Photo 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…

Photo by Lava Lavanda / Unsplash First Language Not sure what to make of the title             (titles can be misleading, like   …

Photo by Lava Lavanda / Unsplash First Language Not sure what to make of the title             (titles can be misleading, like  …

Photo by Alex Arbelaez / Flickr Martil It’s okay to veer toward Tetouan, to stay a while, to be released from a pair of pliers, the two mountains that have gripped Tetoua…

Photo by Vlad Kutepov / Unsplash Echo of Another Sonata                 In your opinion one love e…

Photo by Luis Fernandez / Flickr I go out into the street with the angel by Linda Maria Baros I go out into the street with the angel.     …

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 fi…

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…

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 W…

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 stair…

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…

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…

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 essen…

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,…

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…

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 Pavl…

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, i…

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…

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 roofles…

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 que…

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…

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 sk…

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

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 m…

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 h…