Poetry
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January 6, 2021 |
Photo by Matt Artz / Unsplash I write with words that have shadow but don’t shelter no sooner do I start this page insomnia burns it not the words but what they consume is what reality start... -
December 10, 2020 |
Photo by Patrick Robert Doyle / Unsplash Four Scars for a Nameless Town 1 I come from a town with no name, no smiles of children under the trees. My town h... -
November 17, 2020 |
Detail of Robert Aitken’s Samuel Gompers Memorial, 1933, Washington, DC / Photo by takomabibelot / Flickr What book he was reading – we still don’t know, For Shakespeare doesn’t tell us. Just... -
November 11, 2020 |
Käthe Kollwitz, Pietà (Mother with Dead Son), 1937 (enlarged by Harald Haake in 1993), Neue Wache, Unter den Linden, Berlin / Photo by deadmanjones / Flickr / Original sculpture in the K... -
November 10, 2020 |
Photo by Dave Phillips / Unsplash We heard the trucks pull up, the barking voices, a woman in the street –Irina? – putting up a fight. Each night, the bell’s insistent buzz, the foot-stomps... -
October 9, 2020 |
Photo by Nebojsa Mladjenovic / Flickr Series editor’s note: In Chris Abani’s poem “Ritual Is Journey,” the black man has been laid bare on the page, his histories refocused, and thoug... -
October 2, 2020 |
Detail from a photograph of the author’s great-great-grandmother and a photograph of her mother, age eleven. Image courtesy of the author Series editor’s note: In Aracelis Girmay’s ne... -
September 24, 2020 |
Beginning October 7, the Catamaran Center for the Literary Arts will offer a Zoom class called Around the World with Six Poets. The following interview with the... -
September 23, 2020 |
Nina Simone Sings the Blues (RCA Victor, 1967) Series editor’s note: In Jamaica Baldwin’s “Windfall,” the self is buried beneath layers and layers of internalized memories, b... -
September 21, 2020 |
Sheep’s Head Lighthouse / Photo by John Finn / Flickr Author’s note: For about seven years now, Kwame Dawes and I have been writing long poem-dialogues that have so far appeared as fo... -
September 11, 2020 |
“Girl and a Margin” Image: Ladan Osman. Collage: Joe Penney. Series editor’s note: In Ladan Osman’s piece “Dark Matter Girls,” the poet quietly asks herself, and by extension us, how... -
August 26, 2020 |
Photo by Daniel McCullough / Unsplash Series editor’s note: What happens in the aftermath of a long, ravaging war? What happens to folks whose country is always at war with them? Thes... -
August 5, 2020 |
Photo by Mitchell Luo / Unsplash Series editor’s note: In Saddiq Dzukogi’s new poem, the speaker observes as a snake shows up unannounced, unsummoned, and sluggishly inserts its head... -
July 15, 2020 |
Photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash Series editor’s note: I’ve always thought of poetry as a sacred ground to think and write about things we wouldn’t normally do. And in the case of Sa... -
July 8, 2020 |
"Abstract Yellow Cliffs," Acrylics, 73x50cm by Kazuya Akimoto. Used with permission from the artist. Series editor’s note: In Matthew Shenoda’s new poem, “Seeing,” the writer turns to... -
July 7, 2020 |
Photo by Richard Lee / Unsplash [A flock of cranes] A flock of cranes crosses an ashen sky the prophet is first to rise black lines cleave through the black ai... -
June 30, 2020 |
Photo by John Fisher Manoomin. It is the first Ojibwe word I will learn. It means wild rice, or “food that grows on water.” The sound of it is fitting. Less sibilant than rice... -
June 29, 2020 |
Photo courtesy of the author for Rachelle 4/27/2020 Our moms were widows before they met our fathers. Their hair blue-black, their hands already chapped, caressed by Inglis die-cast... -
June 16, 2020 |
Photo by Marco Arment / Flickr Sunday morning on the parquet Sunday morning on horseback Sunday morning picking lice from her hair . . . with a rosary and prie-dieu... -
June 1, 2020 |
John Ciardi, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Luciano Rebay, and Ivar Ivask after presentation of the award certificate, Norman, Oklahoma, March 14, 1970 / Photo by Jim Lucas Today (June 1) marks the f... -
March 2, 2020 |
Ernesto Cardenal in Santiago, Chile, 2009 / Photo by Roman Bonnefoy Editorial note: The editors of WLT were saddened to hear that Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal passed away... -
February 25, 2020 |
Photo by Stephen Clarkson / Flickr The following essay introduces readers to the early texts that writers produced dealing with the April 21, 2019, bombings targeting Christian places of w... -
February 11, 2020 |
The introductory notes to Quesadilla and Other Adventures (Hawakal Publishers, 2019), edited by Somrita Urni Ganguly, lay the ground plan for the anthology. “Food is history,” writes Ganguly.... -
December 18, 2019 |
Photo by Eric Parker / Flickr A Cuban writer living in the US writes a requiem for Havana, a city of contradictions, to mark its five hundredth year. Havana just turned five hundred.... -
December 17, 2019 |
Photo by T Foz / Unsplash Alphabets of My Heart Because I am from East and West a mother with two alphabets and I must not love one more than the other if they are to grow up and love eac...
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