Les Negres de Paris
“…Every back, / it seems, is a blood neighbor” | Kwame Dawes
English
Ellen Bass
ELLEN BASS’s most recent collection, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Her other poetry books include Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Her poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The NEA, …
Holly Welker
Holly Welker is an award-winning poet and essayist living in Arizona. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Best American Essays, and other publications. poems
Chana Bloch
CHANA BLOCH was a poet, translator, scholar, and teacher. The daughter of Jewish immigrants from what is now Ukraine, Chana Bloch grew up in the Bronx, received a BA in Semitic Studies from Cornell University, MA degrees in Judaic studies and English literature from Brandeis University, and a PhD in English literature from the University …
Katherine Towler
KATHERINE TOWLER is an author, editor, and creative writing professor, as well as being a poet. Her essays, poetry, short stories, and interviews have appeared in many literary journals. She also works as a freelance writer specializing in publications and promotional materials for schools and non-profits. poems
On the Streets of Hanoi
“and the outsized appetites/I am shedding bit by bit” | by Katherine Towler
Mother Tongue
“Walking to the shuq to buy tapoocheem, chalav, and lechem from a merchant who didn’t care—” | by Mari Pack, 2020 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
Funeral Services
“he’d be so perfect / if you could only convince yourself that/ he’s just a terrorist, not a human being”
[Now we remember: janitors and the night-sellers of bread]
“we got to soak in the rain/ on cars/ loaded with the unemployed/ like magazines with cartridges”
[someone stands between you and death-but]
“my heart whispers: Death, he hasn’t ripened yet/ he’s still green, nothing in his life has been/ sweeter than unwashed strawberries”
[we swallowed an air like earth]
“some of us exhaled cherry pits/ some bullets”
[people carry explosives around the city]
“people carry explosives around the city/ in plastic shopping bags and little suitcases”
[Buried in a human neck, a bullet looks like an eye, sewn in]
“But the children feel as strong as their machinery,/ mass-produced, with plenty of seamstresses for repairing:”
[The whole soldier doesn’t suffer-]
“just dreadful losses,/ just the day with a dented helmet,/ just God, who doesn’t protect.”
[This is a post on Facebook, and this, a block post in the East]
“I’ll make you a gift: a camouflage case for your tablet;/ time is earwax, peddled in alleyways, under the table.”
[When you clean your weapon]
“When you dig trench after trench/ When you dig this precious this hateful earth by handfuls/ Every other handful reaches your soul”
Juan Carlos Galeano
JUAN CARLOS GALEANO was born in the Amazon region of Colombia. He is the author of Baraja Inicial (poetry, 1986), Pollen and Rifles (1997) a book on the poetry of violence, and Amazonia (poetry, 2003), Sobre las cosas (poetry, 2010), and Amazonia y otros poemas (poetry, 2011), and Historias del viento (poetry, 2013). He teaches Latin American poetry and cultures of …
Died of Old Age
“Olha was pregnant/ Serhiy was drunk/ and Sonya was only three/ they all perished, too/ and people said, they died of old age” | by Lyuba Yakimchuk