Poetry

The Forever Rachel chiseled into a tree and many years later written in the water of a pond. Forever Rachel in her mesh hikers, stepping over a sleeping policeman. Hair under her arms. Hair on her legs. Wielding a picket sign every other day. She made her prom dress out of old newspapers and during…

Translated by Andrew Wachtel I walked ahead, there was no other path. Doors cut us off from the past:  mama was aging, the tree burned up, and something was wrong with the sick man’s chest. Everywhere I went a beggar woman followed, with a belly bloated like a globe, but she didn’t ask for cash…

Bunsen burners click on, throats closed for a safe flame. The room tepefies—pipettes veiled in thin fog. Litmus paper drops like sleeves on a dress. Every girl measures: reds, blues, acid, acid, base. Some boys huddle around the fire, burn the edge of our assignment, laugh at how an eraser cooks in the blaze. I’m…

The bones of a daytime moon then the shock of them across it: using their arms like wings, wheeling above Middleton Moor now as one body, now as many. They fly in wax jackets and blue check shirts, plaid jumpers and high vis, magpie-black leather. Sometimes you might catch a bracelet falling like a feather,…

original Gaelic poem with English translation by the author mo chasan a’ leughadh leabhar-cumha ruadh an fhoghair my feet reading the russet elegy-book of autumn eòlas nan dùil sgrìobhte ann an làmh rèimeil nan tùs ag innse dhomh gu’n d’fhiach an sgeul ath-aithris, nach eil anns an lobhadh     ach bruadar  knowledge of hopes written in…

original Irish poem with English translation by Gillian Clarke ar ôl “Bird Watching” R. S. Thomas after “Bird Watching” by R. S. Thomas A daeth taith fawr ddwsinau o ddrudwns i ben. It’s long journey’s end for a murmuration of starlings.         Nid sbienddrych o bell yn gorwelio eu plu sy.            Ond heddiw seicdreiddwyr eu…

original Irish poem with English translation by the author faiteadh súile feithide i bhforaois fearthainne i mBorneó the blink of an insect’s eye in the rain forest of Borneo chuir gála gaoithe ag réabadh na tíre, ag pleancadh scioból tuí set gale force winds ripping the country, battering tin sheds is monarchan iata, scoileanna réamhdhéanta…

In the middle of my life I had the most marvelous piece of luck I entered a hotel and among golfers pregnant with beautiful minor worries watched the cheerleaders gallop as James Wright said terribly against each other’s bodies but really it was not except for their cries of happiness bouncing off the mountains surrounding…

after Joy Harjo   The verb has a long history of violence: to take is to grab, seize or capture, esp. by force; note its hard k set against the long vowel, a sign of intent, this cave of sound. He took her by the throat and shook her is one in a proliferation of…