Let’s say I download something in the black night or let’s say I listen to Iron & Wine and get up slept 10 hours hazy and heavy from medicine. Haven’t heard the music in many years, but felt like it the green grass on the cover makes me think of childhood the mongoose hunting snakes in the wet grass the house on poles the palms surrounding our garden. Was at Aina and Oscar’s last night don’t remember how we ended up watching Rambo but it was...

  Then suddenly beech woods, all green behind the dozing eyes a deer leaps across the forest road scents of acid and moss and cheek against bark, sunrain between trunks, I'm home and hear the Baltic Sea crash against big rocks far away and I rest like a fairy or a witch in the sweet smells of the forest floor we can so easily forget what we are who we are that we are, but it takes only a little call to waken the sleepers, as now, in the forest, for LISTEN,...

Translation © 2015 by Meghan Forbes. All rights reserved.

Photo: Sharon May, “Angkor Wat Causeway, Cambodia” (2009) Journey to Angkor Wat (Nireas Nokor Voat), Ukñā Suttantaprījā Ind’s most celebrated poem, recounts his first trip to Siem Reap in 1909 when he was invited to accompany the Khmer provincial governor and his French counterpart to attend King Sisowath’s arrival at the temples of Angkor. It was first published in 1934 but most likely was written between 1909 and 1915. Ind composed his...

Photo: Sharon May, “Apsaras, Angkor Wat, Cambodia” (2009) Queen Indradevi’s Sanskrit composition (c. 1190–1200 AD), inscribed on the large stele found at Phimeanakas in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, reveals a nearly flawless command of the language and its complex poetic forms. The poem was discovered in the stone rubble of the palace temple in 1916. The stele, believed to have been entirely covered in gold, comprises 102 stanzas; the final stanzas are...

I wish there was a god who would see to it                that we who work in Finland as bus drivers small-town hairdressers overwrought nurses rock band roadies liquor store assistants dressmakers and decorators would never know the persistence of power freaks            the attention of moneylenders the support of legal experts that we would be spared the taunts of...

This is a smart time, I think as I sit and eat a sandwich in the kitchen. Tomorrow is sorted, the hayracks ready, the tools even stowed in the shed, your magnificent culinary creation needs one more hour, (no, bread and ham won’t ruin my appetite, I don’t want to pig myself later). Actually, I could even go for a swim, do a length of the lake, come back tuckered and hungry, hang the towel out to dry, but that wouldn’t be fair on you. What’s that you’ve got...

Förby    We have no dipping moon over a metropolis’s hills. We have no breeze caressing the parchment of an aging poetess that would cause her to say: “It comes from the desert! It comes from the desert!” We have wind against the wall of a wooden house like a throbbing ovation. We have a view from the window onto ruins that will be concealed in a few years by forgotten rowan trees. There is the transition of land into sea, there is the unsettled...

what do you write about? asked the Jordanian poet. about love, I answered. there isn’t anything else, is there. yes, agreed the Jordanian poet, there really isn’t anything else. when he read out his poem in the Arabic language his tears flowed freely. sentimental, I thought. then the same poem was read out in English, it spoke of how his family was killed before his eyes, his brothers, parents, wife, and of how apart from love there isn’t anything else. © Trinn...

Now night comes—brings prayer. It opens the silence’s locks makes the sidereal map appear and we kneel facing that immense space between now and the rim of the beginning when spinal cords are all extended. *** I look down on ships as spreading light enlarges my vision. Other ships far off rise bearing gifts. We are leaning out over the heartbeat of waves on cliffs at the far end of the earth. Over there they collect corals, pearls, call on female deities, strew flowers. Within...

Author's Note: The following is an active, experimental dialogue with a beloved poet; texts are constructed around single verses from the German poet, distanced from the original context and used as crumbs to ignite a new poetic explosion.   Nights close inside my palm,                I touch...

My mother gave birth in December. Snow fell on the river. Water froze over the fish by month’s end.  She showed me to everyone since I hadn’t died . . . .  “We’ll take her out in pieces, an arm and a leg caught, maybe unformed.”           Only a sign like a silent hiss remains from that time: a return to that womb with my child, head down, body still forming, two loops of flesh around her neck. Step...

I neared a branch heavy with snow bending under the grip of one of the crows. I became that gray and black rocking. And an uncommon green (a mix of salvia and ice) that spread a tint of bruise on the clouds. I saw myself in that purgatory. Everything was landscape.  Anger: a cloud. Uncertainty—heaps: a hill. Estrangement: trees with shivering shadows. “Pay attention,” said shade from the bush closest to me, “fog swallows your pain. Learn in this earthly life...

I cut my sister’s hair today the locks fell like huge tears against the baseboards I swept it up and tossed it in the trash All that dead hair has filled my dreams One day I dreamt of dead hair  The strands all joined back together They ganged up and demanded I account for my sad deed I was silent, dumbstruck The dead hair insisted: Are you there? Why did you butcher me? I gathered up the hair and my sister’s face appeared floating in the distance Why did you throw my hair...

Frail before the squalor             squalor being a feeble answer the everyday self gives its own abjections it surprises me to be in a city whose name like the humidity that clings to its ancient walls or like its tubercular pigeons means nothing to me any more than being inside its plastic image as I sink into La Defense or lose myself in the ardor of its past      oh the purity the freshness of withered things...

how to write you when the letters are reluctant to sound out voices i knew voices i memorized rush back into loneliness only stillness now even that soon moves away far to the edge of desolation suspicious of any poetry even to exchange a hello moreover words when spelled out can turn into a row of pain instantly in every space how to write you when the pages close themselves the paper lays the body face down covering it with a sheet that quivers from throbbing pens and cursors scattered...

1 When the ever so polite earthquake Rocked our village I heard the singing and dancing In the village square Suddenly fall silent. Insects and other animals The grass, plants, and trees And even the words that were being spoken Sentences filled with anger that billowed like smoke Suddenly fell mute. All was still 2 Our small and stuffy room with its cracked wall A lantern flickering from lack of oil The bed with its creaky springs and withered pillows Where all was fatigue and...

1 After half a life: selva oscura. The dog that I was. Jesus-mittens nailed onto treetips—the Lord had large hands. Blooms made of ejaculate. I walked on. Deeper into the woods.   2 King of the beasts: a bird walking with a broken nose; wings, a comet tail, never worn. Pride after the fall. Carnal desire: a puffy octopus from the class of unsuitable cephalopods, floating in the sky in place of a moon. Staring at the transwoman I cannot be. Call me Beatrice, she says. I...

“muxmäuschen” © Simone Kornappel. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2015 by Jake Schneider. All rights reserved.

My friends are distressed Stunned into silence Many of them grieve And all have despaired Suddenly the night has attacked us It’s so dark I can’t see my path Darkness spreads over everything Like grief after a death            People look for light They search for candles, lanterns To cast light on this tragedy Instead of lighting their houses My friends grieve And my brothers Stunned into silence Everyone despairs       ...