the opening of a cut grape
the butterfly
if it were to lightly rest upon the extremity of the grape
and pretend to drink
if it wasn’t drinking
what was to be done then?
I would have to
improve how well I see, with these eyes
improve how well I hear sounds
and so, employing my hands
I noticed
the smallest of movements
(translations)
“What do you know of killing a child?” Medea shouted, her voice trembling with the hereafter. The woman bowed her head, circling endlessly over rocky ground, stacking stones, whispering absence and omission as her weapons, searching for forgiveness that would never come.
(translations)
This week, ACM is posting poetry every weekday.
we’d just torn out not the eyes but the reflection in the eyes
while culture hanging on the media’s fangs was dying there
no more tongue-in-cheek now and above the vulgarity of
doing cartwheels thinking thus to prove its legitimacy
doesn’t the assassin push forward by brandishing his knife
(poetry/translations)
This week, ACM is posting poetry every weekday.
And they continued with more world history examples
where a victim lived happily ever after next to her executioner,
having forgiven and forgotten.
(poetry/translations)
This week, ACM is posting book reviews every weekday.
Catrileo’s florid, visceral writing traverses the centuries—from the so-called Conquista, Spanish term for the brutal colonization of the Americas, to the modern-day capital city. It is a lyrical and nonlinear chronicle that spans the arrival of invaders armed with “old maps” and “steel fire” to urban streets studded with bars and patrolled by police known for their brutality.
(reviews)
Someone is calling to you from the sea,
beating the heavy waves with his tired hands.
(poetry/translations)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
No wonder Mr. Barde is struggling to fall asleep, considering his job where hypertension goes without saying. So, he suffers patiently, reads until impossible hours, and sometimes plays at cultivating insomnia, gaining thus beaches of meditation, wanderings in thought fostered by silence.
(translations)
This is the first in our Palestinian Voices series, featuring work by Palestinian writers and artists, including people who are part of the Palestinian diaspora.
The dignified broadcaster on TV smiled. “The boy’s mouth is now a restricted military zone,” he announced.
(Palestinian Voices/ Translations)
if the Earth would just split in two
& one half would take its leave
I’d take a seat on the other half
& absorb the blue skies above
(translations/poetry)
to know everything
and understand everything
doesn’t guarantee I’ll be able to tell the difference between poisonous and edible
(No Place is Foreign/ translations)
Nothing is so dangerous as a news report wherein Palestinians die in the passive voice, the horrific violence massaged into meaningless oblivion, the perpetrators somehow irrelevant.
The novel is stamped with an epigraph: a quote from “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears. There’s an alchemy between the novel and the song that should not be overlooked—it adds an eeriness to Gråbøl’s profound yet distant prose as if the true emotion of the writing has been blunted by fear or pills.
(review)
The only language you know / the form you know as love / as one, / complete / complete.
(translations)
But those who press the grapes now, / who toil from morning till night, / they’ve disowned us…
✶✶✶✶
That day has never ended. / The fence he built is still new.
There’s joy on Easter, and that joy lasts a long time. And Lent, it’s not about food, it’s about self-sacrifice, humbling yourself before God. You’re saying, You’re the big guy. I’m the small guy.
It doesn’t matter which language you speak, because language does not influence your way of thinking.
“d. h. lawrence”
“fuck your cv”
(TCTC translations/poetry)
“The Blind Musicians”
“Pontos”
“The Smokers”
(poetry)
“Colorado”
“Arkansas”
(poetry)
When Owlet was two years old I ran across the phrase “a mother should tempt her child into the world.” Meaning that she should show her child how cool it is to be alive, how interesting it is, how inspiring. Something like that. And that’s probably a good idea. I’m trying.
(drama)
Night:
#42
43
44
47
(poetry)
“That which befell you neither occurred nor didn’t occur”
“At the end of every season”
“Discover the place where you live”
(poetry)
My job is this: be what the others are not.
(drama)
I get that’s what happens to her. But can a Korean man love a woman twenty years older?
(drama)
To know how to exploit the weaknesses in human nature in order to best serve Christ is one of the paradoxes of the inquisitor’s calling.
(fiction)
Her suffering fits right into the camera.
(fiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 