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…
Poetry
- 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 fo…
- 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, e…
- Ty Nigh, “Atomic Liquor – Fine cocktails,” Las Vegas Desert View Overlook the chipmunk’s prayer hands & hunched tremble munch & swipe at whiskers bat-like i…
- 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,…
- 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…
- 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 it…
- 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 tin…
- 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…
- Photo: Marion Ettlinger[Meena Alexander, February 17, 1951 – November 21, 2018]for David, Adam & SvatiName me a wordGreat, simple, vast as the skyA word that has, li…
- Statue of Gandhi along San Francisco’s Embarcadero / Courtesy of Ilya Yakubovich / FlickrTo the farmers who braved the police on Gandhi’s birth anniversaryThe farmers left their fiel…
- 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 wo…
- Photo by Andrew Neel / Unsplash Journal, or Story Without WordsAnd I follow the hand copying what it had written years ago,never knowing it woul…
- Photo by Sabah El Bashaheirloom 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…
- Sunset on Ithaka by T. Zengerink / FlickrOnce on IthacaWalking the harbor that day, I saw a cronesitting at a loom on her front porch.Was this Penelope, I wondered, weavingin midday h…
- 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…
- Photo: Peter DresselProtective by defaultaffectionate by designapron, youare my mother:sweet bread bakingblue veins racingdown white expansedotted with delicioussplatter and spill.My mother woreyou we…
- Photo by Michał Mancewicz / UnsplashBathing with Tender Care And not this time the body of my child,but my own skin, loving the wrinkled kneesand the scars dealt the…
- Photo (left to right) - Translator Rowena Galavitz (courtesy of Emerson Richards) and author Paula Ilabaca Núñez He’ll hang the heartsBlack…
- LifecyclesI 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 wan…
- Photo by Atlas Green / Unsplash Boy for DorsenNever seen him in a school uniform.Inste…
- 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: Flower…
- 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…
- Photo by Inhabitat/ FlickrHappy New YearEveryone’s waiting for the ball to drop.The President’s son-in-law is going to jail.Or maybe not.Information…
- Mural in Cochabamba, Bolivia / Photo by proyecto mARTaderoFor more on the poetry of Valdivia, read the companion essay by Margaret Randall. Aullido poema octogonalEn el graznido de mi no…