Online Exclusives

"So many red spider lilies— / if this one turns red / we can throw it away"

In order to don the scent of saltwater, Tonight, I summon the waves. Yearning to overtake the fever rising I puff out my chest, gulping my breath. Because I have elected to name this flavor Sleeping deep in my throat: ocean. The piercing spice of those droplets Certainly will not spoil me.

"Touch and hearing and sight as well / register only novelty, / so for me, my body remains a thing removed."

"Friction from passing you by / lent me a secret heat. / Finding that tiny needle eye / gave me such joy."

"I don’t know what was going through my mind that day as we passed by the edge of what we called “Faraj kishi’s melon plantation” (Mr. Faraj was actually just the guard for the collective). But suddenly Mohlat stopped me, catching at my shoulder with his hand. It was a hot day and we were both burning with thirst.  'Look at those black khunu melons,” he said. “What do you think?'"

"This is the one city / I have to leave. / This is the one place / I can live."

"It is easy / to forget about your homeland. / You have to be restless / as the moon,"

"He, who detests anecdotes, is suddenly full of them, a prisoner. He believes it ideal, both in life and in literature, that facts can be assembled, fused to such a degree that they become neutralized, diluted in a sort of fluid in which none of the parts is significant by itself but rather as part of the whole, which, after all is said and done, should be a mere climate, a certain atmosphere."

"a sheep is grazing dry Garden / Cress diligently, like an ant./ it is showing its blue woolly ass / to us, driving by"

"they said there’s no time / that the place is too small / that the water burns"

"yes, i dream. of course. but my dreams are different."

"shiny drops of sweat are piling up / on the face of time that stopped for a moment. slowly sliding / also over its mildly rounded firm belly."

"Poetry is where everything happens. Like love, humor, suicide, and every fundamentally subversive act, poetry ignores everything but its own freedom and its own truth. To say freedom and truth to refer to the world in which we live or don’t live is to tell a lie. It is not a lie when you attribute those words to poetry: the place where everything is possible."

"That makes three of us: myself; the poem; the addressee. This accusative triangle demands a bit of examination."