By Marina Tsvetaeva
Translated by Mary Jane White

The darkest of nights’
Places: a bridge. –Lips to lips!
Really should we be lugging
Our shared cross to these nasty places,

By Marina Tsvetaeva
Translated by Mary Jane White

“I’m not leaving!—This isn’t the end!” And she clings and clings . . .

But in her breast—the swell

Of looming waters,

By Laura Post

1. Who are you and whom do you love?

I pulled my teeth out

one by

By Laura Post

I have bursts of being a body, but they never last long.

I buried a lightbulb,
thought it might hatch fire,
set those lazy fields ablaze.

By Sean Howard

i. the conquest of the river plate

pampas, horses

ford the stream… (

waves making the land

fall.) silence: conduct-

By Lillian-Yvonne Bertram & Steve Davenport

You are the woman

from the television show who would rather

be sedated than cry—my one friend

always this species of correct

By Sharon Coleman

Before radiation conjoined continents. In those windy days by the Pacific, when we went to empty our hands of grades, bills, unpaid work.

By Sharon Coleman

she shed words like her sister’s hand-me-down anger mis-sewn
dress

she folded into slow july streams, tall dry grasses over warm granite

of a coast they were moved up and down too many times she slept

By Michelle Lewis

Now trees have shaken in the wind where there is

no wind and you must clutch yourself.

You must toggle on your heelbone and become it.

By Michelle Lewis

The thing about my mother is I don’t think

you understand cramhole, I don’t think you understand back into.

The thing is take the scissors to bed.

By Michelle Lewis

Will tonight be every night?

Outside the kick-out door

saying if the dark

By Gray Tolhurst

bridge to bring the language together

(Babylon)

divided the channels

By Emile DeWeaver

We play

chicken where the brave

stay the course. Frames will twist,

By Juan Carlos Flores

Translated by Kristin Dykstra

The skater of death flies across the avenue, between the cars and the passersby, today I just want to look, at the skater of death or the skatedeath of door, rustic pig’s eyes, there’s a boy looking, there’s a boy whose name is Rachiel.

By Juan Carlos Flores
Translated by Kristin Dykstra

She’s singing old boleros, this isolated person, according to medical files, is on the edge, and if the men of the new stone age approach, it’s only to unload their obscure packages

By Juan Carlos Flores
Translated by Kristin Dykstra

Don’t cry for me if the police arrest me, breaker of the law, that was before I knew Jah.

By Juan Carlos Flores
Translated by Kristin Dykstra

Coin-swallowing machines, though in his palms no lines appear, his
future can’t be read, he’s a good person, he should speak here

By Pedro de Jesús
Translated by Dick Cluster

Feldspar. Tiger. Meekness. Scaffold.

With words at his disposal, a poet

can play fast and loose, ape dementia,

By Chris Campanioni

She was rising, bird-like

On the first page, the first

Letter I read, the first line

But we never cut the other kites

By Chris Campanioni

My father learned English

On the radio—

Sing-song Santiago Spanish

“Rocks Off,” The Rolling Stones

By Fina García Marruz
Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen

There’s no time to start from the beginning, everything
in order, shamelessly, in the elemental, candid blue.
There’s no possible lucidity, the circle’s closed off
its horizon where humble paradises swaggered.

By Anton Arrufat

Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen

What do you think of the word metal?
Do you like it?
If I say,
the metal of your voice,
do you like it?

By Víctor Rodríguez Núñez
Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen

1 [158 Campanario Street]

first and foremost to scrape
everything you see
the homeland’s in the claves
the city rooster waking up traffic

By Jo Reyes-Boitel

a lot of our history is gone, let’s be honest –
when your family has been in four countries in three generations
the nonessential is quickly cast off

By Jo Reyes-Boitel

here I am: grafted from the resilience of a 4’7” matriarch traveling 46 hundred miles to freedom
island sensibilities moated by Texas deserts mud pies and dark nights scented in pine
cold Minnesota Septembers

By Satoshi Iwai

I stole a giraffe from the public zoo and hid it in the kitchen of my apartment. The kitchen was so small that the giraffe had to stick its head out of the window.

By Satoshi Iwai

I love her like a pretty chick, but she dumps me like a rotten egg. She tells me that she is going to marry a young and rich anaconda. After her departure, I watch “Anaconda Mating” on YouTube.

By Satoshi Iwai

Don’t tell me anything about rainbows, because every rainbow belongs to someone else’s summer. All I have is one afternoon and seven cigarette burns on my bare stomach.

By Jessica Murray

To drive north, alone, toward the ghost
of the Laurentide Icesheet retreating
through boreal forests, the long miles
spending themselves