Five Poems by Valentine Penrose, translated from French by Mia X. Pérez
If it is a stone of sorrow, there I am seated / There, where ribbons fall sideways on the plain / White veils. This is nothing. / Where the wild-eyed goddess plunges the child of another into fire. / The tree refuses to orient itself. The emerald / Keeps its fist clenched... Read More
Five Poems from The Cheapest France In Town by Seo Jung Hak, translated from Korean by Megan Sungyoon
The heart was about to explode when the pipe was raised, still bleeding. The length of happiness was inversely proportional to fear, that bold solidity. Disgusting laughter echoed around. I, too, almost cried... Read More
Second Beginning by Isabel Sobral Campos
I neglected my period blood / somewhere secretly I drink it / under a rock to trick time. Tis / a pleading smell. Scent / of moon-stages, coals. / (Pause). I don’t see well. / (Pause). Will you tell me / if I misspelled / something vital / like my body / something / like…a... Read More
THE WIND’S MONOLOGUE by Natalie Stamatopoulos
I am an archive / of song. / I have infinite ears / & abdomens. / Am toothless / like a dry rag. / Like a petal. / Am weightless / without mooring. Pregnant with wishes. An essence / of pollen. Brisk / nudge at the ankles. Citizen-full as a trashcan. I am looped &... Read More
Two Poems by AM Ringwalt
silk: a sheen to wear like water. glistens, then, in palest / light. i wrap it ‘round my legs in dreams. i name myself / a partisan, provisional, python, pythagoras? before you /
died, grandfather, you were speaking nonsense into being. / it’s what you thought you knew you saw... Read More
Two Poems by Adrian Lürssen
First the sky is two blues / then twenty-two / a reflexive act of flattery / Chimney and smokestack / become that pixelated neither – / each blue open in equal part / to something and nothing / independent of light’s / calculus against touch: fingertip /
to glass, deduction mined to mind... Read More
Three Poems by Zan de Parry
You learn well – you have a very good job / You have a job and a head on your shoulders – you go to different measures / You go to the event – you meet people who distribute survey ads / under the ploys / You don’t listen to your friend who tells you... Read More
REM IN RE by Michael D. Snediker
Goad credo. Whether quaver or / my larynx’s season / of wilt. / Our cleverness hard & unkind sinks / into your parable, he said. / I am disposed / straightway, / a continuous body resigned / to outward travel as / an artery arrayed / in edgrow...
Read More
For a Stone Sky and Other Fragments by Franca Mancinelli, translated from Italian by John Taylor
this cage of mirrors / —a reflection / with someone else’s eyes. / Pixel dust, what we are. / * / where the lips were / we will not find the coin / for the other shore... Read More
Brass Bell with Tripwire by Chukwuma Ndulue
I prefer a place with no logos / Where lingering musk / wafts through closed corridors, / where there is no way to rationalize a curse, / where there is no fear worth weeping... Read More