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Metaphor for Something

By Hilary Vaughn Dobel
May 2012

We didn’t have any bears and so drew straws / to dress up in the bear-suit and stand, vinyl-fanged // jaws agape in the hotel lobby.

Taxi, Singapore, Ohio

By Lo Kwa Mei-en
May 2012

The fishmonger of me // walks home with a little fish a little empty, / but the next life will be landlocked

Calendrics

By Tess Taylor
May 2012

But I am an amateur / among these bird-cries & must train—

Voice

By Melih Cevdet Anday, translated from the Turkish by Sidney Wade and Efe Murad
May 2012

It was the sound of an historical wrist, of resistance

Watching the Dive Team Practice after Covering a Friend’s Class

By Austin Segrest
April 2012

I wanted to know them, woman and man / the spice of chlorine and adrenaline / to be with them at the edge.

[Those green Huldra]

By Kristina Lugn, translated from the Swedish by Elizabeth Clark Wessel
April 2012

Soon / she’ll let the rodent go / and give you the best thing she knows

In Defense of Dancing

By Ocean Vuong
April 2012

Look how they are reckless in this taming / of gravity, spilling in and out / of duende.

300 Cubits

By Eric Higgins
April 2012

Two of everything, it’s written somewhere, meaning a breeding pair.

Blues for the Death of the Sun

By Ansel Elkins
March 2012

Is it punishment? the newspaper editorial asked. We thought God was dead. / Forgive us, they said. Whoever you are, forgive us.

Mithraic and Poor Summer in Franconia

By W. G. Sebald, translated from the German by Iain Galbraith
March 2012

With his sea-goat ready / for departure the mythologist / beholds once again / the shattered world egg

Many Small Children

By Janet Kauffman
March 2012

They disappear for months. Longer.

An Early Morning in Daylight-Saving Summer

By Erika Burkart, translated from the German by Marc Vincenz
March 2012

In a razor sharp buzzing they come to haul me / from my bat-infested nightmare-time—

Fu Han at the Nuts Café, Chongqing, China, April 9, 2011

By Stephen Haven
February 2012

Whatever song they’re singing / It’s not Tiananmen

Nocturne

By Meena Alexander
February 2012

We have come to Haifa where the sea starts. / The theater Al Midani floats by a tree.

How I Wanted You to Find Me and What You Have in Common with God

By Sarah Carson
February 2012

When I got home God was already in the living room with his knitting / needles. I asked him if he wanted some of my Cherry Seven-Up

[Tomorrow morning I will take a shower]

By Valerio Magrelli, translated from the Italian by Adam Palumbo
February 2012

Tomorrow morning I will take a shower, / nothing else is certain but this.

The Last Bestiary

By Daniel Bourne
January 2012

When all animals have died / even the ones in books

Bamboo Grove and A Place Named for Deer

By Wang Wei, translated from the Chinese by Billy Merrell
January 2012

Strum a song I can whistle to—

Sarah at the Martini Bar

By Rich Smith
January 2012

She wants her red dress to also be her white dress.

It’s Late, Europe and A Lesson in Observation

By Dan Pagis, translated from the Hebrew by Carl Adamshick
January 2012

do not worry so much, Madame, / here, it will never happen, / you will see, / never here.

How to Write a Love Poem

By Traci Brimhall, illustrated by Eryn Cruft
December 2011

Begin with the blackbirds you shot for menacing / the finches.

They Said You Were to Be a Conquistador

By Kyle McCord
December 2011

Dear Sarah, I’m writing to admit to you I’ve never made much of a Viking.

Dog’s Walking Song

By José Luis Rey, translated from the Spanish by David Francis
December 2011

It will be the night of sirens, of police searching / empty apartments for a starfish, / of the bird that wanted to be a girl.

Of Largeness

By Kimberly Grey
December 2011

O America we never wanted / your size but here / it is and we can’t contain ourselves

Clio

By Nik De Dominic
November 2011

When baby came from up top she twistered / her fingers round the wrought iron

our weakness no stranger

By Kate Greenstreet
November 2011

There’s a special name for / all of us are having the same dream.

The Prince

By Sholeh Wolpé, guest-edited by Porochista Khakpour
November 2011

What counted were my widowed cousin / holding her own in a foreign land, / and the grit to say no / to what is hurled—words, glances, bullets, all.

Ghost Horse Prelude

By Roger Sedarat, guest-edited by Porochista Khakpour
November 2011

a wounded man drags his one-legged body home from the war through the depths of winter to describe the sighting of the horse to his village.

[One night, opening in foil] and Sonnet

By Farnoosh Fathi, guest-edited by Porochista Khakpour
November 2011

But no one can / hold a hope so long—there’s relief.

My Father’s City

By Pascale Petit, guest-edited by Brian Turner
October 2011

All of Paris is quiet, while the oxygen machine / struggles to fill your lungs.

Smoke

By Michael Symmons Roberts, guest-edited by Brian Turner
October 2011

What new edifice / hardens within, waits for world to sharpen.

Hong Kong

By Dunya Mikhail, guest-edited by Brian Turner
October 2011

Through windows of no glass / in houses that leak water and fish

Distant Fears

By Billy Ramsell, guest-edited by Brian Turner
October 2011

At night she wakes and feels the money move.

The Sleepwalker

By Matthew Sweeney, guest-edited by Brian Turner
October 2011

The sleepwalker shot himself / on the bridge over the freeway, / while the cars sped on to Dallas.

Desert

By Sumana Roy
October 2011

The desert is a virgin— / its skin only as old / as the last thought.

Downhearted

By Ada Limón
October 2011

What the heart wants? The heart wants / her horses back.

Boulevard des Invalides

By Pierre Peuchmaurd, translated from the French by E.C. Belli
September 2011

You don’t take out your horses / your madmen and whales / you don’t tidy your seagulls / in the seagull drawer

History

By Joanie Mackowski
September 2011

In the beginning, every- / thing was middle, and lovely to behold // (if you like that sort of thing)

Hello Corpse    How Pale You Are

By John McKernan
September 2011

Now I remember    The broken rib / Your tight hold on that wisdom tooth / The sound your kneecap made on rock

Son-in-Law

By Dawn Potter
September 2011

“Oh, don’t he miss those kids,” but that’s the truth. / Why else would he have locked them in that room, / and waved that gun, and howled?

A Stranger Comes to Town

By Sarah Blackman
August 2011

Where are all the girls in this story? Don’t they / set out on journeys? Don’t they bang around in the surf?

[All morning I feed the petals]

By Simon Perchik
August 2011

the way a child just born / already knows to kiss head down

Championship

By Melissa Broder
August 2011

God keeps unfurling me / with God’s gigantic helium.

The Lost Colony of Roanoke‚ 1587

By Sherman Alexie
August 2011

The settlers are not gone. They’re here.

Trace a Line

By Sam Ross
July 2011

Once I was home, Dad told me: You have the blood / of 100,000 innocent Iraqis on your hands.

The Pond

By Christopher DeWeese
July 2011

our place to hide / is someone else’s place / to go finding

The Devil’s Face

By Katie Farris, guest-edited by Ilya Kaminsky
July 2011

The girl has been learning how to shit on the devil’s face. It is a slow process.

Child

By Jacek Gutorow, translated from the Polish by Piotr Florczyk, guest-edited by Ilya Kaminsky
July 2011

death keeps its eyes open / and looks into my right pocket

Thunder in April

By Ishion Hutchinson, guest-edited by Ilya Kaminsky
July 2011

suddenly, strangely peopled, like Robin / in sheaves of rain, the land blurs April / into a fiction that never ends

Every Day

By Ingeborg Bachmann, translated from the German by Monika Zobel, guest-edited by Ilya Kaminsky
July 2011

War is no longer declared, / it is continued.

Island

By Valzhyna Mort, guest-edited by Ilya Kaminsky
July 2011

But none could slap my face as hard as the sea slaps / its adopted child and then steps back, all tears.

And tomorrow the sun will rise

By Nicolae Coanda, translated from the Romanian by Martin Woodside, guest-edited by Ilya Kaminsky
July 2011

Say—die quietly—I’m a poet and poets / don’t speak the truth.

gut feeling

By Kalju Kruusa, translated from the Estonian by Brandon Lussier, guest-edited by Ilya Kaminsky
July 2011

unlike potatoes I do not want /

to be stirred.

1977

By James Byrne, guest-edited by Ilya Kaminsky
July 2011

Star Wars premiered as they cut the exiguous flap of my umbilical.

Other Cultures, Other Realms

By Ilya Kaminsky
July 2011

For his guest-edited issue, Ilya Kaminsky chooses nine far-flung writers who attempt to answer the question, “What are poets to do in this moment of uncertainty?”

Many Things Happened

By Nikola Madzirov, translated from the Macedonian by Magdalena Horvat, guest-edited by Ilya Kaminsky
July 2011

irrelevant things which we’d / never do unless /

they were written down.

group photo of dissection

By dawn lonsinger
June 2011

this could be a comfort amid machines / a cure for feeling remanded

Untitled

By Marie Lundquist, translated from the Swedish by Malena Mörling
June 2011

I have seen a woman transform into a garden and a garden become increasingly more of a woman.

Off to the Side

By Andrés Navarro, translated from the Spanish by Curtis Bauer
June 2011

Schools of horse mackerel come out to greet us, / weigh your lack of sleep and my jitters.

Crimea, An Unexpected Freeze

By Jacob Shores-Argüello, selected by Chris Abani
June 2011

The straw-boned seabirds are blown / from their trawlers, their religion of fish.

Terror of the Back Eighty Acres

By Casey Thayer
May 2011

He grew tame // and hunted the dreams of farm kids—every tree scratch / on the window were his nails, every pregnant farm girl // was knocked up with the devil’s seed and spiderbabies.

At the end of the tube

By Adina Dabija, translated from the Romanian by Claudia Serea
May 2011

They are the same worms / four billion years old, but fatter.

Freedom

By Nathalie Handal
May 2011

even the guards will count / the scars on their tongue / and prepare to heal

The Worst Buddhist

By Bill Neumire
April 2011

The dog wakes, rushes toward the wood. / Then it realizes which world it’s in / & lies down again.

Molecularity

By Laura McCullough
April 2011

bones mellowing from red to yellow, / and wanting to crack / each other open, suck each other / dry.

I Won’t Let You Go!

By Rabindranath Tagore, translated from the Bengali by Fakrul Alam
April 2011

It’s the oldest cry resounding from earth to heaven / The solemnest lament, “I won’t let you go!”

Harvest

By Erin Lyndal Martin
April 2011

I’m younger than anyone here, and I have read // Books about bees, but I’ve only been stung twice.

Deadbeat on the Farm with Cow

By Jay Baron Nicorvo
April 2011

She taught Deadbeat // perineum, wanted a word in exchange. He offered her / duende, which she had.

Marriage: Flesh Of My Flesh, Bone Of My Bone

By Marcela Sulak
March 2011

And dice (singular, die) can come to rest // in six different attitudes, like a woman, / it means something played, something given.

Stable

By Jacques J. Rancourt
March 2011

My house became a stable / when my wife gave birth to a horse.

Distant Incident on Paper with Square Holes

By Wayne Koestenbaum
February 2011

Improvisation, if you’re eviscerated, is quasi-strange.

[Like a nation’s bulk that has started]

By Osip Mandelstam, translated from the Russian by Alistair Noon
February 2011

Like a nation’s bulk that has started / to make the earth sweat, / the dust-encrusted armada / of the herd

from Prose from the Observatory

By Julio Cortázar, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean
January 2011

[T]he observatories beneath the moon of Jaipur and Delhi, the black ribbon of migrations, the eels in the middle of the street or in the stalls in a theatre…

Kill

By Sandra Meek
January 2011

June’s winter, ivory-rinsed blue, // a wild dog tugs a sock of skin /

down an impala’s stick-leg penciling skyward

Snake Story

By Albert Abonado
December 2010

my father has always had / a fear of being swallowed / whether by a large reptile or the earth

[Clothes come to the party]

By Maya Sarishvili, translated from the Georgian by Nene Giorgadze and Timothy Kercher
December 2010

What are the recently depressed accused of?

Tom O’Bedlam

By Aubrie Marrin
December 2010

Put your foot / in that water, and you’ll lose a toe, / or worse, a whole foot.

Dust

By Michael Meyerhofer
November 2010

I want to tell you, I have nothing / but respect for your ribcage

People Like Us Are Dangerous

By Martín Espada
November 2010

I wanted to be a pugilist with clever hands.

Deepening into Humanness

By Emily Fragos
November 2010

Guest Editor Emily Fragos introduces six poets who write about family incarnations—Matthew Zapruder, Cynthia Cruz, Gabriel Fried, Mark Wunderlich, Lynn Melnick, and Jennifer Franklin.

Molotov

By Cynthia Cruz, guest-edited by Emily Fragos
November 2010

Got my enzymes, a nickel bag of / Electrolytes. My entire life, / I’ve been waiting for this.

It Is Tuesday

By Matthew Zapruder, guest-edited by Emily Fragos
November 2010

if you hate me / it must be / for ancient reasons

The Butcher

By Gabriel Fried, guest-edited by Emily Fragos
November 2010

He’s not old, but he is / too old to live with his sisters / for no reason.

Gebet eines Ehemannes (A Husband’s Prayer)

By Mark Wunderlich, guest-edited by Emily Fragos
November 2010

When thistles spring up in the field / of our marriage, when the noxious vine // twines onto the maple, let us pull it up / by its roots.

Poem for a Daughter

By Lynn Melnick, guest-edited by Emily Fragos
November 2010

We aren’t native to this land. / It’s time to plant what is. It’s time to go home.

I would like my love to die

By Jennifer Franklin, guest-edited by Emily Fragos
November 2010

Thin arm around my neck. It doesn’t look / Strong enough to hold a small animal; but it is.

[The Ministry of Hot Water]

By Alexandra Petrova translated from the Russian by Stephanie Sandler
October 2010

The Ministry of Hot Water / has posted an opening: Director. / Well, why not, we can take that on.

That Woman

By Tishani Doshi
October 2010

That woman who spreads her legs, / who is beaten, who cannot hold / her grief or her drink. / Don’t become that woman.

Convince Me Eternity

By Lisabeth Burton
October 2010

There is not one dignified thing about this life or that one.

The Smiths, as I understand them

By Bob Hicok
October 2010

There’s a box at the hospital in which to deposit / children unlikely to win the Nobel Prize.

Untitled

By Roya Zarrin translated from the Persian by Kaveh Bassiri
September 2010

because I hate your every-now-and-then anthems, / because I hate the smell of your socks in the stone mihrabs.

Big Money

By Matthew Pennock
September 2010

We played Steal the Bacon / and explored our unmentionables /

behind the gazebo

Fairytale Smalltalk

By Patty Seyburn
September 2010

He says: look yourself up in the guide and tell me what you are.

Travel

By Bei Dao, translated from the Chinese by Clayton Eshleman and Lucas Klein
September 2010

Nobel Prize-nominee Bei Dao uses travel as a metaphor for life.

Egghead

By Peter Jay Shippy
August 2010

Then he remembered / That he couldn’t remember // If he had toes. What a relief.

The Lucky One

By Robert Walser, translated from the German by Daniele Pantano
August 2010

…there / was always a lucky one, who carried with him / the mistakes of others, what a burden / it must have been that pushed him down, / but he was pleased by all this pushing.

Victoria Kent

By Scott Hightower
July 2010

A few of the prison reforms / you wrestled into implementation // in Madrid, will take root /

in the rest of the world

Oil and Ash

By Michael Bazzett
July 2010

I understand this economically, and I’d rather not / mention the resemblance to prostitution, but when I open my / mouth it also fills with something called sky

New Girls and Room of Surprises

By Grzegorz Wróblewski translated from the Polish by Adam Zdrodowski
June 2010

Men suddenly become meek. / Damn, we all needed it badly.

In Angangueo

By Sarah Lindsay
June 2010

Little boys in drifts of dulling orange were trying / to pack balls of wings to throw at each other; / she thought perhaps she wouldn’t have children.

Beautiful Funeral

By Monica Ferrell
May 2010

Tonight, you are thinking of heroin, / Of the boy who pulled you to his lips / In a blue room and whispered heroin / So close you could feel it on your face like a cloudburst.

Longing

By Andrew Slattery
May 2010

The mammoth and the dodo never saw it coming— / in the end, there is only the idea of species, like a chair / left swinging when the kids go in for lunch.

At the Rahba Souk

By Doog T. Wood
April 2010

I buy some hair of two women, quarter-kilo / fasoukh, some honey, a lizard–

Mississipi

By Aimé Césaire translated from the French by A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman
April 2010

Too bad for you men who do not see who do not see anything

Three Tales

By Jessica Bozek
March 2010

The soldier had been trained in the language of the people he disappeared. This language was a language of things and their ghosts.

Chemotherapy

By Meghan O’Rourke
March 2010

The decomposing squirrel in the yard, / a plump sack. That night / I bled for hours, like a dumb animal.

The other part of truth

By Tadeusz Dąbrowski translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
February 2010

Around Friday heaven arrives; they no longer supply / hell (it stays on the shelf too long), but I’ve got / hell at home, as well as heaven and the saints.

I Have Feelers

By Matthew Rohrer
February 2010

Nobody wants to be rain               falling in November

Hanging Garden

By Colin Cheney
January 2010

They huddled / under the turning maples—almost / as if they were asking to be tried for something / they knew they must have done—

Two Poems

By Adonis, translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
January 2010

To 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.

Albania

By Yang Li translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury
December 2009

Back 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.

The Corset

By Joanna Grant
December 2009

This is what you will not understand, / I tell this jelly, this fat crybaby girl.

Loving Cyrus

By R. Dwayne Betts
November 2009

You’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.

from Fugue of the New Year

By Richard Garcia
October 2009

Next door in the neighbor’s carport, children / laugh, jumping on bubble-wrap, like the far, / perpetual small arms fire in the distance.

Asking for Everything

By Lilah Hegnauer
October 2009

You thought I literally drained every boy’s canteen and / every last quarter and washer was mine.

the sentence

By Sébastien Smirou translated from the French by Andrew Zawacki
October 2009

we imagine rose tintedly because his hands are in his lady

Monarch & Mulberry

By Nickole Brown
September 2009

After that, the sound of hammers and crows / through the open window, then somebody needs to // cut down that goddamn tree.

from Green Zone New Orleans

By Mark Yakich, Guest-edited by Pia Ehrhardt
September 2009

Forget some call love / Bedside grammar: // The body rules / And it’s a trick

Three Poems

By Brad Richard, Guest-edited by Pia Ehrhardt
September 2009

We’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.

Snapshot

By Andy Young, Guest-edited by Pia Ehrhardt
September 2009

There is the talk of friends, uncles / disappeared, impossible to translate / because in English one disappears, // is not disappeared.

Omen

By Joseph Campana
August 2009

You are drowning but / knowing so will not help you.

The Witch’s Burning

By Emma Bolden
July 2009

his lips in the dark dog-warm against / the flat of my foot / became pain became not became flame

Requiem for the Orchard

By Oliver de la Paz
July 2009

Our hands were/ the real language and we hit each other with closed fists/ just to unhinge the details.

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.

The Bleating of Copper

By Amjad Nasser translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
June 2009

Night and horses— / is this what history is all about?

Acknowledgment, 1964

By Gabrielle Calvocoressi
May 2009

Could have gone west. Could have packed your things, / who cares that you weren’t old enough to drive.

Geomancy

By F. Daniel Rzicznek
May 2009

All 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.

Canada

By Henrietta Goodman
April 2009

When he rows out to collect the geese, / he thinks, like any god, this is just / what you do.

Two Poems

By Rafael Acevedo translated from the Spanish by Ricardo Alberto Maldonado
April 2009

With these five bones, human bones, / Doctor Chanca makes me a cannibal / by arranging feathers from the hand / of another cannibal

Decorum: A Study

By Alison Powell
March 2009

A 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.

Dumb Show

By Suzanne Wise
March 2009

The spine does its turtle charade / and the fingers can be counted on / to dance the spider dance or perform

Three Poems

By Novica Tadic translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic
February 2009

Poor us, we are all kings / when we gaze at the starry sky.

Two Poems

By Cynthia Cruz
February 2009

Beautiful, finally, inside the quiet / Latrine of my Mexican / Confessional: // Rode a pony, drove / A tractor, and never / Finished the first grade.

Earring

By Ales Steger translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry
January 2009

The 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.

Two Poems

By Umberto Saba translated from the Italian by George Hochfield and Leonard Nathan
January 2009

It’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.

Flocks of Never

By Drew Blanchard
December 2008

In 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.

Cat Posing for a Portrait of a Dog, Hollywood, California

By Elizabeth Gold
December 2008

On this rainy afternoon in Hollywood / California, I’m practicing / philosophy, watching him sip Napa Red / while he remakes me / into a dog-slut

Ode to Nitrous Oxide

By Sharon Dolin
November 2008

Isn’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.

The Body or its Not

By Keetje Kuipers
November 2008

I 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.

I Think of Pilgrims

By Terese Svoboda
October 2008

Cellphoned to their continents, Pilgrims / from whatever persecution, kill those turkeys in / want, want, want, and the landing gear drops.

Plague

By Robert Thomas
October 2008

Fold 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.

Two Poems

By Manoel de Barros translated from the Portuguese by Idra Novey
September 2008

To 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.

Only Different

By Richard Howard
September 2008

Bruce 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 2008

We pour the eyes in with a ladle / like post-holes half-filled / with mud-water, tap them in / with it if we have to.

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 from the Hebrew 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 from the French 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 from the Hebrew 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 from the Turkish 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 from the Slovenian 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 from the Latvian by Inara Cedrins
January 2008

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

Three Poems

By Adonis translated from the Arabic 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 from the Korean 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.

Seven Poets Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith

October 2007

Guest editor Tracy K. Smith introduces poems “that will save you from drowning, only to admit they were the ones to push you overboard…”

‘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 from the Vietnamese 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 from the Romanian 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 translated from the German by Ian Fairley
April 2007

I HEAR THE AXE HAS FLOWERED, / I hear the place can’t be named

Average

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

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 from the Polish 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

By Tomas Tranströmer translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly
May 2006

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

Sonnet

By Cecco Angiolieri translated from the Italian by Robert Bly
May 2006

If I were fire, I’d burn the world down;

High Noon

By Antonio Machado translated from the Spanish 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 from the Hebrew 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 from the Spanish 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 from the French 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 from the Urdu 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 from the Swedish 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 from the Arabic 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

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 from the Spanish 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 from the Chinese by Tony Barnstone
February 2005

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

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

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

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”

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

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

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”

By Lilah Hegnauer
October 2004

I want this heat, this choice.

World Weather Forecast

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.