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Love

A close-up of a vinyl record player
Photo by Adrian Korte on Unsplash
Unfasten the Silk of Your Silence
By Souad Labbize
Algerian poet Souad Labbize pens a sequence of love poems to the voice of a female singer.
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
By Befaam
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
By Lee Hyemi
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
By Ann El Safi
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
MultimediaMultilingual
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
By Maria Parr
“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.
Beneath a Pile of Rubble
By Djamal Amrani
Because death is stronger than hunger
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
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
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
MultimediaMultilingual
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
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
From “The Night Inside”
By Djamal Amrani
The slumber at the edge/ of my well of fever
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
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
Heeng Kochuri
By Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
I cannot serve a glass of water to a Brahmin’s son.
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”
By Qiu Miaojin
“What if we ran out of things to talk about?”
Translated from Chinese by Bonnie Huie
The Stork and the She-Stork
By Anonymous
“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”
By Qiu Miaojin
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
El Grand Balam Award-winner Guadalupe Nettel channels Haruki Murakami in this tale of plants and alienation.
Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
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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