. . . I sleep early, risebefore daylight, waitwith patient stuporthe coming gray light. . . I move slowly,surreptitiously — ananimal hungry to find success in the hunt.In days of winter. . . I re…
Poetry
February 19, 2025
February 18, 2025Photo by ike / Adobe Stock Boat and ReactionYou were cooking in a dim sum restaurant it worried meIn dreams we react so strangelySometimes only these reactions matteras if there’s no connection…
November 26, 2024In the Beginning the Word worldlittoday · In The Beginning The Word by Rachel Tzvia Back 1 the word was unverbed unruled just birthed before bird on the altar or binding at hilltop not taken or gi…
November 22, 2024Background photo by Sved Oliver / Adobe Stock A Visitor from Hell A resident of Hell, I’ve been sitting here, Lord, for years. Do I not deserve to be a citizen? How is it that even in Hell the ho…
November 21, 2024Courtesy of University of New Mexico Press / Stock.adobe.com The Orphan (Isaac Luria) what is the matter? why do you always pursue me as an enemy?/ you set hidden traps for me?/ you catch me in m…
October 24, 2024Photo by trentinness / Adobe Stock Hunger Strike In the last watch of blood and memories, in the last neighing of empty stomachs, the human tree announces its prophecy overflowing with our bright…
September 19, 2024Photo by AVTG / Stock.adobe.com Translator’s note: Gizella Hervay (1934–1982) is sometimes referred to as the “Ingeborg Bachmann of Transylvania.” Mostly neglected by criticism durin…
July 30, 2024Adobe Stock Collage …
July 25, 2024Photo by Manikanth Halyal / Unsplash [Untitled] At the edge of the village a woman in a stupa ground millet. She whistled brazenly, calling the wind from the steppe to keep the chaff flying so he…
June 28, 2024bettysphotos / stock.adobe.com Writing Poetry on the Assembly Line Sitting in front of the machine in the workshop Exhaling like the moonlight. The soldering iron, screwdriver, motor, buzzer, the…
June 10, 2024for Naomi Shihab Nye Eid al-Fitr Shavuot Pentecost 2021 I want to follow Naomi to walk in her footsteps to gather with her only the gentle words like fallen w…
February 28, 2024Photo by Michel Banabila / Flickr Dinosaurs Each day, I drive beneath the shadow of leviathan bones, concrete muscles poured over rebar ribcage, fossils of future freeways. I walk through the un…
January 31, 2024Painting by Mehdi Qotbi (b. 1951, Rabat) / Courtesy of the artist Les homeless Les homeless ne vivent pas dans la rue Ils attendent que le ciel se jette sur eux chaque soir Un ciel chargé de tou…
December 14, 2023Illustration by fran_kie / Adobe Stock If I Must Die If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so…
October 13, 2023Photo by Yousef Khanfar / www.yousefkhanfar.com. This olive tree in the Al Aqsa compound is believed to be 2,000 years old. I’m not interested in who suffered the most. I’m interested in…
August 1, 2023Photo by h heyerlein / Unsplash Field at Night On a night without you I descend into hell streetlamps become enemies Solitary I walk the salt mines my footprints are salt measuring fate salt like…
July 25, 2023Illustration courtesy of the author Julius D. Jones is a talented and thought-provoking artist who cares deeply about humanity, justice, and peace. Despite being incarcerated for more…
July 13, 2023Photo by said alamri / Unsplash Immigration, detention, unequal pay are modern words for slavery again. Dictatorship, borders. Any imposition of one’s will over another is a fo…
July 7, 2023Photo by Natalia Dimitris X (2007) / Flickr … And instead of despair before your own cracked skin instead of drowning in memories of him instead of hopelessness as you face the scorched plain of y…
June 27, 2023Photo by throgers / Flickr In what follows, I have created three heteronyms to render Pablo Neruda’s “Oda al actor” into English. They are presented in chronological order by date of birth. Their…
June 19, 2023Photo by NancieLee Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we’re free at last. “[O]n the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all pe…
June 14, 2023Photo by Lucas Calloch / Unsplash Japanese Garden I curve like a wooden bridge over a lake lit up by red carps I am hard and dry and barely adorned like a sand garden (though there are stones tha…
June 6, 2023Photo by Evelyn Paris / Unsplash National Anthem This is my room, it is called Iceland. A sea cable fastens it to Europe and to here and from here fly airplanes with their ink cartridges full of…
April 27, 2023Jewish Museum Berlin / Photo by Davie Dunn / Flickr Mommy, mommy repeated Tyre Nichols with his last breaths kicked by the boots of five policemen under his mother’s window in Memphis…
April 18, 2023Photo by Sofya Badkhen “We Live Without Touch” is a found poem. Composed of fourteen English translations of the first two lines of a famous 1933 poem by Osip Mandelstam, it is a timely medita…
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WLT’s executive director, editors, and staff all deeply mourn the passing of David L. Boren, who died on February 20, 2025. Nick Hathaway, who…
. . . I sleep early, risebefore daylight, waitwith patient stuporthe coming gray light. . . I move slowly,surreptitiously — ananimal hungry to find…
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Photo by ike / Adobe Stock
Boat and ReactionYou were cooking in a dim sum restaurant it worried meIn dreams we react so strangelySometimes only…
Since the moment we became readers, we have always thought that to interpret the most profound ideas of a literary work—from the multiple creations…
