Four Prose Poems from Outskirts of the World by María Negroni, trans. from Spanish by Michelle Gil-Montero
How does a disciplinary sea compare to a didactic sea? Or a choppy sea to a verbalized sea? You never know. Meanwhile, this sea begins to seem remarkably like the sea. You only need to wait for the day and night of reality. The sea’s strategy is its own concern... Read More
The Swine King by Michael Jeffrey Lee
“First,” he said, shouting, even though his advisors were quite close, “know that I have exhausted every means of keeping myself alive, and when I leave you at last, it will not be by choice. But even so, all animals must die, even great ones, and my time is swiftly approaching...” Read More
Excerpts from Crane by Tessa Bolsover
I awake and the boughs, battered and paddling against the window, bruise shadows in the hardwood. Amplified by rain, the sounds inside resonate like pieces of a disassembled object. Slowly, words begin to spread with a viscous clarity over everything... Read More
Three Po-Proses by Kim Hyesoon, trans. from Korean by Jack Jung
We question and answer to be nearer to “poetry.” / Literature is inherently unreal. / Poetry lies against the conventional use of language and / Fiction lies against the conventional use of reality. / Perhaps, a writer is someone who knows that after we disappear, what will remain is our lies... Read More
Excerpt from The only name we can call it now is not its only name by Valerie Hsiung
We are swimming and smiling with fate, that is if we could, if we could move beyond the barrier which keeps us practically mute and immobile. Otherwise, it may be conceived as akin to something that resides be-tween negligence and happenstance, between dubious absence and absentmindedness, that is what is residual... Read More
Three Prose Poems by Theodore Worozbyt
As dark memories say to themselves, the only flower to grow now and then is nasturtiums, little elephant’s ears. My grandmother opened her eye and sang the bitter batter butter song. Under the case the pillow was striped in indigo. And then a kiss like a windflower came and had a final note written on... Read More
Excerpt from No Material by Losarc Raal
Times will change the cobalt heaven tongues. I walk people into water past the hippo lights. Black model railroad track. Doctor of the upper wake plea. My heart is hollow; my skin waives tears... Read More
Three Prose Poems by Marc Vincenz
Unreclined at the peninsula’s end, a mile from the city where your feet become the night unveiling—too far to hear of the siege of cicadas where Sister’s coat lies perched against the dark... Read More
Three Prose Poems by Lee Min-ha, trans. from Korean by Jein Han
m is for my name, h is for your name my name, blue-backed snare, sharp oxygen, gasping for air I went to lustrous june’s fleshmarket to sell the apricot-colored uvula caught in my throat... Read More
Three Poems by Michelle Gil-Montero
I had this murmur, this tremor in my mouth. This whisper of running water, now overgrown with wildflowers. I had this thought of the Alhambra, this chalky color caught in folding mirrors... Read More