Background photo by Sved Oliver / Adobe StockA Visitor from Hell
A resident of Hell, I’ve been sitting here,
Lord,
for years.
Do I not deserve
to be a citizen?
How is it that even in Hell
the homes ha…
Poetry
November 22, 2024
November 21, 2024Courtesy of University of New Mexico Press / Stock.adobe.comThe Orphan (Isaac Luria) what is the matter? why do you always pursue me as an enemy?/ you set hidden traps for me?/ you catch me in my own…
October 24, 2024Photo by trentinness / Adobe StockHunger Strike In the last watch of blood and memories, in the last neighing of empty stomachs, the human tree announces its prophecy overflowing with our bright statu…
September 19, 2024Photo by AVTG / Stock.adobe.comTranslator’s note: Gizella Hervay (1934–1982) is sometimes referred to as the “Ingeborg Bachmann of Transylvania.” Mostly neglected by criticism during her shor…
July 30, 2024Adobe StockCollage after Romare Bearden Gather out of star-dust: memories of tender Harlem evenings where portraits filled my young mind with j…
July 25, 2024Photo by Manikanth Halyal / Unsplash[Untitled] At the edge of the village a woman in a stupa ground millet. She whistled brazenly, calling the wind from the steppe to keep the chaff flying so her eyes…
June 28, 2024bettysphotos / stock.adobe.comWriting Poetry on the Assembly Line Sitting in front of the machine in the workshop Exhaling like the moonlight. The soldering iron, screwdriver, motor, buzzer, the injec…
June 10, 2024for Naomi Shihab Nye Eid al-Fitr Shavuot Pentecost 2021 I want to follow Naomi to walk in her footsteps to gather with her only the gentle words like fallen wheat stalks gleaned from…
February 28, 2024Photo by Michel Banabila / FlickrDinosaurs Each day, I drive beneath the shadow of leviathan bones, concrete muscles poured over rebar ribcage, fossils of future freeways. I walk through the unnatural…
January 31, 2024Painting by Mehdi Qotbi (b. 1951, Rabat) / Courtesy of the artist Les homeless Les homeless ne vivent pas dans la rue Ils attendent que le ciel se jette sur eux chaque soir Un ciel chargé de tous les…
December 14, 2023Illustration by fran_kie / Adobe StockIf I Must Die If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a…
October 13, 2023Photo by Yousef Khanfar / www.yousefkhanfar.com. This olive tree in the Al Aqsa compound is believed to be 2,000 years old.I’m not interested in who suffered the most. I’m interested in people getting…
August 1, 2023Photo by h heyerlein / UnsplashField at Night On a night without you I descend into hell streetlamps become enemies Solitary I walk the salt mines my footprints are salt measuring fate salt like the f…
July 25, 2023Illustration courtesy of the author Julius D. Jones is a talented and thought-provoking artist who cares deeply about humanity, justice, and peace. Despite being incarcerated for more than twen…
July 13, 2023Photo by said alamri / UnsplashImmigration, detention, unequal pay are modern words for slavery again. Dictatorship, borders. Any imposition of one’s will over another is a form of s…
July 7, 2023Photo by Natalia Dimitris X (2007) / Flickr… And instead of despair before your own cracked skin instead of drowning in memories of him instead of hopelessness as you face the scorched plain of your f…
June 27, 2023Photo by throgers / FlickrIn what follows, I have created three heteronyms to render Pablo Neruda’s “Oda al actor” into English. They are presented in chronological order by date of birth. Their views…
June 19, 2023Photo by NancieLee Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we’re free at last. “[O]n the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons…
June 14, 2023Photo by Lucas Calloch / UnsplashJapanese Garden I curve like a wooden bridge over a lake lit up by red carps I am hard and dry and barely adorned like a sand garden (though there are stones that blos…
June 6, 2023Photo by Evelyn Paris / UnsplashNational Anthem This is my room, it is called Iceland. A sea cable fastens it to Europe and to here and from here fly airplanes with their ink cartridges full of people…
April 27, 2023Jewish Museum Berlin / Photo by Davie Dunn / FlickrMommy, mommy repeated Tyre Nichols with his last breaths kicked by the boots of five policemen under his mother’s window in Memphis Plea…
April 18, 2023Photo by Sofya Badkhen“We Live Without Touch” is a found poem. Composed of fourteen English translations of the first two lines of a famous 1933 poem by Osip Mandelstam, it is a timely meditation…
March 13, 2023Photo by Lava Lavanda / UnsplashFirst Language Not sure what to make of the title (titles can be misleading, like Chinatown or Popiół i diament or that blue–white…
March 13, 2023Photo by Lava Lavanda / Unsplash First Language Not sure what to make of the title (titles can be misleading, like Chinatown or Popiół i diament…
February 16, 2023Photo by Alex Arbelaez / Flickr Martil It’s okay to veer toward Tetouan, to stay a while, to be released from a pair of pliers, the two mountains that have gripped Tetouan since T…
Recent Posts
Background photo by Sved Oliver / Adobe StockA Visitor from Hell
A resident of Hell, I’ve been sitting here,
Lord,
for years.
Do I not deserve
to be…
Courtesy of University of New Mexico Press / Stock.adobe.comThe Orphan (Isaac Luria)
what is the matter? why do you
always pursue me as an enemy?/…
Yassini Girls (Beacon Books, 2024), the new novel by Shereen Malherbe, invites readers into a rich and emotional narrative, weaving together…
In this interview focused on devotional Indian poetry (bhakti), Arundhathi Subramaniam (b. 1967) discusses her interest and involvement in…
Photo by Daria ShchukinaUniversity of Oklahoma student Daria Shchukina recounts her recent trip to the 2024 ALTA conference and the impact it…
