Photo by OakleyOriginals / Flickr — after BLP Where is it I end? Is it just past the last echo of my fingertips or tongue? Is it where the ink dries on this page— is that my finality?…

Royal Alcazar, Seville, Spain / Photo by Gary Campbell-Hall / Flickr December in the City December in the city. In the tower, the frail angel, radiant in sunlight frailer still, lo…

Photo by Nathan Wright / Unsplash proofs of the living Engraved in the nation of the body That fetters or sets free Unto implacable absence Our lives Will pave Life’s Way.  …

Photo by Chuttersnap / Unsplash List of Totems in the Air A broken wine glass, a Chinese radio, trees looking on undaunted as I grow old, scraps of bitter lemons, a staircase pati…

A Kyrgyz Soviet tomb / Photo by Evgeni Zotov / Flickr Consider Friend, when you visit cemeteries, don’t be afraid. All the dead are Kyrgyz, and most of them you know. Over here is…

Photo by Carli Jeen / Unsplash Epistles to the Children I am writing to the copiers, to those who whisper to each other in fear, to those who scratch their loves into the tables.…

Lychakivskiy Cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine / Photo by Jennifer Boyer / Flickr So many words; they are like crippled ghosts! They strike, like bullets, far and close by But always miss the essence of my…

Benjamin Murphy, 100 Years of Progress (2021), oil on canvas, 72 x 48 in. / By permission of the artist but the day arrived when exhaustion broke my face and i was more than bad, i was da…

Sunrise over Lake Baikal / Photo by Arseniy Chekmarev / Flickr My name is Iaromira Forgive me if I speak of sad things When my footsteps echo in my bones A silence saved me from the word Another si…

Photo by Steve Evans / Flickr A longtime scholar, translator, and promoter of Ukrainian literature reflects on the existential crisis confronting Ukraine—and the West—today. In Pavlo Tychyna…

Photo by Steven Weeks / Unsplash Completely at random, the world ended. Trade in shares was lively, the weather splendid. Lovers lay in beds and some on the sand. Artists painted nature, if not th…

Photo by Adam Cohn / Flickr It did not weep did not plead for mercy nor complain. It fell silently, the tree. ~~~ My hands, yellow as its flesh dripping white blood, shuddering with the deafe…

Photo by Sergey Norkov / Unsplash Iron-Red Tea Were your body a teapot, sleek and slender, face unseen and hands like iron-red stems, were your mouth to release a roofless wind d…

Comic by Pavel Ortega like no one can successfully push away the sea waters —it has been said in a love poem—nadie could make me obey what my living make-up doesn’t obey, it’s not a question o…

Photo by zig0004 / Flickr for Derek Walcott & Sigrid Nama At the end of this sentence, rain will begin. — D.W., “Archipelagos,” Map of the New World  1.  Part…

Dacheng Flour Factory, Shekou, Shenzhen / Photo by Chris / Flickr Every day, educated youth of the erstwhile industrial zone ride the sightseeing elevator, up and down, crowding into the skylark th…

Illustration © Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation Fragile Eagle The La Brea Tar Pits’ Page Museum displays fossils of extinct & extant species. Eye…

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 many times…

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 kisses…

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 easy to…

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 journey o…

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 turning…

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 also b…

Photo by Alexander Sinn / Unsplash The hour of hooded crows when cleaners fly for the night all carrion is eaten all bones picked and all skins farewell you unlucky trail explorers! only a wet s…

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. For th…