Poetry
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October 18, 2021 |
Illustration © Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation Fragile Eagle The La Brea Tar Pits’ Page Museum displays fossils of extinct & extant species.... -
October 12, 2021 |
Photo by Wayne S. Grazio / Flickr In spring of the year I turned twenty I looked for a river river calm and wide that I believed to be my past incarnation. Since childhood, I’ve seen it man... -
October 11, 2021 |
Photo by J. Triepke / Flickr Series editor’s note: The speaker in Nick Makoha’s poem is an unexpected one: Icarus, coming back to reclaim his narrative, approaching Basquiat with a si... -
October 7, 2021 |
Photo by Kari Gunter-Seymour / www.karigunterseymourpoet.com Kari Gunter-Seymour (b. 1955) is having a moment—soon to become two years of moments since she was appointed in June... -
October 4, 2021 |
Dimitris Lyacos with Marsias / Photo by Walter Melcher In 2019 I interviewed Dimitris Lyacos on the occasion of the US tour/launch of his trilogy, Poena Damni, which had been rece... -
September 28, 2021 |
Photo by Parée / Flickr Editorial note: WLT mourns the loss of Kamilah Aisha Moon, whose poem, “Fireflies,” was included in the Black Voices series this year. We hope her lig... -
September 23, 2021 |
Photo by Igor Karimov / Unsplash Series editor’s note: In this week’s poem, the speaker finds himself to be on the outside, looking in with an ever-watchful gaze, pondering all the wa... -
September 8, 2021 |
Photo by valkrye131 / Flickr I kiss her & death is the shadow of that loving bird shaking on the pool yet when she turns to look it has flown. * She’s gone, sleepwalking with her... -
September 1, 2021 |
Photo by Megan (Markham) Bucknall / Unsplash It is easy to be a mother. Childbirth was nothing. Marriage and divorce only crack the plaster a little like when the S-train goes by. It is... -
August 31, 2021 |
Photo by Basetrack 18 / Flickr The trees outside my balcony, Remind me of the trees of Afghanistan They are big green clouds that land on the ground to lift our spirits and take them for a jo... -
August 25, 2021 |
Photo by michael_swan / Flickr Alternatives could or should be basin or lagoon or pool or puddle or small body or was there a motive or I got here by myself iterating through conversions or... -
August 25, 2021 |
Photo by Simone Dalmeri / Unsplash Series editor’s note: With the opening poems of the 2021 series, Ariana Benson resurrects vivid, fleshy worlds, in which Black boys are immersed in... -
August 24, 2021 |
Photo by Sylvie Mazerolle / Unsplash Assembly Dear fellow carpenters and woodworkers, I come with greetings of solidarity from the metaphysicians. Among us the situation has... -
August 5, 2021 |
Photo by Moheb Soliman / From the series Tidings / A Protocol of Circulation, Washing Up & Will In the Land of 10,000 Lakes, to which I recently relocated from the land of infinite spectac... -
August 3, 2021 |
Birds over Jerash / Photo by Omar Chatriwala / Flickr The poets’ voices sing in my head across distance, sing to reconcile to make peace through counterpoint but can’t work as they should.... -
June 10, 2021 |
Photo by NCinDC / Flickr He said: Why must they destroy and destroy again? Why must they forget my face my gestures my voice? Why must they believe in my absence even as I stand in front of th... -
June 9, 2021 |
Our society is increasingly global, and the era of Covid-19 is no different. We may forget our localities and the importance of community in consuming the news and internet media. One city, the domain... -
June 2, 2021 |
Photo by Oluwaseyi Johnson / Unsplash I was lucky to meet Romalyn Ante when I was invited to read at a virtual event organized by R. A. Villanueva and hosted by Books Are Magic in August 2020.... -
April 27, 2021 |
On the Yangtze River, through the Wu Gorge / Photo by Perfect Zero / Flickr Summer Elegy for my father From June to June, as though uninterrup... -
April 13, 2021 |
Juan Felipe Herrera / © UC Riverside / Courtesy of Blue Flower Arts For the 44th Annual Writers Week, the University of California, Riverside department of Creative Writi... -
February 18, 2021 |
Photo by Russ Morris / Flickr Some may live just a block away, even nearer: the Walmart clerk who’d coolly hook a hot wire to your gonads, the grease monkey keen on beheading, the cleaning... -
February 9, 2021 |
The seacoast at Mykonos / Photo by the author In Andros, I Watch a Goat Run to and away from My Father’s Hands He opens his eyes. His eyes the color of its... -
February 3, 2021 |
Photo by Jes Timms / Unsplash for Vishnu Khare How to convey one’s well-being over the phone, It’s going all right, All that is there is good or nothing is good. The main thing to... -
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...
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Recent Posts
Photo by Eileen Pan / Unsplash
“Instead of a totalizing interpretation,” writes the author, translators should seek a dialogical one. “We...
Illustration © Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation
Fragile Eagle
The La Brea Tar Pits’ Page Museum...
Photo by Wayne S. Grazio / Flickr
In spring of the year I turned twenty
I looked for a river
river calm and wide
that I believed to be my...
Photo by andy lapham / Flickr
Whether he is recounting his nighttime drive with a late colleague and poet around the beltway of the pulsing...
World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, will host the 2021...
