Ch’ol embroidered shirts / Photo by Diana Laura Montejo
I Am the Alphabet
They say, grass born in the forest,
my body holds the freshness of mountains.
I have absorbed the garden’s blossoming,
my…
Poetry
Don’t just aim the telescope at the night sky’s swarming to discover one more planet. Turn it also toward the earth, toward the bottom of the sea, see the fish in between the rocks, a flicker of…
Poetry is not solace, it is not a song of joy and of sadness, it is not a haven in the mouth of a blind man, it is not a museum. Poetry is not an almanac of meanings on t…
Photo by Nathan Bang on Unsplash I brought mum and dad an old quilt – It’s nice, only it came out of the wash with funny splodges on it. They can stick it on the sofa bed out at the allotment. “We…
Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash On the hilltop A woman said to me This fruit is called kam Kam I take the word as it comes I write it in my memory Like the three letters in the word…
Photo by Marcel Ardivan on Unsplash I propose, my love, to be for you the surface to be but body for your eyes to be but rhythm for your tongue and information for your net. – Myriam Moscona…
The children see trees bending bending and then they are broken coconutless frondless. The children see roofs in various states of disarray metal sheets lifting eaves pulled away. There’s Takaro’s ho…
Last Tuesday I wasn’t enough of a poet to note how the falling rain would split the sky It doused the fires in my heart till its casing cracked It hammered the pyramids of my mind and washed a…
Because all the fathers and mothers of my parents, all the time past, are earth. But also language, words like Spanish, gypsy, black, or immigrant…
Photo by Ajeet Mestry on Unsplash The Alarm The television had announced the imminence of an attack. Would it be a bomb? Bacteria? A weapon previously unheard of? Everyone had long known their…
Painting by Lydia Rubio, “That sea at night is a sea of fragility” The sky over tonight’s sea is a mirror of glittering fireflies. Writing expands, attentive to this limitless sea that,…
you come and go checking on those figs your eyes scanning the eyelets among branches you leave the slums of the city the rain’s hand-pan roofs above the ruins you come and go checking on those fi…
The audio recording of “Simi” can be found here on the Musuq Illa website. Simi by Olivia Reginaldo Kay simiy ruwasqaykita atipanchu qilla qalluy qulluypaq qillqan Kay s…
Photo © Keiko Onoda A thousand countries in myself – There’s something that precipitates to the very bottom of such a feeling. Is everything just an image, or is this only a wasteland where images…
Photo by Artur Kraft / Unsplash Golden rice stands in sheaves in the freshly cut autumn field. I think of many exhausted mothers and see beautiful, wrinkled faces along the road at dusk. This is…
Lajee Palestinian Dabka Dance Troupe / Photo by Tim Dennell / Flickr I ask the olives to be gentle for they’re weighing the branches down as heavy as the stories Um Muhammad carries on her tired s…
Photo by owtana on Unsplash father inside my coat it is only after i lose my wallet that i find father inside my coat. he is holding a long and slender cigarette between his teeth. dear father inside…
Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash worldlittoday · “Festival,” by Derek Chung The festival is here we play football by the door Even in a tight space my son can nail a kickoff Skilled at the…
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge / Unsplash Fingertips Can you feel how the tips of my fingers vibrate in a scream? I am a simple woman of autumn, flesh tanned from the end of summer leaves me longing for…
Photo by Sean Thomas / Unsplash return oh, that fish could swim through my garden again! Stately as whale sharks, speckled pacifists, or goldfish freed from small glass domes like…
What is the reason for your visit, Embera Wera?1 You’ve walked fourteen hours through the muddy night, you’ve crossed an entire mountain range to see me, even knowing the demon moana la…
Ebony and ivory / Photo by Blondinrikard Fröberg / Flickr for Lida Berberian I remember when I couldn’t read music; The pile of unfamiliar books lay listless; my hands glided across every…
Photo: Giancarlo Revolledo / Unsplash Limbo One day I placed a rock on top of your name and I said to myself: I’ll go singing all the way home. And I sang like a wild woman on pow…
Photo by Paul Gilmore / Unsplash The Clock of the Long Now will operate knowing it will lose the correct time, exposed as it will be to imprecise temperatures, stellar and solar alignments, tectonic…
Photo: jamesjustin / Flickr Open House: Riverside Fujimi Town #103, two rooms with wooden flooring and a small finished basement. A ninety-eight-square-foot basement with no windows, no circulat…