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Loss

black and white drawing of a boy with smoke coming up behind him floating over a red mound
Julia Griffin, "Smoke." Copyright Julia Griffin
Three Poems
By Imran Sada’i
Three short poems by Uyghur poet Imran Sada’i consider how our thoughts and emotions inhabit the world around us.
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
MultimediaMultilingual
Two pears hang from a branch in front of a blue sky
Photo by Mario015 Medeiros on Unsplash
Keder
By Yordanka Beleva
Way back, the old Turks believed that when you die, you bequest to your nearest and dearest precisely forty sorrows.
Translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel
MultimediaMultilingual
An old ornate mansion in India with a green wrought iron gate
Photo by Vikram Nath Chouhan 🇮🇳 on Unsplash
Once Elephants Lived Here: Part 2
By Geetanjali Shree
The city murmured in the mazes of her ancient face.
Translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
Two blue glass skyscrapers seen from below against a cloudy blue sky
Photo by Shubham Sharma on Unsplash
Once Elephants Lived Here: Part 1
By Geetanjali Shree
Here, all things old have been suppressed.
Translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
A black and white image of a hairbrush with an engraved handle
Photo by Michèle C., licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The Making of Tenderness
By Lyuba Yakimchuk
and where do they make this tenderness / as the war rages on around them?
Translated from Ukrainian by Oksana Maksymchuk
MultimediaMultilingual
Princess
By Marta Orriols
A headband, you say? You’re ridiculous.
Translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem
Transcending the Human Viewpoint
By Madeleine Feeny
I allowed myself to be very playful and unafraid, and to try everything.
Three Observations, Untitled
By Ksenia Zheludova
The most horrible things, remember this, are incremental.
Translated from Russian by Josephine von Zitzewitz
MultimediaMultilingual
Trial Run
By Yau Ching
nothing is certain but and taxes
Translated from Chinese by Chenxin Jiang
MultimediaMultilingual
Pegasus Autopsy
By Julio Pazos Barrera
Soon the volunteers will arrive
Translated from Spanish by Bryan Mendoza
MultimediaMultilingual
Two reindeer on a rocky ledge with a body of water behind them
Photo by Jørgen Håland on Unsplash
Journey toward the Island
By Laila Stien
Norway’s Laila Stien tracks a group of Sámi herders guiding their reindeer on the seasonal migration to the north, fighting obstacles both natural and man-made.
Translated from Norwegian by Kerri Pierce
Season of Grief
By Guy-Gerald Ménard
Entwined concrete houses / perform pirouettes on both sides of the street
Translated from Haitian Creole by Chantal Kenol
Multilingual
Under the Rubble
By Guy-Gerald Ménard
Fear sets up a tent / on our chest
Translated from Haitian Creole by Chantal Kenol
Multilingual
January 12, 2010
By Lyonel Trouillot
We already know there are no words for saying some things.
Translated from French by Linda Coverdale
In All Magnitude
By James Noël
I abhor humanitarianism.
Translated from French by Antoine Bargel & Alexis Pernsteiner
Multilingual
Landscape image of Karoo, Beaufort West, South Africa
Photo by Juanita Swart on Unsplash
Poison Karoo
By Etienne van Heerden
Perhaps I will poison a petrol engineer’s coffee.
Translated from Afrikaans by Isobel Dixon
Bonsai
By Guadalupe Nettel
If I was a cactus, what kind of plant was Midori?
Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
The Train
By Murathan Mungan
Some weekends my parents and I went from Mardin to Syria and stayed in Kamışlı, the town nearest to the Turkish border. Although it was a town, I compared Kamışlı, with its wide, well-kept roads, its…
Translated from Turkish by Ruth Christie
A Bullet Fired into the Night
By Ngo Tu Lap
No one knows he used to be a man
Translated from Vietnamese by Martha Collins & Ngo Tu Lap
Product IV (Love and Death)
By Tadeusz Pióro
An anthologist from Berlin asks mefor poems new or recognized:ideally, they should amplifythe union of love and death.I’d like to suit her, since I’m dying,but love is a master from outer…
Translated from Polish by the author
Damascus, What Are You Doing to Me?
By Nizar Qabbani
How do the gardens of Sham transform me?
Translated from Arabic by Shareah Taleghani
Memories of Lily-Colored Photographs
By Jung Mi Kyung
Photographs of a former girlfriend develop into a problem in Jung Mi Kyung's short story.
Translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim
from Portrait of M
By Matei Călinescu
Romanian writer Matei Călinescu pens an anguished eulogy for his son.
Translated from Romanian by Angela Jianu
Photo of the Oudezijds Kolk canal in Amsterdam
Bert Kaufmann from Roermond, Netherlands, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
from The Ministry of Pain
By Dubravka Ugrešic
Instead of talking, they seem to be patting each other with words, spreading a soothing, sonorous saliva over one another.
Translated from Croatian by Michael Henry Heim
I Pity the Garden
By Forugh Farrokhzad
The schoolchildren fill their backpacks / with tiny bombs.
Translated from Farsi by Sholeh Wolpé
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Elegy
By Ahmad Shamlou
And so we repeat the round / of night and day
Translated from Persian by Zara Houshmand
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