by Stephan Roll
Translated from the Romanian by Henry Finch
In the moonlight your eye lacks a pupil
But flowers you lead by hand
Inverse praying to the consecrated saints
Like the taste of the fountain’s black stones
by Zita Izsó
Translated from the Hungarian by Timea Balogh
We lay with our faces in the sand.
For a long time, we dare not believe this is the shore.
We don’t know how many of us made it,
how many we lost.
by Tanja Maljartschuk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins
do the stooped stoop
do the blind squint
do those who love fall in love
would mothers have borne their mothers
had they the choice
can you stop a war with war
by Iryna Tsilyk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Vitaly Chernetsky
feat. the photography of Ruslan Hruschak
Be as it may,
every year begins and ends with
Christmas.
You will be standing somewhere on the porch
of your multi-apartment homeland
looking out for the first star
above the dark eyes of nervous cars
by Ondřej Hanus
Translated from the Czech by Nathan Fields
the first verse decides
through Holešovice underpass back into Mother
airtight sleep of narration spawns flaring micronarratives
a thing is the ekphrasis of essence and essence is the ekphrasis of God
that is the last use of matter
by Petr Hruška
Translated from the Czech by Jonathan Bolton
That’s him.
It happens.
Selective mutism,
as learned people call it,
the sudden loss of speech.
by Pavel Kolmačka
Translated from the Czech by Nathan Fields
LIVING IN HARMONY
even with blossoming trees.
We shout, we laugh,
we carry, we lift,
we load hives, lids, pedestals,
we tighten straps
and drive in wedges.
by Aleksey Porvin
Translated from the Russian by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
The tree must see—under your feet
a dove drops its feathers—take them;
your plumage will be white
if you choose an easy flightpath.
Late cherries—round wounds
remember what arrowhead
made them in the wet summer wind.
They remember, but you must forget.
by Olena Jennings
I remembered the scene when her lover got trampled
by an elephant. She lifted herself above the despair.
Last time I went dancing I was at the level of sky.
I felt my body unfold because I was so close
to getting what I wanted and then it folded again
by John LaPine
The Girl with No Tail has no balance.
She teeters on the brink,
eclipses precipice. Threat of falling does not
thump hard in her chest, does not live
in her throat, her tiny black throat.
She lives like danger becomes her.
She lets herself wobble against
wind, a branchless tree: thin.
by Wanda Deglane
You’re crouched outside the car, limbs folded
like a broken sun chair, spluttering and vomiting
against rocks that gut your hands like first-century nails.
I’m gripping the seat, picturing the world about to go
tumbling, frozen by gravity that wasn’t there minutes ago.
The music explodes through the speakers, tries to drown
out the sounds of your shuddering, your gasping for air,
your downhill battles that shred the still night in two.
by Slavick Ciganec
Translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings
in her eyes a sign should read “swimming prohibited”
no one knows how many of those who ignored it drowned
one day you’ll want to try it
but there is one tiny problem
you must dive to the very bottom
and come face to face with the heavenly
or martyrs
by Sneha Subramanian Kanta
The airport terminal is only familiar because Nietzsche is—there he stands, with a silent yawp. Your body murmurs but you learn to extrapolate the creaks into joint movements. These scrapes of glue paper and unwanted items – unreal carpet route, real scrap. How less we require. How much we desire, how much we have, how much we keep, of it all, the body is closest.
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by Sergey Lebedev
Translated from the Russian by Dmytro Kyyan
They could arrest the garden gnomes,
exterminate swallows and spiders,
roll a granite pavement in asphalt,
take out to the East
the porcelain figurines from a chest of drawers
that peeped through the window,
replace the human souls
with an overcoat cloth
by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
Meticulous Demeter’s revenge was slow but vicious;
she bred innumerable souls to choke the underworld
and laced them with her own ethos; her triumphs
sickened its entombed monarch, and soon he was impotent
by Snežana Žabić
There are life forms who slash the cheek
of a refugee, lay eggs like lizards, drown in their siestas.
Immigrants talk about papers, Dubai, Cambodia,
Singapore, migrate pleasure and work.
by Khrystia Vengryniuk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Dmytro Kyyan
When you make a shot where the snow lies now,
I have my veins twitch and I wake up.
I screw up my eyes.
I fly away.
Imagining HOW you are standing there.
by Oksana Lutsyshyna
Translated from the Ukrainian by Dmytro Kyyan
it seems they sleep on the ground, in the ground
he gets out of the ground in the morning
to say some words
but he forgot the words because they are too long
by Andriy Tuzhykov
Translated from the Ukrainian by Dmytro Kyyan
the square
named after you
is made of pixels
is rendering
is in mitosis
with the square named after me
by Hilary Scheppers
It is early August and I am in New Jersey,
in this backyard, too green,
where my friend reads
a buzz poem called “Follow Him”