Photo: Daniel Simon
Egret
The bird was just searchingfor food not metaphors –or taking rest from a day’s flight
It was dusk after all and its ancestorswho might have crossed the MiddlePassage, crosse…
Poetry
Satiro della Valle, Capitoline Museums, Rome Эти бездонные ночи в июле Эти бездонные ночи в июле, О!Ты вопрошаешь: — Меня обманули? — Да, — отвечаю, — но как! Лучше не спрашива…
Anila Quayyum Agha, Alahambra Nights (2016), acrylic and halogen bulb, 30” x 27” x 30” / Courtesy of the artist Qasida of the Bridge of Teacups The soul cleaves into two somewhere along the…
Photo: Tanya Hart Go Thee And the way you gathered up your excess soulbefore it spilled to the floor.At the end of the Hebrew-Yiddish-English poetry readingand you went to eat shawarma. T…
Photo: Andreas Manessinger/Flickr Old friend, when we meet, we will meetas two shelves of wings and many harsh years, as one imagination that won’t exchange toasts:there’s no one to stomp the grapes…
Gaza City. Photo: Getty / AFP photo / Mahmud Hams History moves darkly and we are small, soft things. –…
The abandoned British Residency in Hyderabad, India. Photo: Kishore Nagarigari Author’s note: After my mother’s death, I struggled with the meaning of legacy. Mother Load,…
Photo: Claude Valette Evolution I was once a Paleolithic painter, a sensual hunterplundering the earth, living from hand to mouth.I painted at the cave’s corner, concerned only w…
Photo by Zsolt Andrasi/Flickr Glints of the tram. The nondescript housesdream numb underwater dreams. Faces aretransparent bubbles popping off from the windowswhere water used to break through. The p…
Photo by Todd Slagter/Flickr A Bridge Behind us a sea-cliff, landfall, ahead the wind,tar-smoke, the sea, a carrick.We sway on a bridge between themabove a great shattering. We have leftthe verge,…
Photo: US Army IMCOM Body For Hassan Rabeh, young dancer displaced from Syria, who killed himself by jumping from a seventh-floor balcony in Beirut, Wednesday, June 22, 2016 & perhaps yo…
Photo: Train Photos/Flickr A Swap At the market bus stopI’m waiting with a man in ragged clothes,unshaven, his hair greasy,swinging his hand holding a big plastic bagwith “The Big Shopper” written o…
Photo by Kai C. Schwarzer/Flickr On recent nights בַּלֵּילוֹת הָאַחֲרוֹנִיםאֲנִי מְחַפֶּשֶׂת אֶת הַבַּיִת שֶׁלִּינָעָה אַחֲרָיו בִּשְׁבִילֵי הַיְקוּםאַרְבָּעִים שְׁנוֹת מִדְבָּרמְגַשֶּׁשֶׁת בְּיָד…
Open book on a bed. Photo by Steve Petrucelli 9:40 a.m. / Venipuncture The way they step on one another’s heelsuntil a spindle-legged woman with dyedhair trips in the queue, and all sticktheir nec…
Fragments of an Inexistent Whole Inspired by Alison Knowles’s “A House of Dust” 1. Syllables sieved through floating gates, Metal clack of printer Mortal rendition, Fortran…
Photo: visitmelbourne.com dusk, Summerland Beach, Phillip Island here they come rush of learners jerky gear shifts and no idea about cruise control it’s a wonder the…
Illustration: Amina Rizwan after Tarfia Faizullah Here, by this tide of waste thatribbons black across empty fields, parched grass a girl gnawsand fills…
Photo by Paula Goodale Thistles and Gods Thistles and gods all withered in the sunLike the blanched remains of temples,Long and slender skeletons,Irrevocable examplesOf the burden of being immortal…
In a Warm Bed (An Alba) by Tomasz Różycki In a warm bed, the minute just before dawn.A blackbird has woken up and is tracinga figure eight outside the window. Belowthe sound again of unknow…
Image courtesy of the International Dunhuang Project as if a drunken body carried by handcart placed in a comfortable room, the coffinis now being lowered sutra engraved on the lidthough th…
Photo: Himanshu Nerurkar The Ant Let it go back to the anthill. If it brushes inattentively against your fingersclimbs themand daydreamsin the furrows of your hand,don’t chase it away or squash it.…
Willendorf Venus Natural History Museum, Vienna, Austria. © Jorge Royan / commons.wikimedia.org Night is coming on.Pirate flags, family pictures,superhero figuresand the image of Venus de Willendorf…
Photo by Renate Dodell These are the closed doors of a hotel hallway. What once were dreams, what life will one day be. She dares to ask. Room 217 looks like a sunny Caribbean isle, like a shipwr…
Photo by Kenneth Dellaquila Language Barrier “When you tell them about their own bodies,” My mentor told me, “realize Their anatomy is Greek to them. Their pupils dilate, pulses rise With all th…
Photo by Benjamin Jakabek Photography alone i will live alone in a room with two birds, a cat and three flowers. in the mornings we will wake with blue eyes. in the mornings we wi…