Poetry

  • March 2014

    Photo by Gwaga
       By Ketty Nivyabandi
    Photo by Gwaga Little Men  Animals no longer speakDrums refuse to beatTanganyika slowly retreats From her shoresBloodied by the nightmare of menWhose pettiness piercesThe deep slumber of the ancient...

  • January 2014

       By Naomi Shihab Nye
    Photo by Pieter Stockmans “Syrian refugees go about their business in a refugee camp in Mafraq, Jordan . . .”  Ropes on poles, jeans & shirts fla...

  • January 2014

    Maize Flower
       By Juan Hernández Ramírez
    Translators’ Note Juan Hernández Ramírez describes both Nahuatl and Spanish as mirrors for his writing: “sirven de espejo, kewak se teskatl.” He does not write solely in one...

  • January 2014

       By Naomi Shihab Nye
    Photo by Kables/Flickr Their language rolls out, soft carpet in front of them.Strolling slowly beneath trees, men in white shirts, belts, baggy trousers,women in scarves,glinting cigarettes in the d...

  • November 2013

       By Ludwig Steinherr
    Clay Tablet Bearing the World’s First Alphabet That had comemuch later – After everythingalready had happened – Without witnessthe first stammered wordthis atomic flash forevercontaminating the oblivi...

  • September 2013

       By Achy Obejas
    The first time I saw your father,I stared back into the pool at your reflectionwhile he waded through,the water moving in gentle circles away from us. The first time, I thought it was the Nilewe’d dip...

  • July 2013

       By Amjad Nasser
    I Before what happened happened,I mean, before the towers became a stairway to the dayof reckoning, and the world split into twocamps, water and sand,I used to wish that I’d be among the poetswho woul...

  • January 2013

       By Lauren Camp
    Letter to Baghdad Even if my father never speaks a word of it, I will knowhe brought a candle, a cough, and the occupied side of his heart.I will know the trees held him, that they rose above roofline...

  • November 2013

       By Arif Shah
    The Cricket Match They have fooled us, friends, got us all to gaze night and day at the television,Entrusted us with the cricket match,While they go and steal the country’s resources, we watch the ma...

  • November 2013

       By Karen J. Weyant
    Late three times for work, so it’s night shiftor my job. I’m eighteen, no experience, broke,so I make the deal. I wear jeans and a T-shirt:Shop at Ray’s for the Best Deals Around,a message more pertin...

  • November 2013

       By Alan Morrison
    [Download the e-book Blaze A Vanishing by Alan Morrison] Alan Morrison's e-book Blaze A Vanishing is available here in its entirety as a WLT web exclusive to go along with...

  • November 2013

       By Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
    Sandy stands in the designer-wear sectionof a suburban department storein her best jeans and a cheery holidaysweater picked up at the Goodwill.The Muzak versions of Christmas carolsleave a hollow ache...

  • November 2013

       By Sandee Gertz Umbach
    I try to tell my brother not to call himself a “go-fer”just because he fetches cardboard  for women shouting, “Bring me a double order,”  who get paid by the piece. A thin vibration against her machin...

  • November 2013

       By Aaron Rudolph
    “You’re a big guy. You should be working construction.”                                                             – a woman in line at Kmart   Every time I swung a sledgehammer,shattered the faces o...

  • November 2013

       By Levi Romero
    maybe we should just writeand see what happens  and what if something does?could we live with ourselvesif nothing did?  nothing has in such a long timeand yet that’s a lie too didn’t you just laugh, s...

  • November 2013

       By Jason Poudrier
    Blind dog staccato howlsin regular intervals in four-four time,on guard like me, can’t sleep.Am I happier here?When in we talked like cellmates,“How many years you got?” Wife alongside, “Wish that dam...

  • November 2013

       By Joseph Millar
    Love picks its way through the gravel rutsleading into the job site, past the truck tiresexploded nearby, the crows’ rusted voices, blackwings and feet, cottonwoods risen in ghostlyfields and the leve...

  • November 2013

       By Dorianne Laux
    When I was young and had to rise at 5 a.m.I did not look at the lamplight slicingthrough the blinds and say: Once againI have survived the night. I did not raisemy two hands to my face and whisper:Thi...

  • November 2013

       By Quraysh Ali Lansana
    Boy, don’t you kick that ball in tha garden. If you kick thatball in tha garden one mo time, imma tan yo’ little brown hiney!                                                Anna “Mut...

  • November 2013

       By Kathleen Hellen
    The vendor closing up on Wolfe and Monumentdeconstructs the skewered souvlaki. A striped umbrella on a truck.Someone buys a soda. Someone rents the scent of onions wafting up.How is it upheld? This fo...

  • November 2013

       By Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
                                        for the sharecropper I left behind in ’79  Thirteen years ago,   before bulk barns  andfifth gear diesel tractors, we rode ro...

  • November 2013

       By Rain C. Goméz
    Five years old, I am chubby, strong, husky, and brown. My hair bleached under southern sun smelling of saltwater, Spanish moss, and cedar, parted down middle pulled into pigtails, that droop in aftern...

  • November 2013

       By Brian Fanelli
    My dinged-up Honda sputtersto the next school, next class –Freshman Comp 101, where students in sweatsyawn away my 8 a.m. lecture and the new recruit quarterbackslouches at his seat, texts while his g...

  • November 2013

       By Jim Daniels
    If you have a map, eat it.The old man wedging curb-dirt under his nailswill give you directions for getting lost.Getting off the grid involves talking in tongueswith other tongues. Follow the sidewalk...

  • November 2013

       By Jeanne Bryner
    Behind our homes a road liesit suffers like a patch of skin alteredby its rash, a scarred spine, yearsof combined ruts. Aging fence linesborder the fields’ windswept grass. Retired from factory work,...
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