AudioPoetry

[The Tip of the Stalk]

By Ernst Meister, translated from German by Graham Foust and Samuel Frederick November 6, 2023

The tip of the stalk / draws / the tossed flower —

Poetry

It’s Important I Remember That Things Are Getting Back to Normal Around Here—

By Cortney Lamar Charleston November 6, 2023

the trains are busy with bodies

Poetry

Revision

By Hala Alyan November 6, 2023

I don’t mean to hate the sparrows.

Poetry

Until the End

By Carl Phillips October 2, 2023

Perversion, sang the sea, / in waves.

Poetry

Garden

By Ahmet Baitursynuly, translated from the Kazakh by Jake Zawlacki October 2, 2023

Clouds concealed, / Now settled down

AudioPoetry

Histories

By Mandy Moe Pwint Tu October 2, 2023

In 1988 our fledgling nation drowned again in blood and clamshell clanging, oh how holy the flesh on pagoda stairs

Poetry

Essay On Tilt

By Kimberly Quiogue Andrews October 10, 2023

Winter. A small door opens, and on the other side, a brightness.

Anthologia

AudioPoetry

Diversity Statement

By Gustav Parker Hibbett September 5, 2023

In the years that formed me, I poured myself into classes, hobbies, extracurriculars I was told you’d like: Latin, Mandarin, Multivariable Calculus, Swimming, AP Physics.

EducationRace

Poetry

[To the noise of rain, pushing sleep…]

Dimitri Psurtsev, translated by Philip Metres September 5, 2023

To the noise of rain, pushing sleep / Like hay into a sack, into me,

Poetry

Voice-Over

By Anna Maria Hong September 5, 2023

A tongue beneath an avalanche, I have cracked / the firmament’s mirror

Poetry

The Owls of Saginaw

By Monica Rico August 21, 2023

My father            knew doves / were a clenched fist

Anthologia

Poetry

Peach

By Cyrée Jarelle Johnson August 7, 2023

The summers swole me: knuckles first, then wrists right down to the elbows.

Poetry

Idle Dawn

Lee Min-ha, translated by Jein Han August 7, 2023

Grandma, why did you powder your face

Poetry

The Trash Mountain Writes Home

By Yunkyo Moon-Kim August 7, 2023

Do not stop the home from leaving, from dissolving / its bouldered foundation into the bank of bodies beneath.

Asia & OceaniaConflict

Poetry

Instead of Ekphrasis

By George Abraham July 5, 2023

i. site of injury turned site of inquiry turned how we met in the field turned virtual

Poetry

Self-Portrait As a Black Hole

By Mag Gabbert July 6, 2023

A poem

EssayPoetry

From Thus Spoke n’t

By Kim Hyesoon, translated from Korean by Jack Jung July 5, 2023

Selections from Kim Hyesoon’s experimental lyric essay project

AudioPoetry

Closure

By Omotara James June 5, 2023

My parents were scheduled to divorce on Valentine’s Day.

Poetry

Untitled IX, 1982

By Victoria Chang June 5, 2023

I counted 44 lines and while I counted, 44 Asian women were touched.

Poetry

Toward Mercy I Throw the First Stone

By Simon Shieh June 12, 2023

Before I knew you I dreamed of you.

Anthologia

Poetry

The Perfect Place for a Homeland

By Dmitry Blizniuk, translated by Sergey Gerasimov June 5, 2023

Autumn. The perfect place for a homeland —

Poetry

Portrait of Fear

By Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi July 6, 2023

Flower blossoming in her hair is scorching hot — Sister is

AudioPoetry

Abstraction

By Lindsay Turner May 1, 2023

A cheap print of an aspen grove / In the exam room

AudioPoetry

Infix

By Chris Santiago May 1, 2023

What happens when fantastic / becomes fan-fucking-tastic

AudioPoetry

Daydream

By Tuệ Sỹ, translated by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins May 1, 2023

Riding an ant, we seek a fairy’s cave / A realm of long life, where butterflies flutter

Poetry

Gunpowder

By Jesús Cos Causse, translated by Kristin Dykstra May 1, 2023

I have met gunpowder: gunpowder moves past with death

AudioPoetry

Noon

By Phoebe Giannisi, translated by Brian Sneeden May 1, 2023

a row of cypresses towered over the road / we knelt at the water’s source

Poetry

David’s Nipples

By Wayne Koestenbaum May 1, 2023

on Sunday after church I took a walk

Poetry

Anthologia

By Sarah Ahmad April 25, 2023

Guernica’s gathering of poems by a single poet

Anthologia

AudioPoetry

I Want, Still

By Dure Ahmed April 17, 2023

Today I am empty, fasting till sundown

Anthologia

PoetryThe Cutting Room

A Girl Can Dream — 

By Vandana Khanna April 5, 2023

Unpublished poems from a new collection reimagining Hindu goddesses through a feminist lens

AudioPoetry

Paper Hummingbirds

By Myronn Hardy April 5, 2023

I’m afraid of what’s beyond the dishes / we wash in retrieved lake water.

AudioPoetry

At the Gallery

By Kwame Dawes April 5, 2023

Finally at the gallery, the couple (all fiction of them), / she in that white bustier, he with the cutout

AudioPoetry

From Guerrilla Blooms

By Daniela Catrileo, translated by Edith Adams April 5, 2023

I look in the mirror / I look at the Indian women

AudioPoetry

In-N-Out for Iftar

By Tamer Mostafa March 20, 2023

The car in front stalls

AudioPoetry

Ism

By Sarah Ghazal Ali March 20, 2023

The name of God is sufficient / for me.

Religion

AudioPoetry

From Here

By Edil Hassan March 20, 2023

Build your life on white, on silence and on stillness.

AudioPoetry

Low Flying Planes

By Hajjar Baban February 20, 2023

A mirrorless story. My father’s mother’s name.

Anthologia

Poetry

Exodus

By Ayesha Raees December 14, 2022

Once is still burial. The rain closes / on gravel, cementing solid / a sterile garden.

Poetry

from Couplets

By Maggie Millner December 7, 2022

All my life I’ve shown up late.

AudioPoetry

Gravitational Constant

By Alicia Mountain November 30, 2022

Even after some time, I am still the weeping wound in the houseplant, / tearing easily.

Poetry

Hill

By Cho Ji Hoon, translated by Sekyo Nam Haines November 23, 2022

Climbing for ten li, over the white cloud-dusted hill, / then, I came down to a small road leading to a village.

AudioPoetry

Wrong Distance

By Elizabeth Metzger November 16, 2022

Don’t you miss me as if I were dead? // That’s how you’d like to be loved.

Poetry

People’s Teeth

By Ahlam Bsharat, translated by Fady Joudah November 9, 2022

One question of childhood: why / do some people have gold teeth?

AudioPoetry

(De)Composition

By Alexa Luborsky November 2, 2022

there will be no more baptisms

AudioPoetry

Eulogy

By Anthony Aguero October 26, 2022

The officer’s fists on the door

AudioPoetry

Radical Surgeon of My Own Life

By Jessica Abughattas October 19, 2022

To wait for something to open, that’s optimism.

Bodies & Nature

Poetry

Our Village

By Tesfamariam Woldemariam, translated by Menghis Samuel and Charles Cantalupo October 12, 2022

You say, our village. / Do you mean our exact village

History

ExcerptPoetry

“The beautiful dream that we unfold and extend…”

By Monchoachi; translated by Eric Fishman; photographs by David Damoison October 11, 2022

"Turn, forever going to your other side / turn your body on the space..."

AudioPoetry

Aubade

By Marco Yan October 5, 2022

Another year of rain and terrible air, then I see the street again —

Bodies & Nature

AudioPoetry

Brief History

By Gbenga Adesina September 28, 2022

The night the flag of the British empire came down / in my country, the cry of a mottled wolf was heard in the wild.

AudioPoetry

Cruel World As a Litany Of Stars

By Haolun Xu September 21, 2022

Forgive me, I did not mean to copy your life.

Poetry

spirit animal

By Nicole Cecilia Delgado, translated by Urayoán Noel September 14, 2022

At this point, / my body’s beastly smell / starts to be all that matters.

Bodies & Nature

Poetry

Speaking Alone

By Tristan Tzara, translated by Heather Green September 7, 2022

senseless here’s the man with the crystal contractions / with the rumor of sand with a doll’s past tense

Poetry

In the Middle of August, I Saw the Sky

By Romeo Oriogun August 10, 2022

One morning, on a wet day during the week...

Bodies & Nature

AudioPoetry

Irrawaddy Delta, 2016

By Maung Day August 3, 2022

A grain of rice cannot feed a hundred mouths

Poetry

Hypertension

By Courtney Faye Taylor July 27, 2022

In the early 1870s, at the mouth of the Big Bend tunnel, / John Henry beat a mechanical steam drill in a “steel driving” / contest.

Race

AudioPoetry

Search Party

By Steven Espada Dawson July 20, 2022

Together, above the kitchen sink, we peeled / a hundred russets.

Family & Relationships

AudioPoetry

Bringing Up Mother

By Idman Omar July 13, 2022

I was not dressed correctly when / motherhood interviewed me.

Bodies & Nature

AudioPoetry

Lived Here

By Tarik Dobbs July 6, 2022

My Birth State can’t possibly drive interest

AudioPoetry

If I Say My Body Is Asian Does This Poem Disappear

By Eugenia Leigh June 29, 2022

Another poem mannequin- / Ing the body.

Bodies & Nature

Poetry

from Beyond the Somber Station

By Liliana Ponce, translated by Michael Martin Shea June 22, 2022

Thought reduced to ashes — / in the golden sky tracing lines.

AudioPoetry

The Christmas Poem

By Jackson Holbert June 15, 2022

there are thousands of days left / tens of thousands if we’re lucky

Arts & Culture

AudioPoetry

A Poem Is a Landscape of the Mind

By Megan Pinto June 8, 2022

It was the winter of my life. Afternoons, / I watched light fade / from the faces of brownstones.

AudioPoetry

When the Sky Is Closed

By Mark Yakich June 1, 2022

Not even children who brave the street / Will notice the robins, mistaking them for nightingales.

Poetry

Hope Dissidents

Mona Kareem, translated by Sara Elkamel May 25, 2022

When we die, / the cemetery keeper tires / of surveilling our graves’ windows.

Poetry

One Hundred Percent House

By Shin Hae-uk, translated by Spencer Lee-Lenfield May 18, 2022

A house where no one lives / needs someone to draw it full of glass, / then smash that glass to bits.

AudioPoetry

Cut Off

By R/B Mertz May 11, 2022

The last man who touched my tits cut them off

Poetry

In the Field of the Dead

By Luisa Muradyan May 4, 2022

I have brought the wrong kind of sandwiches / and yes, I know this poem is supposed to bring us there

Family & Relationships

AudioPoetry

Vigilance

By H. R. Webster April 27, 2022

The hottest summer on record I couldn’t open the windows.

Poetry

Contemporary Utopia

By Ra’ad Abdulqadir, translated by Mona Kareem April 20, 2022

Skilled carpenters / excellent mechanics / energized farmers / fierce fighters

Labor

AudioPoetry

AFTER SEVEN YEARS I’M HOME AGAIN & ANIMAL AS EVER

By Despy Boutris April 14, 2022

I think back / to childhood— // to this state / & its former rainfall

Poetry

the wind would not stop

Xiao Xi 小西, translated by Yilin Wang April 6, 2022

a child licks the candy wrapper; the treat has fallen into the mud.

AudioPoetry

Girl from

By Vandana Khanna March 30, 2022

I tell the oracles that no one has touched / me, that plenty have looked, drunk their fill / on my (   ).

Gender

AudioPoetry

Without Them

By Bernardo Wade March 23, 2022

Thirsty / doesn’t describe what we’re looking for, / yet for some it means desperate for another’s touch.

Climate & Environment

AudioPoetry

A Barn of Many Languages

By Saddiq Dzukogi March 16, 2022

my tongue is at war with a new language

Poetry

With a pair of wolves I walk over the stones

By Khrystia Vengryniuk, translated by Dmytro Kyyan March 11, 2022

With a pair of wolves I walk over the stones. / Clouds are pressing on my shoulders,

Poetry

Pear Snow

By Todd Dillard March 2, 2022

It’s my job to find the dead, / chauffeur them back to their plots.

AudioPoetry

Tenement

By Kellam Ayres February 23, 2022

I’d been undoing myself for years. / Why would this day be any different?

Bodies & Nature

Poetry

Bomb that tree line back about a hundred yards. Give me room to breathe.

By Cathy Linh Che February 16, 2022

Daughter, I think you embellish. A bomb / is nothing like a slammed door.

Poetry

After the Offering Ritual, Cain Carries Abel Home

By I.S. Jones February 9, 2022

Violence is a failure of communication. / The shoulder severed from the dream / of the socket.

Poetry

from and when the light comes it will be fantastic

Kristin Berget, translated from the Norwegian by Kathleen Maris Paltrineri February 2, 2022

This landscape snares us       with its dry stalks

AudioPoetry

Swing

By N. K. A. Prempeh January 26, 2022

At some point, fathers stop unraveling / in private, don’t they?

AudioPoetry

Extended Release

By Lesley Wheeler January 19, 2022

I won’t know how to daughter till it’s done.

Poetry

When You Land at Ben-Gurion Airport

By Issam Zineh January 12, 2022

a convocation of desert eagles rises from your spleen, / each one carrying a stone

Poetry

when I say hello to the oldest apples

By Ina Cariño December 6, 2021

they tell me / a mountain is good for me

Dirt

Poetry

The Summer Your Parents Split

By Kathleen Radigan December 6, 2021

All my life I never told you how quiet it was / on the dismount

Dirt

Poetry

Forgiveness

By Ada Limón November 10, 2021

It was the winter of manatees, Captain / Rhonda and her chartered pontoon boat / floating down the Crystal River.

Poetry

The Heart of Europe

By Tomaž Šalamun, translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry November 4, 2021

The heart of Europe is elegant and / dead.

Poetry

American Monster

By Bryan Byrdlong October 28, 2021

"Thursday, I am born, / of the white glove’s lazy C-section"

RaceUSA

AudioPoetry

Earning Keep

By Sophie Klahr October 26, 2021

“You can see the pure it-ness / of anything if you cut it right”

AudioPoetry

The Daughter Myth

By Vuyelwa Maluleke October 14, 2021

“Say then that I am overflowing / & nobody’s fool & did not give up"

Poetry

On Being Asked What I Am Tired Of

By Paul Guest October 7, 2021

The weather of course and the afternoon light / that might as well be bad milk

Poetry

From Aterrizar no es regreso

Xavier Valcárcel, translated by Carina del Valle Schorske September 16, 2021

“On the islands, leaving comes to seem like the natural thing to do.”

Americas

Poetry

Propuesta de Financiamiento para el Plan de No Hacer Nada / Funding Proposal for the Do-Nothing Plan

Rubén Ramos Colon, translated by Raquel Salas Rivera September 15, 2021

“I will need a grant of a million or two. / A million or more.”

Americas

Poetry

Traducción / Translation

Nicole Cecilia Delgado, translated by Urayoán Noel September 14, 2021

"America I spent it all and now I'm nobody.”

Americas

Poetry

Against Empire: A Folio of Puerto Rican Writers

Raquel Salas Rivera and Ricardo Alberto Maldonado September 13, 2021

Guest editors Raquel Salas Rivera and Ricardo Alberto Maldonado introduce three writers who “counter the loneliness and exploitation of U.S. capitalism.”

Americas

Poetry

The Show of Growth

By Nakeisha Cantzlaar August 19, 2021

"And right there and then, I showed her, I wouldn’t be of much use."

PEN America DREAMing Out Loud Bodies & Nature

AudioPoetry

My Mom Buried a Saint in the Yard

By Laura Villareal August 12, 2021

Not like you think, but yes, he’s upside down.

Family & Relationships

Poetry

The Night is an Eruption of Nebulas

By E. Hughes August 5, 2021

A pipe is a globe of loss— the baby / has no diapers and auntie had to bring some by.