At first I thought the pileated woodpecker
that lifted up from the yard as we came home
from a walk in the woods, flapping
away on long black wings that curved
up at the tips and flashed white
underneath, might be a visitation
Morning wind speaks a dialect of smoke,
brings news from yesterday and tomorrow:
what’s burning there will soon enough burn here.
One bullet. Even a rumor of bullet
restless in the chamber of a neighbor’s gun.
To run, before he arrives with his god.
By JEMAL HUMED
Translated by ADDIE LEAK
The piece appears below both in English and the original Arabic.
For the fighter Taha Mohammed Nur [1]
1
The hallway is cold and disquieting, lined with austere doors marked with consecutive numbers, giving no indication of their occupants.
The corridor is never-ending, leading to a room at its end whose grand entryway, formidable and rigid, seems to surveil the movement of the other doors.
He stood in front of it and straightened his service uniform. He took deep breaths, as if to expel the fear that had accumulated between his ribs on this particular morning inside the prison.
My freedom is not
to answer the phone
or open the door. I don’t care
if I’m not liked anymore.
I’m free to be that, disliked, to sweat
to be that—take flight, from like or dislike.
Aphrodite was whipped from the sea, spun from the foam of Oranos / Uranus.
In science class, I’m laughing at Uranus / your anus. Now, I’m cornered in timeout.
He wants me when I’m fresh, for my curves. He wants me when I’m fermented,
for my composting capabilities. I can grow something made from him.
But the daughter would be born with the worms, and it doesn’t take much for
worms to molt into Medusan snakes. Aphrodite was worshiped as a goddess
Most of our old family photos are from the beach, and most of them are of my father. In them, he is always grinning, gleaming from the Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil that scented the denim shirt he wore every summer. My mother loved the beach, too, but did not like to be photographed. In all those years, Dad caught Mom on camera only once, on a boogie board riding a wave, still wearing the sunglasses that stayed on her head all summer, even after dark. She preferred to float, read, and take pictures of my brothers and me. Blindingly pale or perilously pink, like “before” ads for skin cancer, we’re inevitably chewing or punching or blinking, ruining the picture. My father, however, always looks perfect, natural, exactly where he’s supposed to be. His hands are on his hips, superhero-style, as if he’s won some high-stakes game and the beach now belongs to him.
By VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA
Translated from Hindi by ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA
Table of Contents:
New poems by ADRIENNE SU, ELEANOR STANFORD, KWAME OPOKU-DUKU, and WILLIAM FARGASON
Table of Contents:
Solitude
By Adrienne Su
My body rebelled
against the amorphousness
of American
motherhood, which asked
me to be available
as if I were five
women: two grandmas,
Vertigo
Santiago, Chile
For over a month now, my wife and I have dangled extension cords
from our 26th-floor balcony to the neighbors’ apartment
because their landlord collects rent but refuses to pay the utility monopoly.
The girls cry when we have to disconnect, but we’ll be gone for a while,
plus there’s a chance of rain, and therefore, an electrical fire
in our 1000-person highrise. We saw one just last week. The all-volunteer
By ANNIE TRINH
The first time Lilian saw her siblings’ hands sprout from the fertile earth, she hid behind her father’s leg and begged him to be careful. She tugged his fingers as the infant-cries rang through the twilight of crickets and fireflies, telling him that they should hurry before mom came back from the store, but he didn’t listen. Her father looked down with watery eyes and knelt to the ground, trembling. He removed the soil from the newborn babies, took them into the kitchen, and placed them in the sink. Monoecious plants, one boy and one girl. Her father cleared all the dirt from their bodies. With a fresh towel, he cleaned their tiny hands, wiggling feet, faces, their grumbling stomachs—dusting off the tiny ants and soil stuck to their eyelids.
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