Poetry

Four Poems

By Maxim Amelin

September 2017
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...
Captivity

By Kimberly Blaeser

May 2017
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...
Resurrection

By Jennifer Elise Foerster

May 2017
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...
Grandma’s Zydeco Stomp Dance: A Patchwork Poem*

By Rain Prud’homme-Cranford, Carolyn M. Dunn

May 2017
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...
Sitting in the Car Waiting

By Linda Rodriguez

May 2017
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...
like any good indian woman

By Tanaya Winder

May 2017
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...
Ode (Ending with a Confession) to the First Mango I Ate on Guam After Decades Away

By Craig Santos Perez

May 2017
Craig Santos Perez

Photo: Jin Choi/Flickr All the mangoes I’ve tastedin California were imported and lost their true flavors in transit. And, even though all the mangoes I’ve enjoyed in Hawai’i were homegrown and ripen...
Skins, Forms, Flows, Tones

By Heid E. Erdrich

May 2017
Heid E. Erdrich

Photo: Jake Bellucci/Flickr What holds water in a droptension that holds humans in between their sweet skins water holds usher arms baystide of bloodbeat so close just our skins betweenhome and oce...
Excerpt from Dissolve

By Sherwin Bitsui

May 2017
Sherwin Bitsui

Photo: WerbeFabrik/Pixabay A bottom-lit sea ponders the lake’s questions,their secret conversations thatch howls to whimpers exhaled from an isthmus of drowned wolves. Its glossary’s cataclysms smoo...
Private Rituals

By Shauna Osborn

May 2017
Shauna Osborn

Photo: Mark Brodie/Pixabay between landscape and the female body:earth sand stones plants flowers blood a silhouette digging molding carving space visible & tactile between the body...
What Shivers Since the Wheel Forgave Us

By Chip Livingston

May 2017
Chip Livingston

Photo: Granger Meador/Flickr Our stuck tongues screamed louder In Alabama, words hung in a rhythm Reservation hands could basket Tied back rocks rose, picked Tarnished cigarettes unsupervised Betwe...
Logging Trail Angel

By Sy Hoahwah

May 2017
Sy Hoahwah

Marwin Begaye (Diné), Riders of the Storm II, lithograph, 15 x 22 in / Courtesy of the artist (@m.begaye2015) That day my guardian angel was cast out,she responded, “Fine, your heaven is too bougie,a...
Two Poems

By Elise Paschen

May 2017
Elise Paschen

Photo: HeinerTenz/Pixabay Daybreak After the watch, dorveille,pin-prick of stud in sky,before that six a.m.first warbler wake-up callfrom elm above the deck,in dream a wife no longeranswers...
21st-Century Meditation

By Kim Shuck

May 2017
Kim Shuck

Kim Shuck, Warrior Trout (2016), 15/0 glass seed beads on brain-tanned hide, 9 x 2.5 in / Courtesy of the artist and Doug Salin Photography Memory spirits give me days full of Words I’ve forgotten or...
Refugio Beach

By Casandra López

May 2017
Casandra López

Photo: David Cantu/Flickr Brother piles sand on his pregnant girlfriend’s belly. On her sandy stomach I draw a belly button. Soon it will be dusk and the last surfers in the distance will disappear ...
Still Life Morrow

By Tacey M. Atsitty

May 2017
Tacey M. Atsitty

Photo: Dan Zen/Flickr I think they know – about every leaf I’d catch to peel from my tongue. It spoke to how good I was at being alone. This morning I sit in the still kitchen, rued by autumn passing...
Moving to a New Classroom

By Laura Da’

May 2017
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...
Papatea

By Dan Taulapapa McMullin

May 2017
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...
Witness

By Trevino L. Brings Plenty

May 2017
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...
At Standing Rock

By Karenne Wood

May 2017
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...
Six Poems

By Shadab Zeest Hashmi

May 2017
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...
Two Poems

By Gili Haimovich

May 2017
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...
Old Reasons

By Ghassan Zaqtan

March 2017
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...
Three Poems

By Kiriu Minashita

March 2017
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,...
After the War

By Rachel Tzvia Back

March 2017
Rachel Tzvia Back

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