Poetry

  • November 26, 2018 Sudeep Sen
    Photo: Marion Ettlinger [Meena Alexander, February 17, 1951 – November 21, 2018]for David, Adam & Svati Name me a wordGreat, simple, vast as the skyA word that has,…
  • October 30, 2018 Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee 
    Statue of Gandhi along San Francisco’s Embarcadero / Courtesy of Ilya Yakubovich / Flickr To the farmers who braved the police on Gandhi’s birth anniversary The farmers left their f…
  • September 21, 2018 Frank Sherlock, Carlos Soto-Román
    María Verónica San Martín, from In Their Memory: Human Rights Violation in Chile, 1973–1990 (2012), silkscreen, digital print. San Martín is a Chilean born, Brooklyn-based artist currently w…
  • September 4, 2018 Brian Swann
    Photo by Andrew Neel / Unsplash   Journal, or Story Without Words And I follow the hand copying what it had written years ago,never knowing it would…
  • August 10, 2018 K. Eltinaé
    Photo by Sabah El Basha heirloom  Ninety thousand men, women and childrendragged their dust to rivers,dams were never built for. Under six cataractslie the bones of my ancestors.Under my bed is the c…
  • August 7, 2018 Don Schofield
    Sunset on Ithaka by T. Zengerink / Flickr Once on Ithaca Walking the harbor that day, I saw a cronesitting at a loom on her front porch.Was this Penelope, I wondered, weavingin midda…
  • August 2, 2018 Shakti Chattopadhyay
    Photo by Paul Streltsov / Unsplash   Grief that is now old, I ask it to come and sit near me today.I’m sitting, there’s my shadow, and if grief indeed comes and sits beside meI will feel quite good;…
  • July 26, 2018 Samantha Thornhill
    Photo: Peter Dressel Protective by defaultaffectionate by design apron, youare my mother:sweet bread bakingblue veins racingdown white expansedotted with delicioussplatter and spill. My mother woreyo…
  • July 18, 2018 Linda Hogan
    Photo by Michał Mancewicz / Unsplash Bathing with Tender Care And not this time the body of my child,but my own skin, loving the wrinkled kneesand the scars dealt t…
  • June 26, 2018 paula ilabaca núñez
    Photo (left to right) - Translator Rowena Galavitz (courtesy of  Emerson Richards) and author Paula Ilabaca Núñez   Hell hang the heartsBlack and dull as the…
  • June 19, 2018 Fabián Casas
      Lifecycles I was chatting with your executioner,a sweet, tidy man.He said because it’s me,I could choose the way you go out.He said when Eskimos get old,they wande…
  • May 30, 2018 D. M. Aderibigbe
    Photo by Atlas Green / Unsplash   Boy             for Dorsen Never seen him in a school uniform.Instead, each day, he wore clothes,bearing time’s hands. Hea…
  • April 17, 2018 Esther Dischereit
    Mürtüz Yolcu (Enver) and Mansou Ciss (Otello) producing the radio play Blumen für Otello, April 9, 2014 / Photo by Sandro Most courtesy of Deutschlandradio   Author’s note: Flowers…
  • April 5, 2018 Tom Paine
    Courtesy of Natalia_Kollegova/Pixabay   Ibis   The Ibis, in Egypt, was not a bird,he was Thoth, the god in the pyramidwith my heart in his scimitar beak.We are not j…
  • January 8, 2018 Beth Bachmann
    Photo by Inhabitat/ Flickr Happy New Year Everyone’s waiting for the ball to drop. The President’s son-in-law is going to jail. Or maybe not. Inform…
  • October 3, 2017 Rita Valdivia
    Mural in Cochabamba, Bolivia / Photo by proyecto mARTadero For more on the poetry of Valdivia, read the companion essay by Margaret Randall.   Aullido poema octogonal En el graznido de mi…
  • September 26, 2017 David Samoylov
    Samoylov as a soldier in the Red Army in the 1940s Translator’s note: In June 1944 David Samoylov (1920–1990), an important Russian-language poet who was then a soldier in the Red Army, was…
  • September 20, 2017 Lauren Camp
    This view of Saturn’s rings from the “ringscape finale” series was among the last images Cassini sent back to Earth (September 13, 2017) / Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institut…
  • September 13, 2017 Fred Dings
    Gillie Rhodes, “Log pile,” November 7, 2009 Late Autumn  A butterfly searches our garden plants for blossoms  I don’t see. Flitting, almost lurching, it lands    at last on a barren branch as if exha…
  • September 7, 2017 Ilan Stavans
    Grave at the US/Mexico border taken at a cemetery near Anthony, New Mexico, July 19, 2015 / Photo by Lanie Elizabeth The following is an excerpt from part 2 of a four-part poem called “T…
  • September 6, 2017 Liu Xia
    Liu Xiaobo, 1991 / Courtesy of Wang Ya Translator’s note: This photo of Liu Xiaobo swimming surfaced on the Internet after the sea burial in Dalian, China. Those of us who were hear…
  • August 30, 2017 Victoria McArtor
    Bury Me tell me            wet limestone            flinching coral reefs  what’s it like to alwaysbe night                                      tell me  what is it to be rooted in shadow           …
  • August 23, 2017 Shamshad Abdullaev
    John, “Fallen Angel,” August 29, 2010   Here and Now Here he is sitting across from the balcony door;the wind will blow – a wound. The rustling lightblushes and fades in the rectangular mirror – th…
  • August 15, 2017 Phoebe Giannisi
    Lorenzo Gaudenzi, “Agria,” September 15, 2016 For more, read Brian Sneeden’s translator’s note on Giannisi’s work.   (Nostos I)                                                 f…
  • August 7, 2017 Perrin Langda
    Tail light. Photo: Sarah-Rose/Flickr   Pistoning seas rise andmountains flow a river spreadsin the bed of an undulatingvalley forestswither and entire citiesblossom people copulate thereon certain nig…