Poetry

  • Lobo-Lobo

    Everybody knows that men in uniform are suffering from low self-esteem; that those of us who’ve got a sweet tooth need to eat lots and lots of chocolate or else we lose our temper; Texas Longhorns never wear anything but orange; the human race is obviously progressing; gastropods are always inconsolable; celebrities abrade their skin…

  • Costa Del Dento

    There he is eatin’ like a horse with his neck brace around his elbow— robbin’ pears from the next table. He’s on the dole at home with a claim in against the Corpo for a dodgy curb job only he called it an f’ing footpath. You’d have to be on LSD for your foot to…

  • June Dolphin

               1 Thi hert loups wi thi gairfish in uts waatirgaw o spray, o ee an muscle, licht and air-rush in mornin oan thi Tay. Ye needna be a bairnie, or hae keethin sicht o ocht tae see whit ithers carena fur an laive ahint aa thocht.        …

  • from Salt

    The sky brighter than before; rushes and salt flats; white, broad-winged birds that landed standing, like angels, who are known by all to be salt-eaters.     In that silence he set out water and bread and salt. He burned myrtle and hyssop. He wept. He called the quarters.     Raw rice and a…

  • Escaping Kanitu, March 1988

            Najiba Ahmad and Fatima Muhammad Amin Everything began to end that winter. Inch by inch we withdrew, stopped at Kanitu, prepared for the caves— baking bread, boiling meat, sorting through clothes. Then someone screamed: “They’re coming.” We left the bread on the saj tray, the meat on the kerosene heater, the…

  • Dispute over a Mass Grave

    The one you have finished examining is my son. That is the milky colored Kurdish suit his father tailored for him, the blue shirt his uncle gave to him. Your findings prove that it is him—he was a tall fifteen-year-old, was left-handed, had broken a rib. I know she too has been looking for her…

  • Gas Attack

            Badria Saeed Khidir and Ayshe Maghdid Mahmud Bombs could fall anywhere, any time of the day. They were a nuisance we got used to. In our dug-out shelters we felt safe, until that haunting winter twilight when the muffled explosions deceived us. We came out thinking we’d survived the bombs but…