GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT Left in the grey air as unfulfilled desires smoke of cremation * Hankering for dawn but it won’t rise for them corona victims * The blackbirds wonder why the streets are so empty sorrowful their songs * A…
SILVIA PIO If you were to find yourself in a doctor’s waiting room one day, feeling in question, or at sea, feeling anxious, or even just plain bored, might you be glad of a poem displayed there, on the wall?…
GEORGE GÖMÖRI In the whole of New York what I liked best was the tree: that tree with its dense foliage spreading its arms up there on the roof, green and abandoned as the everyday miracle that is the created…
Today Emily Dickinson turns 190. EMILY DICKINSON 1488 Birthday of but a single pang That there are less to come – Afflictive is the Adjective But affluent the doom – *** 903 I hide myself – within my flower, That…
YUAN CHANGMING Raging against the Crow in the Park Disguised as a pigeon, you’ve just had Enough food From my palm (& heart); then, you flap high up Beginning to circle above me, ready To flee away only after Shitting…
GABRIEL ROSENSTOCK Letter to India (On the imprisonment of Telugu-language poet Varavara Rao) India! Does the goddess Saraswati smile When you imprison your poets When, Covid-stricken, they hallucinate Sitting in a puddle of urine? India! Is Saraswati pleased? Varavara Rao,…
ELDAR AKHADOV For Richard Berengarten, author of the monumental poem ‘Tree’* Artillery shots. Foxtrot sounds. Villages and ancient manuscripts burn. And only the tree outside the window keeps waiting. Whenever you glance at it The mind darkens. Ice crumbles. A…
