Humayun's Tomb in New Delhi. Photo by VED on Unsplash
On an evening stroll down my street,
the azan echoes, stops my feet,
reminds me it is time to pray,
but I start musing…
Poetry
January 6, 2020
December 17, 2019Photo by T Foz / Unsplash Alphabets of My Heart Because I am from East and West a mother with two alphabets and I must not love one more than the other if they are to grow up and love e…
December 11, 2019Photo by Kea Mowat on Unsplash Dear WLT Readers, I am thrilled to offer the following translation of “Eagle Poem” from English to Arabic in honor of poet Joy Harjo who, this year, w…
November 21, 2019Photo 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 res…
November 7, 2019Photo 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 t…
October 28, 2019Photo 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 A…
October 24, 2019Photo collage courtesy of the author El Matador after Argentina’s World Cup Victory in 1978 La…
October 22, 2019Perfecto 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…
October 8, 2019after Ai Wei Wei, Michael Lujan Bevacqua, and various documents of protest by Indigenous dissidents1,2
September 25, 2019Photo: AndyM / Flickr I imagine the crocuses also sometimes come down unexpectedly feverish, spread…
September 3, 2019A 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…
July 5, 2019Chris 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 shad…
June 20, 2019The poet Phoebe Giannisi and WLT Translation Prize (Poetry) winner Brian Sneeden Leaves Inside these articulations the beginnings of language outside of yes and n…
May 14, 2019Humpback 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…
April 25, 2019Photo 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…
April 11, 2019Denisse Leon / Unsplash The Beginning Mother gave birth during an earthquake. She screamed, Mera bucha – my child. Inhaling, exhaling, withdrawing – Mera bu…
April 9, 2019Richard 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 evenin…
March 26, 2019Ellenm1, 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 holdin…
March 14, 2019A detail from Francisco Goya, The Drowning Dog, ca. 1820–23 / Museo Nacional del Prado I wish that I could find myself asleep tonight …
March 5, 2019Iain Broadfoot, “Epic abstract art” (coffee dregs) / Flickr The Storyteller by Ruxandra Cesereanu Just like that, we used to talk together in the café, not…
February 26, 2019Photo 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 fo…
February 21, 2019Mercè 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, e…
February 19, 2019Ty Nigh, “Atomic Liquor – Fine cocktails,” Las Vegas Desert View Overlook the chipmunk’s prayer hands & hunched tremble munch & swipe at whiskers bat-like i…
February 4, 2019Natalia 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,…
January 29, 2019Mike 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…
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