there are no street ads anymore,
except for advertisements for death and patriotism.
this is our, no one else’s, autumn.
I’m a bit queasy from freedom,
from undercooked pasta with stew and raw water.
under artillery shelling
we are all as free as wheat,
as trees and birds,
(poetry/translations/Ukraine)
Lamb’s ears plucked where
the stairs are, prairie
grass, steeple here, and
dandelion bends,
(poetry)
How long is a piece of string when all we’ve got is scissors?
(poetry)
I think about the world:
a hummingbird’s heart
Its structure
so wickedly tender
(poetry/translations)
Remains, remnants, in print only, a death mask; just as dead
But in another place. Taxons without Lazarus. Facts
Some data has confirmed. You, among the dead,
(poetry)
But every so often it goes berserk
And slips away from all control
It injects all sorts of liquids, starts to speak in tongues
And becomes infected with French syphilis or English rickets
Disrupting discotheques or buses filled with children
It dreams of ascension into heaven
(poetry/translations)
Newspapers make the best
umbrellas, the rain erases
them. Fascinating philosophies
in my head-hunch over litter,
digging for shit
when there is already so much
on the surface.
(poetry)
but how do you explain a marathon
to those who’ve never run it?
(poetry/translations)
father’s Chevy
station
wagon nostalgia
weekend I am
always in
service to
my failed
marriage’s cream-
colored
cashmere
sweater
(poetry)
Sears Tower stands fast and solidly flies. Over its base no statues try to beautify the essence of its vim: a skeletal trajectory, a bold learp of blackest metal/glass reaching, soaring higher and higher
(poetry)
My sister is going on a limitless journey
Those flying blue atoms above us
Penetrating our hearts exactly like darkness
(poetry)
this, the poem i cannot
return to
this, the wholehearted
downpour
(poetry)
it was a hundred thousand miles safely tucked away
had been years since its teeth had tasted the lock of his mouth
when they murdered him
it didn’t break no it vibrated
changed from key to tuning fork
death does that you know
(Palestinian Voices)
His cheek, cool on asphalt, shining before he closed
his eyes: the pigeon’s neck, shimmering
(poetry)
To read Södergran’s work today is to easily contextualize her voice within a feminist discourse, but it also defies being so neatly categorized. What makes her poems feel timeless is exactly their resistance to any niche delineation of time’s cultural productions.
(reviews)
The poems refuse to dramatize feeling when intimacy is already present, letting proximity, stillness, and ordinary action carry the weight. Moments of connection are often pared down rather than heightened. After intimacy is established through shared gestures—errand talk, side-by-side movement, unremarkable speech—“Greenlight” concludes simply: “Nothing much happened.
(reviews)
This identity transformation, and the inherent tensions of being a mother-writer, inform the poet’s search for a medium that can contain the impossibility of it all. Its pulsing, chimeric quality is reflected against, and through, the structure and constraints of poetry.
(reviews)
plant
a single seed
germinate
be
a lusty weed
die out
then again sprout
a life
(poetry)
The speaker’s estrangement from her parents and her ancestral culture carries over to relationships with lovers and friends. The book contains moments of broad and icy humor, which reflect uneasily on her difficulty in forming intimate relationships.
(reviews)
The government, monet notes, will try to spin a different narrative—that of the domestic terrorist, the outside agitator, the paid protestor. That’s why it’s important to write and share, to maintain the presence and livelihood of resistance.
(reviews)
How does one write about the very things that defy language—things like loss, sorrow, not to mention potential words from the past that went unsaid? How does one convey language-defiant notions through language? For Heller, such linguistically impossible truths are conveyed with metaphor and story, but also with silences, approximations, and fragments.
(reviews)
I went to the lakefront at sunrise, but the beach and
sky were empty, and my dear friend
was not there.
(poetry/Palestinian Voices)
in my city, two fallen en route
to a market, eight more
at an intersection
of a hospital, ice
in their cheeks, hair, lips as if
they said goodbye
(poetry)
One of the famous Iranian rug patterns is the Tree of Life, in which the tree is often located on the vertical symmetry line of the carpet. The tree symbolizes the connection of earthly beings to the heavens.
(poetry)
I WhatsApp my cousin on his jubilee. He was born the day after the Yom Kippur War started, and here again: rockets, hostages, my aunt fainting. Can we celebrate anything without a backdrop of mourning, or—unlike the other day in Ukraine—even mourn, not adding at the memorial half a village to the slain?
(Ukraine)
this sharpness
of ritual burns
toward expiation, but
the body kindles
(poetry)
That which presents itself
startling you
when you least expect it
must have the practised agility
of that which does not present itself
when it is expected.
(poetry/translations)
So the day begins:
searchlight; flesh cannot repel
it, drinks; partakes; that
never hurt before.
So the day begins
with Big Bang light; no way to
penetrate its skin.
No tool can pierce it.
(poetry/translations)
Look! Look! Look! The dance
of these albatrosses in a sea, heaviness
like the iceberg of a frozen era!
(poetry)
The boy in the black carriage listens.
Solo in flight the starlings have no message.
They fly. He listens.
(poetry)
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