Photo by Brent Pearson/Flickr
Negative Space
I
I was born on a Tuesday in April.I didn’t cry. Not because I was stunned. I wasn’t even mad.I was the lucky egg, trained for gratitudeinside the belly f…
Poetry
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Todd Stewart, “Fence Line, Tule Lake Relocation Center, 2001,” from Placing Memory: A Photographic Exploration of Japanese American Internment (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008). Eating No…
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Author note: These flash semi-témoignages or reportages are inspired by stories people told me It began as a personal acco…
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Photo by Gwaga Little Men Animals no longer speakDrums refuse to beatTanganyika slowly retreats From her shoresBloodied by the nightmare of menWhose pettiness piercesThe deep slumber of the ancient…
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Translators’ Note Juan Hernández Ramírez describes both Nahuatl and Spanish as mirrors for his writing: “sirven de espejo, kewak se teskatl.” He does not write solely in one…
- Clay Tablet Bearing the World’s First Alphabet That had comemuch later – After everythingalready had happened – Without witnessthe first stammered wordthis atomic flash forevercontaminating the oblivi…
- I Before what happened happened,I mean, before the towers became a stairway to the dayof reckoning, and the world split into twocamps, water and sand,I used to wish that I’d be among the poetswho woul…
- Letter to Baghdad Even if my father never speaks a word of it, I will knowhe brought a candle, a cough, and the occupied side of his heart.I will know the trees held him, that they rose above roofline…
- Ghazal Shakeel Badayuni My heart longs to go beyond the obsession of love,and find joy in a new session of love. Love drowned me in its tidesbut my heart hopes that was a mere dig…
- Placing Everything on the Line Zvonko Karanović A car stops in the middle of the screena gentleman walks out dressed in black, wearing a hat, grabs a frightened girl by the armblackmails her to…
- Blues Cola de Lagarto Su frenesí candentede espiral infinitamuere, revive– b…
- Photo by Bu Yousef/Flickr At the Market in Baghdad, 1940 Every morning the elder took his sons to pray,then let them swim through the heat of the dijlawhile he and his servant went to marke…
- Kookaburras in a tree. Photo by Jaraslavd/Flickr I thought it said on the girl’s red purseA kind of sad dance and all dayWondered what was being defined . . .The real love that followsEarly…
- Romantic Disagreement Of course I amagainst disturbing the moon.For many reasons.Not only is it an unseemly exaggeration—personally I’ve long avoided exaggeratingbecause of exhaustion—but it is also…
- Illustration by Ciaran Duffy/Flickr The Blue Whale Our five-year-old daughter bubbles with laughteras she bounces on her bed, pure joy flashingin her eyes like the glint of fingerlings in sunlit wav…
- On the Edges of Autumn I shall close death’s doors.I am the autumn’s last flower.– Edith Södergran My body is like algaeExhausted by the night’s diving.Gather me up in…
- Following is a selection of four bilingual audio readings from Shizue Ogawa’s A Soul at Play, a collection of verse reviewed in the May 2012 issue of WLT. Donna Tamaki provides the…
- Audio versions read by the author Editorial note: Geoffrey Philp’s interview with Erika J. Waters appears in the May 2012 issue of WLT on pages 24–29. A Prayer for My…
- To a Poltergeist in the Bedroom’s Northward Wall Your senile hollow knocking hasremained ever the same, nodevelopment, no punctuation,you repeat yourself day after day,night after g…
- The Flower and the Hummingbird (En español) The Flower and the Hummingbird ¡Tengo un colibrí! dijo la flor. Me envuelve con su fino picoy su hi…
- Bidaani’ Ruyadxie’ lii sica ruyadxi guragu’ guibá’,ribaque chaahue’ lii ndaani’ guiña candanaxhi guiriziñaguidilade’ ruxhele guirá guie’ bizeecabe lu xpidaane’ guirá nguiiu ne biulú z…
- Irma Pineda "You Will Not See Me Die" Natalia Toledo "The Weaver" "For T.S. Eliot" Victor Terán "I Know Your Body"
- Translator’s note: Feliciano Sánchez Chan is among a growing group of poets (including Briceida Cuevas Cob and Isaac Carrillo Can) writing modern verse in the ancient language of Mayan. The M…
- The four recordings here are from Poet in Andalucía, forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press in January 2012. "Tree of Red Leaves, Jaén" "Prophet in Andalucía" "La…