Courtesy of Cherry Trees Gallery (Megève, France). To honor Mabanckou on the occasion of his visit to the University of O...

  • September 2016

    A stream in Veracruz.
       By José Luis Rivas
    A stream in Pico de Orizaba, Veracruz. Photo by Anwar Vazquez/Flickr xxxviii  Then they landed in large pastures, light aircraftsof gringo registrationfrom which som...

  • September 2016

    A splash in dark water. Photo by Julian Böck/Unsplash
       By Brenda Marie Osbey
    Photo by Julian Böck/Unsplash (Heavy Water #74: going down) i. the version of my father’s brother’s drowning i was raised on and preferis the one in which his frien...

  • September 2016

    Kathy Vargas (b. 1950, San Antonio), Oración: Valentine’s Day / Day of the Dead [Hand], ca. 1989–90, gelatin silver print with hand-coloring, 24x20 in.
       By Luis Lorente
    Kathy Vargas (b. 1950, San Antonio), Oración: Valentine’s Day / Day of the Dead [Hand], ca. 1989–90, gelatin silver print with hand-coloring, 24x20 in. You must know, Lord, who was...

  • September 2016

    Jay Wright
       By Jay Wright
    The instrument did not choose this ceremony.My mother offered me five strings, nounswithout a grammar.I left my mother’s emptiness, to embrace my own.Whose darkness sits in the north,if no one can sin...

  • September 2016

    A woman walking over rocks with bare feet.
       By Feliciano Sánchez Chan
    Photo by Jordan Whitt/Unsplash U k’a’ajsaj a tuukul Kin k’áatiktuntimbáe’Bix a máan a ta’ak a wichtu bo’oy táanxel t’aanilKa’ a wa’al ma’atan a na’atik u t’aan Yum Iik’.  A yuume’tu yu’ubaj a tsikba...
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