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Love

A nitrate negative of Gaza

"Gaza. (Ghuzze). Section near the mosque" by American Colony in LOC.

Afterwords

By Sinan Antoon

After our house in Jabalia was destroyed we hid in the UNRWA school. But the bombs followed us there too . . .

Translated from Arabic by the author

Multimedia

A close-up of a vinyl record player

Photo by Adrian Korte on Unsplash

Unfasten the Silk of Your Silence

By Souad Labbize

I buttress arches / curved in the style of Nubian vaults

Translated from French by Susanna Lang

MultimediaMultilingual

A sunset behind a line of trees

Photo by Niels Weiss on Unsplash

vesper

By Iryna Shuvalova

do you see—the trees have gathered at the gates in the twilight

Translated from Ukrainian by Uilleam Blacker

Multilingual

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

A colored floral illustration on paper

Detail of “Leopard Bearing Lion's Order to Fellow Judges", Folio 51 recto from a Kalila wa Dimna. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Alice and Nasli Heeramaneck Collection, Gift of Alice Heeramaneck, 1981

All It Seems

Even grief now becomes / a kind of delight, or so it seems.

Translated from Gujarati by Meena Desai

Multilingual

A wagtail perching on a stick by a body of water

Photo by Nikita Nikitenko on Unsplash

A Wagtail’s Song

By Bikash Dihingia

How was it possible that there was another me buried within? And how could someone else feel his presence even before I could?

Translated from Assamese by Harsita Hiya

Multilingual

A woman's mouth, chin, and neck

Photo by Pan Yunbo on Unsplash

Ligature Marks

The interplay of night and day. Deception and falsity.

Translated from Korean by Soje

Multilingual

Cereté, Córdoba

By Raúl Gómez Jattin

I love you all even more in exile

Translated from Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Olivia Lott

Voracious

By Emma Pedreira

Even though I hate her, my mother probably wrote me letters that she never sent.

Translated from Galician by Kathleen March

This, I Don’t Know

By Samuel Solleiro

These are the years directly preceding the onset of vulnerability.

Translated from Galician by Neil Anderson

Aperture: Sudanese Female Novelists Coming into Focus

By Sawad Hussain

Is there some sort of double marginalization at play?

Freedom of Flight

She is a woman I have watched for many years, and for as many years she has been unaware of me.

Translated from Arabic by Nariman Youssef

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Basma’s Dream

By Amna al-Fadl

She hovers overhead, aimless, surrendering herself to fate.

Translated from Arabic by Katherine Van de Vate

Here in Chorrillos

By Doris Moromisato

My eyes fill with rowboats

Translated from Spanish by Margaret Wright

Multilingual

Raur Gives His Blanket a Hug

“How am I supposed to be nice when nobody’s nice to me?”

Translated from Norwegian by Guy Puzey

Firstclaw

By Sachiko Kashiwaba

Firstclaw’s love spells were rumored to be unusually effective.

Translated from Japanese by Avery Fischer Udagawa

Red earth has broken apart leaving a cliff-like overhand with exposed tree roots against a forest...

Photo by Jan Canty on Unsplash

Color Thief

By Sara Shagufta

When a man cries / he floods himself in salt tears / and colorfast he drowns

Translated from Urdu by Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb

The Story of Sunni and Bhunku

By Himalayan Oral Tradition

Why, oh why, did you not come back immediately?

Translated from Lahouli by Noor Zaheer

Hyenas

By Eduardo Plaza

It was impossible to talk to a dead man, so I talked to her instead.

Translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery

MultimediaMultilingual

“I Write in French to Tell the French I Am Not French”: Algerian Francophone Poetry

By Marilyn Hacker

Algerian Francophone poetry was largely outside, and in contrast to, the post-World War II movement in French poetry of disengagement from political causes.

The Tartar from the Kremlin

By Habib Tengour

This particular Tartar is unbeatable at cards/ Except for whist (not a game for Tartars)

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Celebration of the Absent One

By Habib Tengour

The father’s house is a living language/ Open to guests passing through

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

MultimediaMultilingual

A shadowy orange canyon with twisting rock formations

Photo by Peter Forster on Unsplash

In the Shadow of Grenada

By Samira Negrouche

She tells me not to be / a holy land / or a mine of tenderness

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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Minus One

By Samira Negrouche

I would like/ in a faraway language/ to tell you what I don’t/ understand

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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Beneath a Pile of Rubble

By Djamal Amrani

Because death is stronger than hunger

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

From “The Night Inside”

By Djamal Amrani

The slumber at the edge/ of my well of fever

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

Heeng Kochuri

By Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay

I cannot serve a glass of water to a Brahmin’s son.

Translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha

Devdas

By Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

She searched for an answer, embarrassed for the first time in her life at having to say what she was about to.

Translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha

My Grandfather and Sitt Biba

By Mohammed Abdelnabi

I was convinced that I really had caused the death of the one I loved most.

Translated from Arabic by Nariman Youssef

From “Notes of a Crocodile”

“What if we ran out of things to talk about?”

Translated from Chinese by Bonnie Huie

A photo of a brown leather wallet

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Code Name: Butterfly

By Ahlam Bisharat

It terrified me to hear the words “honor” and “flesh” in the same sentence.

Translated from Arabic by Nashwa Gowanlock

The Stork and the She-Stork

“I was a fool. I will die and you will live. Return to our young now!”

Translated from Sindhi by Musharraf Ali Farooqi

from “Last Words from Montmartre”

Dusk in the Latin Quarter was like a fairy tale or a love poem, like a Klimt mosaic, like glowing, rose-colored clouds reaching toward the heavens.

Translated from Chinese by Ari Larissa Heinrich

A flowering bush, a leafy shrub, a bonsai tree, and a cactus stand in a row in front of a white...

Photo by Julie Fader on Unsplash

Bonsai

By Guadalupe Nettel

If I was a cactus, what kind of plant was Midori?

Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey

Waiting Room

By Francesc Parcerisas

The love you didn't expect is always more pure.

Translated from Catalan by Lawrence Venuti

Product IV (Love and Death)

By Tadeusz Pióro

An anthologist from Berlin asks me / for poems new or recognized:

Translated from Polish by the author

The Wondrous Deer of the Eternal Hunt

By Svetlana Alexievich

He was a wildly lonely person. I loved him.

Translated from Russian by Marian Schwartz

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Memories of Lily-Colored Photographs

By Jung Mi Kyung

These pictures were for the two of us to look at, laughing, never something to keep or show someone else.

Translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim

2023-February-Love-Song-for-Words-Al-Malaika-Johnson-Feature

Valentine Puzzle Purse, Anonymous, British or American, 19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. Richard Riddell, 1981.

Love Song for Words

By Nazik al-Mala’ika

Why do we fear words? / If their thorns have once wounded us, / then they have also wrapped their arms around our necks / and shed their sweet scent upon our desires.

Translated from Arabic by Rebecca C. Johnson

A couple at the tomb of the poet Hafez.

By Adam Jones. License: CC BY 2.0.

The Fish

By Ahmad Shamlou

I think my heart has never been / like this / so warm and red.

Translated from Persian by Zara Houshmand

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