Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Memory

Photo by Eduardo Barrios on Unsplash

The Last Letter of My Body

By Alex Averbuch

gardens are in bloom: cherries, oranges, mandarins / I talked through three phone cards in three days

Translated from Russian by Anne O. Fisher

Multilingual

Pedestrians walk over a bridge in Leningrad in 1991.

fdecomite, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Book of Conjuring

By Anna Badkhen

Thirty years had passed: who can recall all the minutiae of such a long-ago heartbreak?

Multimedia

Photo of rocks and brush in Fitatimen, Río Negro

Photo: Liliana Ancalao

I Write to Purge This Memory

By Liliana Ancalao

Liliana Ancalao honors her Mapuche identity and records the violence the state committed against her people in the Conquest of the Desert and Occupation of Araucanía, violence that continues to this day.

Translated from Spanish by Liliana Ancalao & Seth Michelson

Multilingual

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

The White Tablecloth

Eight years and I’m still not over it.

Translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem

War of the Species

By Michel Nieva

Completely unaware that this was the kind of sacred moment when you pledge your undying allegiance to a team, through thick and thin, I stated my choice.

Translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery

Cereté, Córdoba

By Raúl Gómez Jattin

I love you all even more in exile

Translated from Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Olivia Lott

Sinkings

By Haukur Ingvarsson

the glacier is black / polar bears run on hot sand

Translated from Icelandic by Meg Matich

Multimedia

Writing Against Estrangement in Galicia

By Scott Shanahan

No doubt a few Galicians will think it in very bad taste to inaugurate this issue with a likeness to their higher profile southern neighbors, but because there may be a great many glad for the comparison,…

Three Observations, Untitled

By Ksenia Zheludova

The most horrible things, remember this, are incremental.

Translated from Russian by Josephine von Zitzewitz

MultimediaMultilingual

Here in Chorrillos

By Doris Moromisato

My eyes fill with rowboats

Translated from Spanish by Margaret Wright

Multilingual

Özdamar’s Tongue

By Mariana Oliver

Özdamar knew that arriving in a country with no return ticket meant voluntarily surrendering to an indeterminate foreignness.

Translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches

See-the-Sea

By Dina Salústio

Are all of us accidents wandering through other people’s lives?

Translated from Portuguese by Nina Perrotta

Cabo Verde Is the Center of the World

By Germano Almeida

In those days the island of Boa Vista was the whole world.

Translated from Portuguese by Stephen Henighan

The Poem

By Mohsen Emadi

the poem is riding a bicycle; / trembling and in haste.

Translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé

Learn

“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.

From “The Night Inside”

By Djamal Amrani

The slumber at the edge/ of my well of fever

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

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

Mustard Flowers

Morning starts / when lights turn green.

Translated from Punjabi by the author

While I Slept

By Navtej Bharati

I will not accept this old age / grafted slyly on my body.

Translated from Punjabi by the author

Standing on Ashes: Three Punjabi Poets on Aging

By Sonnet Mondal

Punjabi poetry stands on ashes, reinforced by a blend of spirituality and dissent.

A metal bowl against a white background

Khalili Collections / CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, via Wikimedia Commons

“Chhanna,” the Metal Bowl

By Amarjit Chandan

Contemplating a family heirloom, a ruminative Amarjit Chandan finds the past staring back at him.

Translated from Punjabi by Sarabjeet Garcha

It’s Cold and It’s Getting So Dark

By Carmen-Francesca Banciu

I can’t sit up any more, she said. I can only lie in bed.

Translated from German by Elena Mancini

The House of Wax

By Subodh Ghosh

“Have you been able to forget me?”

Translated from Bengali by Somrita Ganguly

Please Enter Destination

By Tereza Semotamová

That piece of junk is driving me crazy!

Translated from Czech by Barbora Růžičková

Multimedia

That Deep Ocean…

By Ana Candida de Carvalho Carneiro

This month, we bring you the first of three winning entries in the Words without Borders - Play for Voices Radio Drama Contest.

Translated from Italian by Stephen Pidcock

The Memory

By Mitsuyo Kakuta

And then what did you do, he asked, and she said, I watched.

Translated from Japanese by Polly Barton

Learn

Green Sour Orange

By Neda Kavoosifar

With his eyes bulging, Mr. Moadab murmurs, It’s like silk . . .

Translated from Persian by Sara Khalili

LearnMultilingual

Crying over Light Green

No, the word “green” is hardly adequate.

Translated from Korean by Won-Chung Kim & Christopher Merrill

An Interview with Hisham Matar

Nouri Gana talks to Hisham Mattar about poetry, beards, and his novel In the Country of Men.

Damascus, What Are You Doing to Me?

By Nizar Qabbani

How do the gardens of Sham transform me?

Translated from Arabic by Shareah Taleghani

From “Portrait of M”

By Matei Călinescu

Anyone's death is a great tragedy.

Translated from Romanian by Angela Jianu

Nabokov in Brasov

By Mircea Cartarescu

I was asked to join Securitate.

Translated from Romanian by Julian Semilian

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

The Other Body / The Other Home

Migration is another name for exile made gentler by the alphabet.

Translated from Arabic by Ammiel Alcalay & Kamal Boullata

Elegy

By Ahmad Shamlou

And so we repeat the round / of night and day

Translated from Persian by Zara Houshmand

Learn

An Empty Room

Was there anything else worth seeing? Why was I the only one hiking?

Translated from Chinese by Toming Jun Liu