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Hanging Garden
by Colin Cheney, January 2010They huddled / under the turning maples—almost / as if they were asking to be tried for something / they knew they must have done—
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Two Poems
by Adonis, translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa, January 2010To the country dug into our lives like a grave, / to the country etherized, and killed, / a sun rises from our paralyzed history / into our millennial sleep.
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Albania
by Yang Li translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury, December 2009Back in our day there wasn’t anyone who didn’t know Albania / who didn’t know it was the bright light of European Socialism / or that the other bright light was us.
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The Corset
by Joanna Grant, December 2009This is what you will not understand, / I tell this jelly, this fat crybaby girl.
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Loving Cyrus
by R. Dwayne Betts, November 2009You’ve learned it 34 years too late and it wrestles / with the story of Cyrus, / the first man you’ve known with a woman’s / curved breast.
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from Fugue of the New Year
by Richard Garcia, October 2009Next door in the neighbor’s carport, children / laugh, jumping on bubble-wrap, like the far, / perpetual small arms fire in the distance.
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Asking for Everything
by Lilah Hegnauer, October 2009You thought I literally drained every boy’s canteen and / every last quarter and washer was mine.
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the sentence
by Sébastien Smirou translated from the French by Andrew Zawacki, October 2009we imagine rose tintedly because his hands are in his lady
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Monarch & Mulberry
by Nickole Brown, September 2009After that, the sound of hammers and crows / through the open window, then somebody needs to // cut down that goddamn tree.
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from Green Zone New Orleans
by Mark Yakich, Guest-edited by Pia Ehrhardt, September 2009Forget some call love / Bedside grammar: // The body rules / And it’s a trick
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Three Poems
by Brad Richard, Guest-edited by Pia Ehrhardt, September 2009We’ll never make it in time: you’re twelve, / riding west to see a corpse in a flood, / I’m your grandson at forty-two, riding east // to see my city’s flooded remains.
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Snapshot
by Andy Young, Guest-edited by Pia Ehrhardt, September 2009There is the talk of friends, uncles / disappeared, impossible to translate / because in English one disappears, // is not disappeared.
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The Witch’s Burning
by Emma Bolden, July 2009his lips in the dark dog-warm against / the flat of my foot / became pain became not became flame
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Requiem for the Orchard
by Oliver de la Paz, July 2009Our hands were/ the real language and we hit each other with closed fists/ just to unhinge the details.
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Romania. A Post-history Hysteria
by Chris Tanasescu translated from the Romanian by David Baker and the author, June 2009...fir on a barren rock-sharp wall, the kind / the shepherds around here talk and sing to / before felling when someone young and single dies.
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The Bleating of Copper
by Amjad Nasser translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa, June 2009Night and horses— / is this what history is all about?
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Acknowledgment, 1964
by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, May 2009Could have gone west. Could have packed your things, / who cares that you weren’t old enough to drive.
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Geomancy
by F. Daniel Rzicznek , May 2009All things that find a death there take / an invisible token of that freshwater pout: / a bone is dragged into pines and oak, / an organ ends up sailing around in the rain, / the rest is dissected there on the sands.
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Canada
by Henrietta Goodman, April 2009When he rows out to collect the geese, / he thinks, like any god, this is just / what you do.
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Two Poems
by Rafael Acevedo translated from the Spanish by Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, April 2009With these five bones, human bones, / Doctor Chanca makes me a cannibal / by arranging feathers from the hand / of another cannibal
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Decorum: A Study
by Alison Powell, March 2009A person could be at a loss. The width, spools and yardage, meringue / airs, impossible long fingers, of decorum. Its army sashay of the side- / walk.
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Dumb Show
by Suzanne Wise, March 2009The spine does its turtle charade / and the fingers can be counted on / to dance the spider dance or perform
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Three Poems
by Novica Tadic translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic, February 2009Poor us, we are all kings / when we gaze at the starry sky.
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Two Poems
by Cynthia Cruz, February 2009Beautiful, finally, inside the quiet / Latrine of my Mexican / Confessional: // Rode a pony, drove / A tractor, and never / Finished the first grade.
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Earring
by Ales Steger translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry, January 2009The whole time he tells you what to do. / His voice is chocolate candy filled with hysteria. // He is a loving blackmailer. An owl blind in one eye.
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Two Poems
by Umberto Saba translated from the Italian by George Hochfield and Leonard Nathan, January 2009It’s as if for a man battered by the wind, / blinded by snow—all around him an arctic / inferno pummels the city— / a door opens along a wall.
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Flocks of Never
by Drew Blanchard, December 2008In these moments, I’d imagine, / though I never saw anything / like it, the spray of twelve gauge / buckshot entering the body / of a goose in mid-air, / and its mate, its mate for life, / would honk, drop down, / honk, follow the limp body / to the ground.
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Cat Posing for a Portrait of a Dog, Hollywood, California
by Elizabeth Gold, December 2008On this rainy afternoon in Hollywood / California, I'm practicing / philosophy, watching him sip Napa Red / while he remakes me / into a dog-slut
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Ode to Nitrous Oxide
by Sharon Dolin, November 2008Isn’t it funny how good numb can feel? Is that / the experience? Or is it waking up after—lucid but no longer asking (or caring) /where it throbs—or when—or why—or because of whom.
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The Body or its Not
by Keetje Kuipers, November 2008I have plans to kill a creature. The best / I can explain it is: I’m afraid. Of what / will be left—a hoof, the jaw, one sun-dried- / soft-as-oats ear.
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I Think of Pilgrims
by Terese Svoboda, October 2008Cellphoned to their continents, Pilgrims / from whatever persecution, kill those turkeys in / want, want, want, and the landing gear drops.
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Plague
by Robert Thomas, October 2008Fold back your sleeve, cara, so I can see / the lining and the wrist bone’s alp. A girl / in Castello grew white fur on her tongue // when I was fifteen. All but the pink tip, / like a tiny monk’s head, a tonsured pate. / Then the fur blackened, and the monk grew horribly young.
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Two Poems
by Manoel de Barros translated from the Portuguese by Idra Novey, September 2008To enter the state of being a tree it’s necessary / to begin with a gecko’s amphibian torpor / at three in the afternoon in the month of August.
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Only Different
by Richard Howard, September 2008Bruce claims it would be madness to suppose / these two poles of American Romance / —does What Maisie Knew fit at the North Pole? / The Land of Oz
at the South?—could even / hypothesize each other’s existence… -
The Gods Describe Building Bodies, like Badger’s
by Adam Day, August 2008We pour the eyes in with a ladle / like post-holes half-filled / with mud-water, tap them in / with it if we have to.
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What, Friends, Is A Life?
by Mark Yakich, August 2008Honestly 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.
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Mutable and Immutable
by Maya Bejerano translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keller, July 2008let me go don’t be a dog / my very dear cage / haven’t we agreed
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World's End: North of San Francisco
by Tess Taylor, July 2008Here 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.
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Two Poems
by Gabrielle Althen translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker, June 2008Space is full of mental rooms where we can go / Like a hunter unleashing his dogs, I freed my spirit into them
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Two Poems
by Hamutal Bar-Yosef translated from the Hebrew by Rachel Tzvia Back, June 2008I am a poisoned well, / I told the ram / as he flared his nostrils. / Everything in me is poisoned.
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The Stagnation
by James Galvin, May 2008The stagnation is deafening. / Then some menacing / Nudists walk past / Laughing, which doesn’t / Affect the stagnation.
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Two Poems
by Sarah Messer, May 2008It’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.
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Two Poems
by Amy Hegarty, April 2008Beautiful baby / With your head cut off / Why didn’t they bury you then?
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Three Poems
by Monica Youn, April 2008When you have left me / the sky drains of color // like the skin of a tightening fist.
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Found Myself in Search of Matthias & Paul
by Robert Gibbons, March 2008I 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.
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Two Poems
by Reginald Shepherd, March 2008Night renders everything insensible, / her eyes are filled with feathers, filled / with burning bridges, burning cornfields / wuthering to wind-blown ghosts of smoke.
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Two Poems
by Edip Cansever translated from the Turkish by Julia Clare Tillinghast and Richard Tillinghast, February 2008No 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.
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Two Poems
by Ales Debeljak translated from the Slovenian by Andrew Zawacki and the author, February 2008How 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.
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from The Mad Song
by Michael Schiavo, January 2008Of 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.
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Untitled
by Pēters Brūveris translated from the Latvian by Inara Cedrins, January 2008I am given ten cubic meters of darkness / every night I pace over them obediently
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Three Poems
by Adonis translated from the Arabic by Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard, December 2007In the name of his own history, / in a country mired in mud, / when hunger overtakes him / he eats his own forehead.
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Why Can’t We
by Kim Hyesoon translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi, December 2007We 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...
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Two Poems
by Sean Singer, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith , November 2007Mobley talked about revolution. / Asterisk, palladium, forever unjaded. // He talked about two lives—the one we learn with / and the one we live after that.
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Three Poems
by Aaron Smith, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007The 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.
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Two Poems
by Kyle Booten, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007It 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.
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Cinderella
by Cynthia Cruz, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007Briefcase brother, what silver / Steamboat, brother, have you / Got for me this time.
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Three Poems
by Terrance Hayes, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007Yes, I have a pretty good idea what beauty is. It survives / alright. It aches like an open book. It makes it difficult to live.
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Three Poems
by Tina Chang, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007The 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.
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Two Poems
by David Semanki, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007Shouldn’t you both be used to it— // a ritual which you revert to each night? / This turning off the light, / lying still, falling asleep.
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Seven Poets Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith
, October 2007Guest editor Tracy K. Smith introduces poems "that will save you from drowning, only to admit they were the ones to push you overboard..."
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'struth
by Christopher Mulrooney, October 2007it’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
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Mambo Cinema
by Barbara Hamby, October 2007Last 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
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Two Poems
by George Szirtes , September 2007Somewhere 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.
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Lovelier Near the End
by Mark Bibbins, September 2007The fate of the inter- / office matchmaker // is to be forever / sitting on press // releases intuiting one / big happy time zone.
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Thumb, Throat, Affidavit
by Tung-Hui Hu, August 2007At 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.
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Love Tokens
by Tran Da Tu translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh, August 2007I'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
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Rescue
by Rebecca Morgan Frank, July 2007The 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.
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Double Reed
by Kazim Ali, July 2007when dusk says hand it over / what am I supposed to hand over // in printing you have to choose / between portrait or landscape
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New Translations of René Char
by Nancy Naomi Carlson, June 2007He 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.
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Wholesale Romania
by Chris Tanasescu translated from the Romanian by Ilya Kaminsky and Martin Woodside, May 2007Yes, 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.
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New Translations of Polina Barskova
by Ilya Kaminsky, May 2007I 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.
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Four New Translations of Paul Celan
translated from the German by Ian Fairley, April 2007I HEAR THE AXE HAS FLOWERED, / I hear the place can't be named
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Average
Three Poems by Jon Woodward, April 2007skywriting its name in the/ optical illusion blank spaces/ shifting around the surface/ of the necessary paperwork (also in mouth)
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Two Poems
by Oni Buchanan, April 2007soporific for the earthly,/ but for the waking,/ a buoyancy, the medium/ for floating up with/ flutter-kick, with wings
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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.'"
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Four New Translations of Rumi
by Coleman Barks, March 2007A snake drags along looking for the ocean./ What would it do with it?
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Four Erotic Poems
by Chinese poets translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping, January 2007Her tears drop on the mirror / and around the guttering lamp insects swirl.
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Four Poems on War
by Chinese poets translated by Geoff Waters, January 2007A few horses returned with torn flags we couldn’t make out. / I would have a ceremony for you, but what if you are alive?
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Complaint / Za_alenie
by Andrzej Bursa translated from the Polish by Kevin Christianson and Halina Ablamowicz , November 2006I don't know you personally, but I saw your photo in the paper / and I feel deeply offended
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Three Poems
by Terese Svoboda, July 2006The hedges, as square / as the capital letters important / books begin with, screen // the neighbor but not / his feet
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After Reading Some Tales of the Hindu Gods
by Billy Collins, July 2006I would see teeth and a quivering tongue / and that little glistening punching bag / that hangs from the roof of the mouth.
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Responsibility
by Craig Morgan Teicher, June 2006We were trying to make the best / of a very short time.
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Throwing Star
by Jocelyn Casey-Whiteman, June 2006Aida knew it was the sound that would get to her.
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Three Haiku
by Tomas Tranströmer translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly , May 2006Night-a twelve-wheeler / goes by making the dreams of / the inmates shiver
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Sonnet
by Cecco Angiolieri translated from the Italian by Robert Bly , May 2006If I were fire, I'd burn the world down;
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High Noon
Two Poems by Antonio Machado translated from the Spanish by George Kalogeris and Gláucia Rezende , March 2006By this glass of wine so dark it brims / Like rising nightfall, with a heart whose deepest faith / Is insatiable thirst
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Doctor of Teeth (White, Natasha)
by Mebane Robertson, March 2006It's lonely it's getting harder / To do the dirty work of ever getting them back.
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Visiting Chicago
by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, February 2006My El, my pallor, my gas- / fed water, tell me how to touch your walks.
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The House of Hissing Radiators
by Adam Davis, February 2006Coyotes swarm these hills at night in great flurries of electric lantern-light.
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Catapult
by Joanne Straley, January 2006The flinch of it lingers // As I exchange my insides for the front of the line
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Keelhauled: Three Poems
by Julianne Buchsbaum, December 2005The sound of wharves aswarm / with rats woke me from stupor.
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The Beginnings of Stars
by Russell Thornton, November 2005We build a fire which will repeat at night / what the sun did during the day...
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After History
by Carol Vanderveer Hamilton, November 2005After history we will all drive home alone / through present darkness and impending rain
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Stone
by Nurit Zarhi translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keller , September 2005This is sanity—when love comes—/to offer a bed, a chair,/sustain and raise it like a pet
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A Myth of Justice
by Paul Kane, August 2005And so it transpired, richer took from poorer,/ as if politics rules even in death.
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Still Life with Hatchet and Picasso
by Eamon Grennan, June 2005The midden / of kindling gleams in cloudy sunshine / like bloodless, dismembered flesh and bone
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Mirror on High
by Olga Orozco translated from the Spanish by Guillermo Castro and Ron Drummond , June 2005perhaps that agate's circular gaze was your gaze, / which from water in the air unfolds itself
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The Bypass
by Sandy Tseng, June 2005They were children circumnavigating a haunted house, / trekking into private property
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Two Poems
by Jean Gallagher, June 2005Then you fell / like something fancy and on fire in my lap / and there’s no going home for me.
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Anton Van Dyck
by Marcel Proust translated from the French by Richard Howard , May 2005Under pines these riders halt beside a brook / calm like them, yet like them close to sobs
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Why I Don't Worry
by Ghalib translated from the Urdu by Robert Bly and Sunil Dutta , May 2005The sorrows of the world are truly abundant; but wine is abundant too.
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Midwinter
by Tomas Tranströmer translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly , May 2005A blue glow / Streams out from my clothes. / Midwinter. / A clinking tambour made of ice. / I close my eyes. / Somewhere
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“Time Is the One Essential Mystery,” Says Jorge Luis Borges
by Tony Barnstone, May 2005Everything 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
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Ghazal #61: The Fire of Love
by Farid ad-Din Attar translated from the Arabic by Robert Bly , May 2005The sweetest thing in the soul is the fire / Of your love; still sweeter is the fire / Leaping out of the soul from your love
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Aswim with Happiness
Four poems by John Brehm, April 2005Our ideas leap like fish upstream / to spawn and die in / sunlight / their backs/flecked with blood / their eyes ruinous and open.
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Ode to the Black Panther
by Pablo Neruda translated from the Spanish by David Unger , April 2005It happened 31 years ago, / I can’t forget it, / in Singapore, the rain / falling / hot like blood / on the ancient white walls
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Seven Poems
by Han Shan translated from the Chinese by Tony Barnstone, February 2005Like bugs in a bowl / we all day circle, circle / unable to get out.
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Noon
by Quinn Latimer, January 2005Already 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
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Weeping Icons
by Rigoberto González, January 2005One 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.
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Harvest & Walking Home
Two Poems by Monica Ferrell, January 2005Tonight 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.
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Said the Leader of the Free World
Four Poems by Marjorie Agosín translated by Betty Jean Craige and Laura Rocha Nakazawa, January 2005History may even forget that tonight / I determined who would live / And who would die
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From “Four Square Poems”
Two Poems by Patrice Nganang translated by Cullen Goldblatt, January 2005to look for a lifesaving buoy in the flood / the destruction of the last drop of man
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Absinthe
by Salavador Novo translated by Rigoberto González, January 2005But your eyelids hold such flowery perfume, / that they breed inside my mind the bastard’s doom
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From “Mozart’s Third Brain”
by Göran Sonnevi translated by Rika Lesser, January 2005in which city do I want to be? / I want to be in the face / between the realms
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February
Two Poems by Robert Wrigley, January 2005It’s a special kind of frigidity, / a cold no man’s meager skin is match for...
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Esfera de Vidro em Campo de Batalha
Two Poems by Flavia Rocha, October 2004The sphere rolls a short distance on the grass, / stops. On a sunny morning, a blink, and the sounds – // march, wings fluttering, shells.
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from “Dark Under Kiganda Stars”
Three Poems by Lilah Hegnauer, October 2004I want this heat, this choice.
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World Weather Forecast
Three Poems by Virgil Suàrez, October 2004He 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.
