Sunrise over Lake Baikal / Photo by Arseniy Chekmarev / Flickr My name is Iaromira Forgive me if I speak of sad things When my footsteps echo in my bones A silence saved me from the word Another si…

Photo by Steve Evans / Flickr A longtime scholar, translator, and promoter of Ukrainian literature reflects on the existential crisis confronting Ukraine—and the West—today. In Pavlo Tychyna…

Photo by Steven Weeks / Unsplash Completely at random, the world ended. Trade in shares was lively, the weather splendid. Lovers lay in beds and some on the sand. Artists painted nature, if not th…

Photo by Adam Cohn / Flickr It did not weep did not plead for mercy nor complain. It fell silently, the tree. ~~~ My hands, yellow as its flesh dripping white blood, shuddering with the deafe…

Photo by Sergey Norkov / Unsplash Iron-Red Tea Were your body a teapot, sleek and slender, face unseen and hands like iron-red stems, were your mouth to release a roofless wind d…

Comic by Pavel Ortega like no one can successfully push away the sea waters —it has been said in a love poem—nadie could make me obey what my living make-up doesn’t obey, it’s not a question o…

Photo by zig0004 / Flickr for Derek Walcott & Sigrid Nama At the end of this sentence, rain will begin. — D.W., “Archipelagos,” Map of the New World  1.  Part…

Dacheng Flour Factory, Shekou, Shenzhen / Photo by Chris / Flickr Every day, educated youth of the erstwhile industrial zone ride the sightseeing elevator, up and down, crowding into the skylark th…

Illustration © Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation Fragile Eagle The La Brea Tar Pits’ Page Museum displays fossils of extinct & extant species. Eye…

Photo by Wayne S. Grazio / Flickr In spring of the year I turned twenty I looked for a river river calm and wide that I believed to be my past incarnation. Since childhood, I’ve seen it many times…

Photo by valkrye131 / Flickr I kiss her & death is the shadow of that loving bird shaking on the pool yet when she turns to look it has flown. * She’s gone, sleepwalking with her kisses…

Photo by Megan (Markham) Bucknall / Unsplash It is easy to be a mother. Childbirth was nothing. Marriage and divorce only crack the plaster a little like when the S-train goes by. It is easy to…

Photo by Basetrack 18 / Flickr The trees outside my balcony, Remind me of the trees of Afghanistan They are big green clouds that land on the ground to lift our spirits and take them for a journey o…

Photo by michael_swan / Flickr Alternatives could or should be basin or lagoon or pool or puddle or small body or was there a motive or I got here by myself iterating through conversions or turning…

Photo by Sylvie Mazerolle / Unsplash Assembly Dear fellow carpenters and woodworkers, I come with greetings of solidarity from the metaphysicians. Among us the situation has also b…

Photo by Alexander Sinn / Unsplash The hour of hooded crows when cleaners fly for the night all carrion is eaten all bones picked and all skins farewell you unlucky trail explorers! only a wet s…

Birds over Jerash / Photo by Omar Chatriwala / Flickr The poets’ voices sing in my head across distance, sing to reconcile to make peace through counterpoint but can’t work as they should. For th…

Photo by NCinDC / Flickr He said: Why must they destroy and destroy again? Why must they forget my face my gestures my voice? Why must they believe in my absence even as I stand in front of them? Why…

“A Fisherman at Lake Dian.” Photo by Yu Jian. Reading Glasses I am no longer young, a half-blind Homer, wearing reading glasses to see the world. The calendar shows that it is autu…

On the Yangtze River, through the Wu Gorge / Photo by Perfect Zero / Flickr Summer Elegy                         for my father From June to June, as though uninterrupted, I…

Photo by Russ Morris / Flickr Some may live just a block away, even nearer: the Walmart clerk who’d coolly hook a hot wire to your gonads, the grease monkey keen on beheading, the cleaning lady…

The seacoast at Mykonos / Photo by the author In Andros, I Watch a Goat Run to and away from My Father’s Hands He opens his eyes. His eyes                   the color of its gray co…

Photo by Jes Timms / Unsplash for Vishnu Khare How to convey one’s well-being over the phone, It’s going all right, All that is there is good or nothing is good. The main thing to say is,…

Photo by Matt Artz / Unsplash I write with words that have shadow but don’t shelter no sooner do I start this page insomnia burns it not the words but what they consume is what reality starts occup…

Photo by George Kourounis / Unsplash [I ask everybody] I ask everybody have you noticed today when the time passed with its voice of silence with its common appearance I had a w…