A Storm Like No Other

by Marie Ketline Adodo

What storm is brewing
With the falling of dead stars
That lie along these alleys of sea foam?

Suicidal waves
Rise and crash
Into the throat of a gaping gulf
Which …

Hot Stepper at the Gates of Hell

by Martin Egblewogbe

 

who now pleads with the ancestors
seeing with naked eyes the gates of the dead

who now sees the impossibility of life
finding at last the answer to the question

and wonders …

Thousands or Millions of Tiny Dots of Varying Size

by Matt Donovan

Once, I drove through Virginia slush to NRA Headquarters,

the winter air humming
                                 with the …

I’m not sorry for the summer I gave you chlamydia

by Susan Nguyen

because there were bees.
And I’m not sorry for bees.
Not even the two who buried
their stingers in me and made me cry:
one by my left knee, one …

What’s It Like Escaping Something Trying to Kill You?

by Karisma Price

A minister blames this on the slaughter of unborn children. We enter a tunnel, and my breath

holds itself for comfort. My father suggests we find a copy of The Green …

The mothers were drowning

by Danielle Pafunda

At first, they said the mothers were drowning
in their own waters. Each mother agreed.
I am drowning she said. They said you should know
it is not your fault. …

Who Takes This Desert Home?

by Soheil Najm

Shadows stick into the horizon
like thorns of flame.
I am a magician,
angels on my right
illusions on my left.
On my shoulders, sands that lost their way
spout,

My Story

by Leeladhar Jagoori, translated by Sarabjeet Garcha

My story
is the story
of a hoe wearing thin
of a factory becoming a ruin
of a road falling out of repair

my story
is the story
of stone
turning …

Battleground

by Gerrit Achterberg, translated by Thomas McGuire

Listen to Thomas McGuire’s introduction and recitation of the poem in Dutch.

 

The gloaming falls like ground.
In Holland lopes a hound.
A hound with yellow teeth.
He roves throughout the …

PUNISHMENT

by Boris Khersonsky, Translated by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky

All animals were once human, but then
they sinned—
and God flooded our Earth
and Noah smuggled all those former humans in pairs. Each of them
was wicked, deceitful. And …

Postcard

by Ananda Lima

you speak to a mountain
by becoming
it your body in her
language of minerals
a whisper a humming
bird’s fluttering wings
since I became
a mother nearly a decade

How We Teach Them

by Melissa Dickey

in a café I watch a boy
maybe five years old

hit his sister again and again
till his mom gives him a phone

on which to watch videos of boys
shooting …