by Iryna Shuvalova
translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps

if I am not being killed
do I have the right
to talk with those who are being killed
as an equal

do I have the right to hurt
if I’m not wounded

by Edwin Fagel
Translated from the Dutch by Claudette Sherlock

You lie tied & blindfolded
& all the men are chanting

sanctus sanctus

they all share the same name
& all walk as I do

by Tomaž Šalamun
Translated from the Slovenian by Matthew Moore

To open the faucets, Anastasia,
will bring you to naught

nowhere. We watched the heat.
A figure is a face, a part,

motif. Sulfur on a barrel.

by Vasyl Stus
Translated from the Ukrainian by Bohdan Tokarskyi and Uilleam Blacker

I wandered around the city of my youth,
vainly searching, in the new blocks,
for yesterday’s buildings, parks, and paths,
for familiar patterns on pediments,
geography is lost.

by Ekaterina Simonova
Translated from the Russian by Robin Munby

writing about a city
in which you’ve never set foot
is like trying to have a conversation
with someone who no longer loves you
so much pain lies between you
that language collapses into incomprehensible fragments

by Mary Birnbaum

Atavistic we palm the mist
at the window, hoarding our safe
close shadow. We peer into
the uncertain freedom that once
unfolded monstrous birds
with narrow wings and jagged beaks
like storm waves, like the bite
of mountain range and clouds
nesting hailstones.

by Jessica Kim

Someone will parcel memories into the cardboard box and leave them on my doorstep. I will not be not home. Today, I no longer live in this body, fingers unhooking from the discolored sky, feet angling towards the heavens, aimless.

by Olena Jennings

Forbidden are the plants that grow around our feet.
Forbidden are the plants that taste like lavender.
Forbidden are the plants that sting with touch.
Forbidden are the plants that fall under our weight.
Forbidden are the plants that point towards the sky.
Forbidden are the plants that can be boiled into tea.

by Snežana Žabić

I will live your futurism
If you will live mine

I see wet cement and imagine
softly imprinting my naked
back in that porridge of silicates and oxides
one vertebra at a time

by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee

By noon the sun shimmers the city and I know
I should leave. But I have books to buy and stop
at the only English bookstore. Inside, the air is cooled,
It reminds me of a bookstore at home, in America.

by Ali Podrimja
Translated from the Albanian by Genta Nishku

it’s been days been years been centuries
that the person with the wound in the head
remains on the white hospital table

by Alina Stefanescu

Candlelight makes it look
as if the hand goes numb
before the throat.

You are the color technician
in a dream warning the woman
who was me before bleach.

by Nina Murray

the outside margin of nostalgia
is the last page in a used-up passport
full of exit stamps commingling their inks
a mongrel pedigree
my ghosts reduced to spectral marmosets
winged on my shoulders
I can feel them part the hair at my nape
touch my scalp with their infant-sized
icy fingers
poetry is what I would think if I wore the skin

by Aleksey Porvin

All knowledge of translation is dying in a far-off fire, but we keep trying. “Ask the birch, the river, the explosion that has taken root deep in the heart, beg for the right words, like the children beg for bread from the border guards” – where does such advice lead to? The crumbs smell like brass, the crust smells like lead and steel – everything repeats the structure of the bullet, even this old man with a metal core instead of words.

by Ștefan Manasia
Translated from the Romanian by Clara Burghelea

I took lots of photos, according to personal logic,
but the ectoplasmic entities failed to appear
on the screen. I took pictures of white, red ribbons
hanging from trees but the sudden wind

didn’t make them vibrate, in the Morse alphabet
or another code. It was sunny and cold.

by Andreea Iulia Scridon

But when the thunderstorm leaked
through my cardboard sanctuary,
like Hamlet’s, the walnut tree
(which, by tradition, we know must be
the victim of our torture, for rules are rules),
I was alone in the world,
I was alone in my life.

by Arvis Viuls
Translated from the Latvian by Jayde Will

One morning upon awakening he understood,
that actually his entire life
he had wanted to be a saw and nothing else,
and he decided to follow his dreams.

by Juris Kronbergs
Translated from the Latvian by Māra Rozīte

Mouths that mouth in different tongues
none are mine
none are yours
A star shines a crown glows
Nothing’s mine

by Inga Pizāne
Translated from the Latvian by Jayde Will

While doing a writer’s residency
I went to beach every afternoon
to look at the sea.
There was neither the beginning
nor final credits.

by Tereza Riedlbauchová
Translated from the Czech by Stephan Delbos

When she came from abroad I was waiting for her
she was startled she sat on the stool behind the door
bent her legs and hugged them she had dark blue knees