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…

To kick off National Poetry Month, I’d like to share with you five favorite poets/poems that have appeared in the magazine’s pages over the past five years. Zsuzsa Takács (Hungary), “On Vision” and “…

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…

Photo by Kevin Bessat / Unsplash In this fictive dialogue of Johanna Schopenhauer with her son, Arthur, family appears as a philosophical playing field: mother-root and son’s wants. Of dreams and…

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…

Marilène Phipps, Roots, 13 x 18 in., oil on linen canvas / Courtesy of the artist Whether she is a writer who paints or a painter who writes, Marilène Phipps combines the two gifts with a rare brilli…

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…

Humberto Ak’abal in 2013 / Courtesy of LiteraturhausSalzburg For nearly a decade I ran a visiting writers series at a liberal arts university in Indiana. The series was very well endowed, which meant…

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…

Loretta Collins Klobah / Courtesy of Peepal Tree Loretta Collins Klobah’s Ricantations (Peepal Tree, 2018) is her second collection of poetry. The book has been selected as a Poetry Book Soc…

Enrapture Captivating Media / Unsplash What becomes a legend most? Great talent, suffering, and mystery . . . three ingredients that French poet Arthur Rimbaud possessed in spades. General readers wi…

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…

photo : yvo luna Naomi Foyle (naomifoyle.com/wp), editor of A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry, discusses curating the project,…

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” and our aim is to reach the unattainable, the unknown through the “viewless wings of Poesy.” “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” thinks the…

Misuzu Kaneko (1903–1930) is a poet who holds a special place in the hearts of many Japanese as a voice of compassion in a difficult time for the country. The recently published Are You an Echo? T…

Jonas Zdanys is a master lyricist. The bilingual poet (English and Lithuanian) displays his versatile ability with a variety of poetic styles in several recent collections. In Red Stones (201…

Translating poetry is impossible in the sense that prose works can be translated (not to speak of the translation of nonliterary texts). But re-creating poetry in a different language is always possi…

Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas (Graywolf, 2017), a poetry finalist for the 2017 National Book Awards, contends with the U.S. federal terminologies in relationship to Indigenous people and rein…