Category: Poetry

TWO POEMS by Kuhu Joshi

Saraswati on a Sunday morning All this living alone. This mug With my initials on it, scrubbed And put to dry On the kitchen slab. It waits for me. Looks happiest when filled up. I’m a bit sick of Maria – my Areca palm There by the bookshelf. She Dances. When it gets like this I Don’t know what to do with myself. Fridge then…
SELF-PORTRAIT AS THE CORNFIELDS by Carolina Hotchandani

I am a citizen of a former British colony that rebelled from England with a great tea party, declaring itself its motherland one day. America. Was it orphaned? Did it kill its own mother? Poor England. Where are you from? the other Americans ask me. My mother is Brazilian; my father is Indian. I was…
TWO POEMS by Daniele Pantano

CORRUPTED (WASTEWATER) We ask to be made too . . . short and bleeding to be . . . strangled with candy floss . . . to taste what it takes . . . to reach another to be absolutely . . . nothing but spoken about . . . to spell innocence or renewal…
TWO POEMS by Lucas Jorgensen

The Bureau of Consumption It’s the warmest day of the year so far in Brooklyn, where I confess I have done a bad thing quietly. The self-storage center, a jolly roger, glints with a novel kind of light. Last night, I had a green potato and didn’t die. Today, I had another. Off the R…
(JANUARY) by Hanna Riisager trans. Kristina Andersson Bicher

I see the subject allthe time in front of me, see all thesesmall rituals.How it lies on the sofa and waitsfor me to come.The wind pushes moirés of ice and snowagainst the windowpane. An undulating, pearl gray surface –silk bark.My brain’s pale tissues unfold in the room in a billowing mass.I’m floating under the roof, looking…
AROUND THE FIRE by Gloria Susana Esquivel trans. Joel Streicker

“En llamas será la canción”Briela Ojeda Everything was in flames. She felt a slight burning in her eyes and thought, for an instant, that the smoke choking the images on the TV had filtered into the room. She blinked, then turned her attention back to the newscast. Ten million hectares were burning uncontrollably. The world…
INVITATION TO END by Faris Kuseyri trans. Patrick Sykes

A woman puts an orange in her husband’s pocketand her longing I saw they’re opening unmarked graves with warrantsand silence’s strength I saw truth bound, the papers lieand hate in the words I saw grace in the bazaar, conscience in exileand the feigned surprise I saw driven again to my pencil’s mercyand the invitation to…
THREE POEMS by Anne Vegter trans. Astrid Alben

With permission from the publisher WILDCARD A light-hearted lullaby this, not much happens that doesn’t already happen somewhere else: a garnet-red baby opens wide its tiny jungle mouth. Familiar to all who read them, lullabies are about kisses, jealousies and parents / keepers. Raging in the pillow, rising like a statue made of ash. A parent is a house.…
CHEWING BETEL NUT by Mark Dorado trans. Eric Abalajon and Mark Dorado

This mouth grows in it a forestborn from the spitof the godsof my land;chews a wildfirethat blackens the stumps of my teeth;hums the serenadeof our greatest hunters. This mouth can utter to lifethe many names of our ancestorsthe conquerors could neverwrap their tongues around,the ones they spat with regretas their teeth disintegrated,choking on the sharpinflections of the…
THE GARDEN IS THIS GARDEN by Hélène Cixous trans. Beverley Bie Brahic

My days come and go, their almost motionless river is swept with traces, am I in the river’s current or on the edge? I see the shores of Lethe. The river repeats itself unchangingly, on and on, endlessly until we heave ourselves, the river and me, out. The garden is This Garden. This garden is…
THREE POEMS by Álvaro Fausto Taruma trans. Grant Schutzman

CEMETERY OF THE DROWNED To my shipwrecked brothers on the island of Inhaca As your hymn hangs above the mouth of the castaway I call out your name, I call you with this tongue whose words are more than just a soft murmur, a sob, a liquid wound, a widow’s voice, an estranged orphanhood beyond…
THROUGH THE LAKE, THROUGH THE WATER by Johannes Anyuru trans. Brad Harmon

THROUGH THE LAKE, THROUGH THE WATER The beeches stand there, imposing, untouched,steeped in time: I wanderthrough the tall yellow hall of leavesand listen to the openchords: October, whoever cries herecries inwards,the wood bridge has sucked the salve dry.The underworldly bamboo flutes resound through the lake, through the water, the wind islead poured into stone molds.…