[Tomorrow morning I will take a shower]

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

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

How I Wanted You to Find Me and What You Have in Common with God
By Sarah Carson, January 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
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
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.
Poem with Several Unforgivable Keatsian References, Poem Burning Up in the Fire I Lit to Warm My Son, or Do as I Say Not as I Do
by Chris Dombrowski, May 2011

Hello, darkling, / where’ve you been all my life?
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!
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!”
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.
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.
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
translated from the German 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
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
Two Poems 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
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 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
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.