Najwan Darwish (translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid)
Your name's like a ship with no hope of arriving,
no hope of returning—
It never arrives, and it never returns.
It never arrives, and it never goes under.
from the journal
Action Books
In our series “Language as Form,” we invited poets to write about poetic language as patterned language—how words as sound, voice, sentence, and song become elements of form.
- November 28, 2023
Jim Whiteside
a little point
of ignition, a place
where it wanted
to burn
- November 27, 2023
Petra Kuppers
Hip bones sink and anchor on wood. Light rhythms paint the window.
My gullet is empty, endless, a void slick with ground glass festers
into pain, pulls me into time river, moonlight sucks down to snow.
- November 26, 2023
Marilyn Chin
I finger my butterfly lute
I strum my fated plectrum
Striking the same fret fret fret
Summoning the museum of heaven
- November 25, 2023
Lisa Kelly
My direct stare —
a direct invitation of sorts
for a kiss.
- November 24, 2023
Omotara James
I still lay my temple across a cool surface, splay
my troubles atop a tiled floor. Limbs like I'm seven again,
naked from the waist, beneath my mother's steady hand and
long silver scissors.
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