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All posts tagged: Poetry

Talks with the Besieged: Documentary Poetry from Occupied Ukraine

August 21, 2025 Poetry, Translation

Translated by OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK, MAX ROSOCHINSKY, and the author

Piece appears below in English and the original Russian and Ukrainian.

Translators’ Note

Alex Averbuch authored Talks with the Besieged on the basis of his engagement with group chats on Telegram and other public IM platforms by Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. The present selection is excerpted from this larger work that explores the relentless and evolving nature of the occupation, capturing the initial bewilderment and disorientation experienced by those who stayed behind. These brief, fragmented exchanges reflect civilians navigating the chaos of war in real time. Oscillating between found poetry, a digital archive, and virtual testimony, the text presents the fears, anxieties, aspirations, and dreams of the community enduring liminality and existential uncertainty. In translating these dispatches, we’ve attempted to approximate the casual, matter-of-fact tone of participants, their poignant attempts to lighten the mood, encourage each other, and offer reassurance and consolation.While Telegram and many other IM platforms offer automatic capitalization for each new comment, we decided to use lowercase letters instead, capitalizing only toponyms and proper names. We have also removed the names of the original contributors, blurring the distinctions between them and obscuring where one utterance ends and another begins. We hope that these decisions help render the text as a continuous uninterrupted expression of hope and terror and create an impression of a living chorus, a droning and wailing unbroken human voice.

A Tour of America

August 13, 2025 Dispatches

By MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER

A bearded man stands in front of a black background, looking toward the left.

Photo courtesy of Jules Weitz.

America

This afternoon I am well, thank you.

Walking down Main Street in Danville, KY.

The heavy wind so sensuous.

Last night I fell-

ated four different men back in

Philadelphia season lush and slippery

with time and leaves.

Keep your eyes to yourself, yid.

As a kid, I pledged only to engage

in onanism on special holidays.

Luckily, America.

Giving the Poem a Body: Megan Pinto interviews Lena Moses-Schmitt

August 11, 2025 Interviews

Lena Moses-Schmitt (left) and Megan Pinto (right)

When we listen to language, what do we hear? When we look at an image, what do we see? LENA MOSES-SCHMITT’s poetry beautifully captures the nature of perception. Her lyric-narrative meditations are interested in the mind’s movement across the field (visual, sonic) and the page. Moses-Schmitt writes in “The Hill”: “This morning I heard the man/ who lives downstairs say I love you to the woman–/not the words, but the rhythm, the shape, and I filled in the rest/ as if with red crayon.” Her debut collection, True Mistakes, moves between perception and imagination, the grieving for and the making of a life. MEGAN PINTO sat down with Lena Moses-Schmitt on a sunny June afternoon in Brooklyn. They marveled at the light through the leaves and drank cold seltzers with bitters. Their conversation shifted from superhero alter egos to how poetry sustains them through life’s many blips and heartbreaks.

Four Ways of Setting the Table

August 6, 2025 Dispatches

By CLARA CHIU

Photo of a long wooden table with chairs. Plants in the background

Photo courtesy of author.

Amherst, Massachusetts

I. Tablecloth Winter

We are holding the edges of the fabric,
throwing the center into the air.
& even in dusk this cloth
billowing over our heads
makes a souvenir of home:
mother & child in snowglobe.
Yet we are warm here, beneath
this dome, & what light slips through
drapes the dining room white.

July 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems by our Contributors

July 31, 2025 Poetry

New work from GEOFFREY BROCK, GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL, DOLORES HAYDEN, JAMES RICHARDSON, and JULIA LISELLA.

Table of Contents:

Geoffrey Brock, “Song”
Gray Davidson Carroll, “Truth or Dare”
Dolores Hayden, “Coming of Age”
James Richardson, “Transports”
Julia Lisella, “The Geese of Medford, Massachusetts”

Before They Traded Devers

July 30, 2025 Dispatches

By AIDAN COOPER

Photo courtesy of author.

Boston, MA
After Frank O’Hara

Father’s Day, it’s 8 a.m. & I’m late on the road
to Boston because I drooled too much sleeping
I’m driving to a Red Sox game, yes I’ll go
because my dad at one point liked the pitcher
& the tank’s too full to not go

when I reach the MFA beehiving with students
I wonder what’s on & it’s Van Gogh’s Roulin Family Portraits
& I want to park there in case I have time to peruse
but it’s 50 bucks & I’m seeing my family anyway
so I circle Huntington until I find an empty spot
on Parker & it’s Sunday so I’m off the hook
& I don’t thank God pay a thing

An Embodied Sense of Time: Raychelle Heath Interviews Rosa Castellano

July 14, 2025 Interviews

Rosa Castellano (left) and Raychelle Heath (right)

RAYCHELLE HEATH (RH): Rosa, it is so lovely to meet you, and All is The Telling is such a beautiful read. The book is structurally interesting, and it’s inspiring on many different levels. The stories of different girls and women drew me in immediately. But, I want to start with the title. You’re telling a layered story here, and I’m curious how you arrived at the title. How does the title poem place the characters in the story arc of the book?

ROSA CASTELLANO (RC): I love this question! I hope that the collection’s title and the poem prepare readers for all of the telling that takes place in the book, which is largely concerned with telling stories and telling our truths, especially the stories we carry in our bodies. I subscribe to this idea of the layered self, like a series of paper dolls we can tug open to find a line of selves connecting who we are now, back to all the selves we’ve been, those previous identities that we hold. That’s how I’m hoping the poems in this collection work, linked together with various kinds of repeating patterns, working to tell the interconnected stories of a self. It’s a complicated thing, most days, to be an alive person.

Florida Poems

July 2, 2025 Dispatches

By EDWARD SAMBRANO III

Photos courtesy of author.

Florida

After the Storm
(after Donald Justice)

I will die in Portland on an overcast day,
The Willamette River mirroring clouds’
Bleak forecast and strangers not forgetting—
Not this time—designer raincoats in their closets.
They will leave for work barely in time
To catch their railcars. It will happen

On a day like today. Florida’s winter
Brings the satisfaction of sunlit goosebumps
As I read on the veranda wondering whether
To retrieve a sweater. I’m learning
Of life’s many versions of triviality,
Which merely manage to repeat themselves.

June 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems from Pedro Poitevin, Aiden Heung, and Ellie Black

June 26, 2025 Poetry

This month we’re pleased to bring you poems by PEDRO POITEVIN translated from Spanish by PHILIP NIKOLAYEV and new work by 2025 Disquiet Prize finalists AIDEN HEUNG and ELLIE BLACK.

Table of Contents:

Pedro Poitevin (trans. Philip Nikolayev), “Sonnet from the water before dawn” and “Self-Portrait as a Dog”
Ellie Black, “The Confessional” and “Revelator”
Aiden Heung, “The Theory of Evolution”

Two Poems by Hendri Yulius Wijaya

June 5, 2025 Poetry, Translation

By HENDRI YULIUS WIJAYA
Translated By EDWARD GUNAWAN

Content warning: Some offensive slurs that appear in the source text have been carried over into the translation.

Translator’s Note

Fueled by far-right nationalist politics and religious extremism, persecution and violence from both state institutions and the general public against queer and trans Indonesians have reached unprecedented levels—mirroring similar disturbing patterns worldwide.