Yalta, Ukraine
The minibus stops in the middle of the road and the driver opens the door, he says something in Russian which I take to mean I need to get off. I begin to walk on a red dirt road that meanders down, and in front of me, the vastness of the Crimean terrain opens up, splotches of yellow overgrown grass, young bushes and wildflowers, the quiet dark sea in the distance.
By MONA KAREEM
Translated by SARA ELKAMEL
Farwaniya, Kuwait
“Darkness alone is in my voice.” — Jean Sénac
I am of darkness.
My nation is an aging butterfly,
the desert my prayer.
I wash in rain’s saliva.
In my supplications, the sun dances
on the tips of her toes.
Los Angeles, CA
There is comfort in a lack of context, dishes on the floor, jewelry on a peg board, grand piano next to an abandoned plastic phlebotomy practice arm. All the parts of the world shuffled and randomly dealt amongst rooms. A sort of magic trick, skinned in dust, connecting all things to a singular body—the auction house. I remember finding a large bowl of teeth.
By WONG KOI TET
Translated from Chinese by SHANNA TAN
Dakota Crescent, Singapore
The body of water that runs by the neighborhood is in fact a river, but everyone used to call it longkau—a storm drain. The Hokkien word has a crispier edge than the Mandarin longgou. Calling it a river would require a proper name, a division into upstream and down. Nobody knew about that stuff, so we went with what was the easiest. Anyway, a name is just a name, and it was kind of endearing after you got the hang of it. The neighborhood does have a proper name: Dakota. There’s a place called Dakota somewhere up north in the States, but that’s not what we’re named after. No, our origin story is local and commemorates the crash of a Dakota DC-3 aircraft nearby. Maybe by giving the neighborhood a name tinged with disaster and exoticism, we were also foretelling its premature demise.
Pine Mountain Valley, Georgia
He is Risen signs go up in the neighboring yards, making sure I remember Easter.
On Easter in 1865, Union troops attacked Columbus, Georgia, the city closest to my current address. This was the Civil War’s last battle, and useless. The Confederates had surrendered in Virginia already, but, this far south, neither side knew.
Photo by Lisa Rosenberg
Gulf of Kyparissia, Ilia, Greece
1. This is the story
of cigarette butts and discarded straws.
Of beach, and sea, and all that mythology
rolled into one bright ball where my child plays
Divided Heart: painting on slate, Jess Richards 2014.
Wellington, New Zealand
Stained light shines on breath-less angels
who occupy a stone heaven-on-earth without living for touch
without having felt another human enfolding them against soil.
Only the winged can lift themselves so high
but freeze half-way to the clouds
locked in cold bodies, solo-flight paused.
Poems by HÉLÈNE DORION
Translated from the French by SUSANNA LANG
Poems appear below in both French and English.
Québec Province, Canada
Les racines
fendent le sol
comme des éclairs
avancent dans leur solitude
et tremblent
pareilles à une vaste cité de bois
les racines
s’accordent à la sève
qui les fouille
observent-elles les nuages
pour apprendre
la langue de l’horizon
Bucharest, Romania
Spring Boulevard 50, in the heart of Bucharest’s former nomenklatura, currently bourgeois neighborhood, is where the former General Secretary’s one-story villa can be found. Împușcatu is what people sometimes call him around here, “the one who was shot,” or Ceașcă, “cup.” They were executed in winter: Nicolae Ceaușescu, and his wife Elena, who was also shot, but in people’s minds this was secondary to her being an insufferable pseudo-intellectual who loved fur coats. And their children, Nicu, Zoe and Valentin, spared during the 1989 Revolution.
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