‘Poets and pornographers’ and other poems
by Alex Leigh Farber
The poets and the pornographers
meet in the same place
every night—
after the city has emptied out.
Neither tourists nor police
can tell them apart.
‘If the Queen Shows up in a Double Rainbow’ and ‘Teardrop Pearls’
by Mitzi Dorton
Signs
After death,
Wouldn’t they come
From a mother, too,
Who bangs on the glass
At the emergency room,
The desk ladies talking,
Lost in their own family sagas
War Cake
by Charlotte M. Porter
Enduring bloodshed, recipes, women’s spoils,
make do w/ shortages, rations & absence
of manna, milk & honey, miracle loaves—
foody promises made real in War Cake,
a city confection for cooks w/out chickens,
an eggless feat, almost fat-free w/ raisins,
minus milk, to fete a special occasion
as soldiers die on someone else’s T.V.
‘A word fallen out of language’ and other poems
by Milena Findeis
In the mouth, the word
to taste
to chew
It hums in the ears
is rolled by the eyes
cut apart by grimaces
Spread with hashtags
processed in the news stream
until it ends, checked off,
in the cache
What will people say?
by Mire Marke
She tells me not to sit on the cold stone slab in front of the fireplace. It will ruin your womb, she says. You need your womb. I tell her I don’t want children anyway. Flames burst from her mouth in the shape of what will people say?
‘The Mother’ and other poems
by Ema Dumitriu
In fleeing me, my wrath,
my fear
a female rat is giving birth
on the hot sidewalk,
steadily,
trailing behind a streak of blood
with child
‘In the passing’ and other poems
by Alexandra Magearu
a tumult of birds
like a little chaos
thick and fluttering
with treasures in their toothless mouths
cruel in the glacial light
(…)
Two wartime poems
by Olena Herasymiuk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Viktoria Ivanenk
I am standing on the stage that
no longer exists
it’s not a stage — it’s a mass grave,
under it
buried alive, lie thousands of
men, women, and their children —
the dead, the living, and the unborn
Three wartime poems
by Natalka Marynchak
Translated from Ukrainian by Lada Kolomiyets
everyone will have their own story
of broken paths and breathlessness
everyone will have their own defended territory
of roaring and laughing
I now have a heart
of reinforced concrete
it knows neither pity
nor comfort
Untitled (from "Stitches")
by Doina Ioanid
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure
To be exposed to the harsh air, saturated and heavy with those who came before you. To come into the world as fog takes big bites out of the bark of birch trees and foxes hop around drunk.
K. 7:00
by Krista Szöcs
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure
they say love will save me from the distances I can’t cross
the distance from here to many meters away measured in footsteps
love will also save me from tiresome fantasies
that inflate my ego and self-confidence
where is my ego and self-confidence?
In an attempt to escape my doubts & excerpts from the cycle "Pebbles"
by Vasyl Stus
Translated from the Ukrainian by Bohdan Tokarsky and Julius Kochan
If people carry on writing books
for another couple of centuries
then what will our descendants do?
What taught people to sharpen knives
was screams.
Sand Covered City
by Munawwar Abdulla
Elect a baby as king, why don’t you? I am
played in, loved in, traded in, not
fenced in. Nor do walls protect me.
Perhaps the desert does.
High Tea at the Kapurs'
by Karuna Ezara Parikh
She tells me and my college friend from London
– Diana, ‘like the princess!’ Aunty says –
that ‘nowadays it’s only for marriage,
like we are Khatri, we want Karan also to marry Khatri.’
Diana asks why, as I dip Pure Magic in chai,
but Karan comes in, bringing with him hot-hot air,
‘Bhenchod’ he says, and tells us how the ‘bloody driver’ has been unfair.
Philsophies
by S.T. Bryant
Othello teaches, contra Descartes, that we are perpetually,
to our precarious doom, unaware of that deepest in our hearts.
We are planetary, too planetary, orbital, to be so singular.
Always susceptible to annihilative ruminations, motives.
Our happiest times, our Monism, prey us to destruction.
Three poems from the cycle “Vacate the Premises”
by Iryna Starovoyt
Translated from the Ukrainian by Grace Mahoney
New tenants will sit on my couch, cuddle each other.
The woman is beautiful, pregnant.
They will drink tea from my cups, will light my candles.
Only Ursa Major, the Great Mama Bear, asks:
Who’s been sleeping in my bed? Something’s not right,
what’s gone wrong here…?
"A Home to Freedom" and other poems
by Yuliya Musakovska
Translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings and the author
The war that you've been carrying
in your shirt pocket
gnawed a hole in you as if it were a fox.
Your heart keeps falling out.
I am sewing the hole shut,
firmly holding the edges together
with my numb, unbending fingers.
