Photo by Ervins Strauhmanis / Flickr
1
We maintain antiquity and elegance on paper;
inside we are full of shame. We
present heaven and hell on paper;
our self-disgust results from…
Poetry
- Photo by James St. John / Flickr Fences I will never think of this in the same way, watching the woman in her daily brown skirt throw her own body against the fence and try to cli…
- Photo by Bryan Kuwada Aunty says She climbed a ninety-foot cliff in the dark Traced the scars of a long-forgotten waterfall Cried as she felt the green disappearing under her fingertips And I lea…
- Photo collage courtesy of the author El Matador after Argentina’s World Cup Victory in 1978 La Patria comes dressed in multiple costumes, during the “…
- Perfecto Santiago / Courtesy of the author Culebra, Puerto Rico, 2018 Let us sit in the open air where days I work, my hands shaping a small plane out of sticks. I tell you only what I li…
- after Ai Wei Wei, Michael Lujan Bevacqua, and various documents of protest by Indigenous dissidents1,2
- Photo: AndyM / Flickr I imagine the crocuses also sometimes come down unexpectedly feverish, spreading their long green leaves through the wrong season. So it’s Oct…
- A boy riding his bike near the Chamishko IDP camp in Iraqi Kurdistan, near the Turkish border / Photo by David Shook Non-Broadcast News Today a fire broke out in two tents The famil…
- Chris Barnes, Egypt, December 2010 / Flickr To Hisham Harbi who said to me: “don’t stay in the shadows” but I didn’t listen Epigraph rushing as always, my shadow jumped but I…
- The poet Phoebe Giannisi and WLT Translation Prize (Poetry) winner Brian Sneeden Leaves Inside these articulations the beginnings of language outside of yes and no inside…
- Humpback whale / Photo by Wade Tregaskis / Flickr 7. For about a minute you spin and the world shifts galaxies. What germinates in your flesh is the viper’s dream. You slither through the underbru…
- Photo by Dennis Jarvis / Flickr Bema In Greek it means step. In church it separates me from the nave, where the quiet sit and wait. Behind the screen the altar boys, age twelve, ar…
- Denisse Leon / Unsplash The Beginning Mother gave birth during an earthquake. She screamed, Mera bucha – my child. Inhaling, exhaling, withdrawing – Mera bucha mere pai…
- Richard Smith, “Piano Shadow” / Flickr A day without news. Left behind, last night’s lead story – a friend’s untimely death, his son surviving the head-on two miles from home. This evening, my ne…
- Ellenm1, ice formations, Barton Dam, Michigan / Flickr Dismissed from some other duty the drawbridge attendant questions the stability of days. As in: how long until what we’ve been holding on to…
- A detail from Francisco Goya, The Drowning Dog, ca. 1820–23 / Museo Nacional del Prado I wish that I could find myself asleep tonight in a house on the banks of the Manzanares, …
- Iain Broadfoot, “Epic abstract art” (coffee dregs) / Flickr The Storyteller by Ruxandra Cesereanu Just like that, we used to talk together in the café, not sitting down S…
- Photo by Daniel García Peris / Flickr The Pounding of Hoes The pounding of hoes — don’t you hear them? Behind high stone walls, unceasing, yet slow, beyond the folds of time. Th…
- Mercè Cañadell, The Young Minotaur and Ariadne / Photo by William Murphy Night Shift at the Globe I am the Master Leafblower, a.k.a. Tornado in Rags: Sopped, half dizzy, ears plugg…
- Ty Nigh, “Atomic Liquor – Fine cocktails,” Las Vegas Desert View Overlook the chipmunk’s prayer hands & hunched tremble munch & swipe at whiskers bat-like in front of bike…
- Natalia Rifai, “Floating Carpet,” Srinagar, Kashmir, 1990 on Agha Shahid Ali’s 70th birth anniversary February 4, 2019 I In the post office, moored to the ghat, Secret gr…
- Mike Schaffner, “Angel of Grief,” Glenwood Cemetery, Houston, Texas / Flickr In Which I Try to Imagine Justice without a thought to efficiency, without a thought to deadlines, wit…
- The bruise of ink on white paper. The words that line transcription and record. I know I am more than this thin sheaf. The written name of my village can’t say anything about the openness of its…
- Greg Jordan, “Moth, Glass, Hand,” Sept. 2009 / Flickr Before there is sausage and bread And blood-red wine Like the light Over the great lake Are you a ship Or a sequin Something so tiny It co…
- Elephants in Etosha National Park, Namibia / Photo by Richard Jacobs on Unsplash for Reinaldo Arenas I have seen a land of regal elephants, you wrote some years ago, not many really, back wh…