What, Friends, Is A Life? by Mark Yakich

August 2008 - Honestly I don’t understand many / People. But, Friends, if you plan on dying // By your own hand, don’t use pills. Swallowing / Is simply another way of marking time.

Mutable and Immutable by Maya Bejerano translated by Tsipi Keller

July 2008 - let me go don’t be a dog / my very dear cage / haven’t we agreed

World's End: North of San Francisco by Tess Taylor

July 2008 - Here at the continent’s end, fortifications / linger for the end of the world. They greet // each California morning, these barracks in the fog. / Below, the lagoon is gunmetal, or mercury poured.

Two Poems by Gabrielle Althen translated by Marilyn Hacker

June 2008 - Space is full of mental rooms where we can go / Like a hunter unleashing his dogs, I freed my spirit into them

Two Poems by Hamutal Bar-Yosef translated by Rachel Tzvia Back

June 2008 - I am a poisoned well, / I told the ram / as he flared his nostrils. / Everything in me is poisoned.

The Stagnation by James Galvin

May 2008 - The stagnation is deafening. / Then some menacing / Nudists walk past / Laughing, which doesn’t / Affect the stagnation.

Two Poems by Sarah Messer

May 2008 - It’s true I slept with Abe Lincoln. / I now know everything there is to know about this country. / Believe me, I carry a tapeworm for you the size of Kentucky.

Two Poems by Amy Hegarty

April 2008 - Beautiful baby / With your head cut off / Why didn’t they bury you then?

Three Poems by Monica Youn

April 2008 - When you have left me / the sky drains of color // like the skin of a tightening fist.

Found Myself in Search of Matthias & Paul by Robert Gibbons

March 2008 - I said to Connors that the miracle for me was that that wood once had bark surrounding it, & that look, now, those carved figures are the spirit of Man.

Two Poems by Reginald Shepherd

March 2008 - Night renders everything insensible, / her eyes are filled with feathers, filled / with burning bridges, burning cornfields / wuthering to wind-blown ghosts of smoke.

Two Poems by Edip Cansever translated by Julia Clare Tillinghast and Richard Tillinghast

February 2008 - No matter the time or place, I’ll always grow for the one who is the sea. / With one thin finger cut in half. / That is why I’m the oldest recipient of your on-again, off-again love.

Two Poems by Ales Debeljak translated by Andrew Zawacki and the author

February 2008 - How it rises out of waves in the bay / and shudders like a gentle thrust / of the sea, which sooner forgives / than punishes, doomed as it is to feckless birth.

from The Mad Song by Michael Schiavo

January 2008 - Of Bedlam in its prairie pride. Of the roach that winds between the stars, triumphal. Of well-water served in garnet goblets. Of crusted penknife sitting on the pillow in the crib.

Untitled by Pēters Brūveris translated by Inara Cedrins

January 2008 - I am given ten cubic meters of darkness / every night I pace over them obediently

Three Poems by Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) translated by Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard

December 2007 - In the name of his own history, / in a country mired in mud, / when hunger overtakes him / he eats his own forehead.

Why Can’t We by Kim Hyesoon translated by Don Mee Choi

December 2007 - We make Buddha ride an elephant like the way a village boy rides on a man’s shoulder, and we let Buddha run and play, then make him cry, and we make him couple blissfully with a buttery woman and call it Tantra...

Two Poems by Sean Singer, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith

November 2007 - Mobley talked about revolution. / Asterisk, palladium, forever unjaded. // He talked about two lives—the one we learn with / and the one we live after that.

Three Poems by Aaron Smith, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith

November 2007 - The woman at the DMV wasn't happy / when I asked if I could keep / my old driver’s license and use it / to fight terrorism. She doesn't understand / I'm trying to do my part.

Two Poems by Kyle Booten, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith

November 2007 - It is the bog hour, the minute / which dwindles into a speck of ash. / As I do every morning I fall into my chair, / like a pebble thrown into a well. I think / you are not too thin, though I am lying.

Cinderella by Cynthia Cruz, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith

November 2007 - Briefcase brother, what silver / Steamboat, brother, have you / Got for me this time.

Three Poems by Terrance Hayes, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith

November 2007 - Yes, I have a pretty good idea what beauty is. It survives / alright. It aches like an open book. It makes it difficult to live.

Three Poems by Tina Chang, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith

November 2007 - The animal must be shot. You must / be hungry enough to skin it without / flinching, must be willing to cook it, / still trembling over the watchful eye / of the fire.

Two Poems by David Semanki, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith

November 2007 - Shouldn’t you both be used to it— // a ritual which you revert to each night? / This turning off the light, / lying still, falling asleep.

'struth by Christopher Mulrooney

October 2007 - it’s a fine American laggard sea found Haitian / with a boatload sinking under the precipice there / fallen into the new sink / in the new kitchen

Mambo Cinema by Barbara Hamby

October 2007 - Last night at the mambo cinema, with its wide screen / diamond sheen, my medulla oblongata / was knocked back to the Stone Age, primal scream / rising as I took my seat like a black sheep, Red Queen

Two Poems by George Szirtes

September 2007 - Somewhere there is a perfect architecture / where light, form, shadow, space all move / to form a language beyond architecture, / where to dream of the wrong architecture / is to dream of dying.

Lovelier Near the End by Mark Bibbins

September 2007 - The fate of the inter- / office matchmaker // is to be forever / sitting on press // releases intuiting one / big happy time zone.

Thumb, Throat, Affidavit by Tung-Hui Hu

August 2007 - At this point your credit score / will be helpful. Turn in your old train tickets / and walk the way you have always walked, / feet turned out, heels light as oars.

Love Tokens by Tran Da Tu translated by Linh Dinh

August 2007 - I'll give you a roll of barbwire / A vine for this modern epoch / Climbing all over our souls / That's our love, take it, don't ask

Rescue by Rebecca Morgan Frank

July 2007 - The hero arrives in an armada, years after you begin dreaming of him in black and white. // Armies stamp through your sleep, dole out chocolate, dried milk with a chalkiness you long for.

Double Reed by Kazim Ali

July 2007 - when dusk says hand it over / what am I supposed to hand over // in printing you have to choose / between portrait or landscape

New Translations of René Char by Nancy Naomi Carlson

June 2007 - He was hurled to the ground by the same unjust blows that hurtled him far ahead in his life, toward future years when one person alone could no longer make him bleed.

Wholesale Romania by Chris Tanasescu translated by Ilya Kaminsky and Martin Woodside

May 2007 - Yes, that’s right, maybe I’ve run out of / patience, we have certainly run out of cigarettes / and the later, as Cioran used to say // hold more fire than the Gospels in our blessed country.

New Translations of Polina Barskova by Ilya Kaminsky

May 2007 - I will try to live on earth without you. / I will try to live on earth without you. // I will become any object, / I don’t care what— // I will be this speeding train.

Four New Translations of Paul Celan by Ian Fairley

April 2007 - I HEAR THE AXE HAS FLOWERED, / I hear the place can't be named

Average Three Poems by Jon Woodward

April 2007 - skywriting its name in the/ optical illusion blank spaces/ shifting around the surface/ of the necessary paperwork (also in mouth)

Two Poems by Oni Buchanan

April 2007 - soporific for the earthly,/ but for the waking,/ a buoyancy, the medium/ for floating up with/ flutter-kick, with wings

The Way I Am by Mark Rudman

April 2007 - "I always do everything wrong. Sans exception./There I am again using 'sans' instead of 'without.'"

Four New Translations of Rumi by Coleman Barks

March 2007 - A snake drags along looking for the ocean./ What would it do with it?

Four Erotic Poems by Chinese poets translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

January 2007 - Her tears drop on the mirror / and around the guttering lamp insects swirl.

Four Poems on War from the Tang Dynasty by Chinese poets translated by Geoff Waters

January 2007 - A few horses returned with torn flags we couldn’t make out. / I would have a ceremony for you, but what if you are alive?

Complaint / Za_alenie by Andrzej Bursa translated by Kevin Christianson and Halina Ablamowicz

November 2006 - I don't know you personally, but I saw your photo in the paper / and I feel deeply offended

Wheel by Jennifer Burch

October 2006 - if I am not green and horses do not fly

Three Poems by Terese Svoboda

July 2006 - The hedges, as square / as the capital letters important / books begin with, screen // the neighbor but not / his feet

Three Poems by Peg Boyers

July 2006 - ...to leave you is to grow up.

After Reading Some Tales of the Hindu Gods by Billy Collins

July 2006 - I would see teeth and a quivering tongue / and that little glistening punching bag / that hangs from the roof of the mouth.

Responsibility by Craig Morgan Teicher

June 2006 - We were trying to make the best / of a very short time.

Throwing Star by Jocelyn Casey-Whiteman

June 2006 - Aida knew it was the sound that would get to her.

Three Haiku by Tomas Tranströmer translated by Robert Bly

May 2006 - Night-a twelve-wheeler / goes by making the dreams of / the inmates shiver

Sonnet by Cecco Angiolieri translated by Robert Bly

May 2006 - If I were fire, I'd burn the world down;

High Noon Two Poems by Antonio Machado translated by George Kalogeris and Gláucia Rezende

March 2006 - By this glass of wine so dark it brims / Like rising nightfall, with a heart whose deepest faith / Is insatiable thirst

Doctor of Teeth (White, Natasha) by Mebane Robertson

March 2006 - It's lonely it's getting harder / To do the dirty work of ever getting them back.

Visiting Chicago by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

February 2006 - My El, my pallor, my gas- / fed water, tell me how to touch your walks.

The House of Hissing Radiators by Adam Davis

February 2006 - Coyotes swarm these hills at night in great flurries of electric lantern-light.

Catapult by Joanne Straley

January 2006 - The flinch of it lingers // As I exchange my insides for the front of the line

Keelhauled: Three Poems by Julianne Buchsbaum

December 2005 - The sound of wharves aswarm / with rats woke me from stupor.

The Beginnings of Stars by Russell Thornton

November 2005 - We build a fire which will repeat at night / what the sun did during the day...

After History by Carol Vanderveer Hamilton

November 2005 - After history we will all drive home alone / through present darkness and impending rain

Stone by Nurit Zarhi translated by Tsipi Keller

September 2005 - This is sanity—when love comes—/to offer a bed, a chair,/sustain and raise it like a pet

Star by Herman Asarnow

September 2005 - At birth a slow star/ bursts inside us

Insomnia by Robin Beth Schaer

September 2005 - We sleep on stilts, above the floor

A Myth of Justice by Paul Kane

August 2005 - And so it transpired, richer took from poorer,/ as if politics rules even in death.

Still Life with Hatchet and Picasso by Eamon Grennan

June 2005 - The midden / of kindling gleams in cloudy sunshine / like bloodless, dismembered flesh and bone

Mirror on High by Olga Orozco translated by Guillermo Castro and Ron Drummond

June 2005 - perhaps that agate's circular gaze was your gaze, / which from water in the air unfolds itself

Spider Web by Paula Bohince

June 2005 - The heart is made first, to make a foothold.

The Bypass by Sandy Tseng

June 2005 - They were children circumnavigating a haunted house, / trekking into private property

Two Poems by Jean Gallagher

June 2005 - Then you fell / like something fancy and on fire in my lap / and there’s no going home for me.

Anton Van Dyck by Marcel Proust translated by Richard Howard

May 2005 - Under pines these riders halt beside a brook / calm like them, yet like them close to sobs

Why I Don't Worry by Ghalib translated by Robert Bly and Sunil Dutta

May 2005 - The sorrows of the world are truly abundant; but wine is abundant too.

Midwinter by Tomas Tranströmer translated by Robert Bly

May 2005 - A blue glow / Streams out from my clothes. / Midwinter. / A clinking tambour made of ice. / I close my eyes. / Somewhere

“Time Is the One Essential Mystery,” Says Jorge Luis Borges by Tony Barnstone

May 2005 - Everything tumbles forward end-over-end / like a stone down a mountain. / I keep waking up (it's a pinprick, / like the mosquito that bit me on the neck

Ghazal #61: The Fire of Love by Farid ad-Din Attar translated by Robert Bly

May 2005 - The sweetest thing in the soul is the fire / Of your love; still sweeter is the fire / Leaping out of the soul from your love

Aswim with Happiness Four poems by John Brehm

April 2005 - Our ideas leap like fish upstream / to spawn and die in / sunlight / their backs/flecked with blood / their eyes ruinous and open.

Ode to the Black Panther by Pablo Neruda translated by David Unger

April 2005 - It happened 31 years ago, / I can’t forget it, / in Singapore, the rain / falling / hot like blood / on the ancient white walls

Seven Poems by Han Shan translated by Tony Barnstone

February 2005 - Like bugs in a bowl / we all day circle, circle / unable to get out.

Washington & Happiness Two Poems by Elisabeth Frost

January 2005 - Again I try to explain how all talk is slippery.

Noon by Quinn Latimer

January 2005 - Already the ship hovers, a soft mark near the harbor, / the ashen shore unsure if it is approaching land / or leaving, its curved back—that long labor—rocking land

Weeping Icons by Rigoberto González

January 2005 - One stunned passerby will drop a bottle of cranberry juice on the pavement. / You’ll blink, surprised it doesn’t shatter holding in the red lake of its lung.

Harvest & Walking Home Two Poems by Monica Ferrell

January 2005 - Tonight the lares have eaten their offerings. / The sweetbreads are gone, black kidneys / Infantine and nacred as mollusk-eggs. The smoke / Circles and begins to clear.

Said the Leader of the Free World Four Poems by Marjorie Agosín translated by Betty Jean Craige and Laura Rocha Nakazawa

January 2005 - History may even forget that tonight / I determined who would live / And who would die

From “Four Square Poems” Two Poems by Patrice Nganang translated by Cullen Goldblatt

January 2005 - to look for a lifesaving buoy in the flood / the destruction of the last drop of man

Absinthe by Salavador Novo translated by Rigoberto González

January 2005 - But your eyelids hold such flowery perfume, / that they breed inside my mind the bastard’s doom

From “Mozart’s Third Brain” by Göran Sonnevi translated by Rika Lesser

January 2005 - in which city do I want to be? / I want to be in the face / between the realms

February Two Poems by Robert Wrigley

January 2005 - It’s a special kind of frigidity, / a cold no man’s meager skin is match for...

Esfera de Vidro em Campo de Batalha Two Poems by Flavia Rocha

October 2004 - The sphere rolls a short distance on the grass, / stops. On a sunny morning, a blink, and the sounds – // march, wings fluttering, shells.

from “Dark Under Kiganda Stars” Three Poems by Lilah Hegnauer

October 2004 - I want this heat, this choice.

World Weather Forecast Three Poems by Virgil Suàrez

October 2004 - He smells me, / and I in turn smell a faint scent of tumeric, // or bijol, the colorant my mother used / in her paellas, or arroz con pollo dishes.