In the Beginning the Word worldlittoday · In The Beginning The Word by Rachel Tzvia Back 1 the word was  unverbed unruled just birthed before bird on the altar or binding  at hilltop not taken or gi…

Background photo by Sved Oliver / Adobe StockA Visitor from Hell A resident of Hell, I’ve been sitting here, Lord, for years. Do I not deserve to be a citizen? How is it that even in Hell the homes ha…

Courtesy of University of New Mexico Press / Stock.adobe.comThe Orphan (Isaac Luria) what is the matter? why do you always pursue me as an enemy?/ you set hidden traps for me?/ you catch me in my own…

Photo by trentinness / Adobe StockHunger Strike In the last watch of blood and memories, in the last neighing of empty stomachs, the human tree announces its prophecy overflowing with our bright statu…

Photo by AVTG / Stock.adobe.comTranslator’s note: Gizella Hervay (1934–1982) is sometimes referred to as the “Ingeborg Bachmann of Transylvania.” Mostly neglected by criticism during her shor…

Adobe StockCollage                                                 after Romare Bearden Gather out of star-dust: memories of tender Harlem evenings where portraits filled my young mind with j…

Photo by Manikanth Halyal / Unsplash[Untitled] At the edge of the village a woman in a stupa ground millet. She whistled brazenly, calling the wind from the steppe to keep the chaff flying so her eyes…

bettysphotos / stock.adobe.comWriting Poetry on the Assembly Line Sitting in front of the machine in the workshop Exhaling like the moonlight. The soldering iron, screwdriver, motor, buzzer, the injec…

for Naomi Shihab Nye  Eid al-Fitr Shavuot Pentecost 2021  I want to follow Naomi  to walk in her footsteps to  gather with her only the gentle  words like fallen wheat stalks   gleaned from…

Photo by Michel Banabila / FlickrDinosaurs Each day, I drive beneath the shadow of leviathan bones, concrete muscles poured over rebar ribcage, fossils of future freeways. I walk through the unnatural…

Painting by Mehdi Qotbi (b. 1951, Rabat) / Courtesy of the artist Les homeless Les homeless ne vivent pas dans la rue Ils attendent que le ciel se jette sur eux chaque soir Un ciel chargé de tous les…

Illustration by fran_kie / Adobe StockIf I Must Die If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a…

Photo by Yousef Khanfar / www.yousefkhanfar.com. This olive tree in the Al Aqsa compound is believed to be 2,000 years old.I’m not interested in who suffered the most. I’m interested in people getting…

Photo by h heyerlein / UnsplashField at Night On a night without you I descend into hell streetlamps become enemies Solitary I walk the salt mines my footprints are salt measuring fate salt like the f…

  Illustration courtesy of the author Julius D. Jones is a talented and thought-provoking artist who cares deeply about humanity, justice, and peace. Despite being incarcerated for more than twen…

Photo by said alamri / UnsplashImmigration, detention, unequal pay are modern words for slavery again. Dictatorship, borders. Any imposition of one’s will over another is a form of s…

Photo by Natalia Dimitris X (2007) / Flickr… And instead of despair before your own cracked skin instead of drowning in memories of him instead of hopelessness as you face the scorched plain of your f…

Photo by throgers / FlickrIn what follows, I have created three heteronyms to render Pablo Neruda’s “Oda al actor” into English. They are presented in chronological order by date of birth. Their views…

Photo by NancieLee Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we’re free at last. “[O]n the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons…

Photo by Lucas Calloch / UnsplashJapanese Garden I curve like a wooden bridge over a lake lit up by red carps I am hard and dry and barely adorned like a sand garden (though there are stones that blos…

Photo by Evelyn Paris / UnsplashNational Anthem This is my room, it is called Iceland. A sea cable fastens it to Europe and to here and from here fly airplanes with their ink cartridges full of people…

Jewish Museum Berlin / Photo by Davie Dunn / FlickrMommy, mommy repeated Tyre Nichols with his last breaths kicked by the boots of five policemen under his mother’s window in Memphis Plea…

Photo by Sofya Badkhen“We Live Without Touch” is a found poem. Composed of fourteen English translations of the first two lines of a famous 1933 poem by Osip Mandelstam, it is a timely meditation…

Photo by Lava Lavanda / UnsplashFirst Language Not sure what to make of the title             (titles can be misleading, like                         Chinatown or Popiół i diament or that blue–white…

Photo by Lava Lavanda / Unsplash First Language Not sure what to make of the title             (titles can be misleading, like                         Chinatown or Popiół i diament…