the flowers of war open at night on boulevard Saint-Laurent a line from Lorca a word from Castellanos a body unharmed by the siege of Sarajevo a bomb that didn’t explode in Hanoi or Baghdad and the sweet lips of women in winter are enough to make dawn bear fruit on this corner on boulevard Saint-Laurent best if you don’t know who you are best if you don’t know where you’re from best if you don’t know where you’re going the boulevard’s flowers in...

a man standing on the tracks stares at a train as it advances with a moan of metal and night the iron moves the blind diesel thrusts the siren wails the feverish headlight lights up and splits the chest of the earth and forest but the man stays still before the apparatus still ten meters left and he just stares and stares at the invention that will chop him split him shatter him he lacks no strength or ability     to thrust his body to one side he can jump run dodge save...

When the city was destroyed, they started fighting over the cemetery. It was right before Easter and wooden crosses over the freshly dug graves put out their paper blossoms— red, blue, yellow, neon green, orange, raspberry pink. Joyful relatives poured vodka for themselves and for the dead—straight into their graves. And the dead asked for more, and more, and more and the relatives just kept pouring. The celebration went on. But at some point a young man tripped over the...

The whole soldier doesn’t suffer— it’s just the legs, the arms, just blowing snow, just meager rain. The whole soldier shrugs off hurt— it’s just missile systems “Hail” and “Beech,” just bullets on the wing, just happiness ahead. Just meteorological pogroms, geo-Herostratos wannabes, just the girl with the pointer poking the map in the stomach. Just thunder, lightning, just dreadful losses, just the day with a dented helmet, just God,...

You undulate, soaked in iodine and sun around the cold outline of a universe: profound, public, oceanic, the mindset of a country: a tank of pleasure, of collective loss, shimmering in different grades of sepia since sepia is the shade of fine sand, and sand             is the color here, and ocean-blue. The night is at rock-height trying to pronounce your name: hot, salty in my mouth. How to explain the heat a language...

  I         “At three in the afternoon, I’m the most demanding woman         in the world . . . When it’s over, six in the afternoon comes, also         indescribable, in which I turn blind.”...

I Adam Gerber says good morning:                                                             “Good morning, trees, good morning, sky, good morning, morning;...

I plugged my poem into a manhole cover That flamed into the first guitar, Jarred the asphalt and tar to ash, And made from where there once was Ground a sound instead to stand on.   "Terra Incognita" from The Ground by Rowan Ricardo Phillips. © 2012 by Rowan Ricardo Phillips. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. 

Our country has no more warriors only timeworn fig trees beaten thoroughly by the thousand winds of our plight. The barefooted angels with pathetic faces at the bottom of our ramparts die with each new light. The scent of childhood is now nowhere to be found no chance of nursery rhymes or sunshowers what happened to the hours of ancient romance our dreamy obsession with Al-Buraq’s powers? Oh that horse-woman with the mane flowing longer than the clouds over our houses crumbling...

When the rose perceived the distance between itself and the earth, it brought forth its thorns. When the rose realized that a single leg couldn’t take it anywhere, that it was voiceless and mostly had no echo, it thought of fragrance. The blooming petals: a navel. The stem: a rope that binds it to the earth’s deep womb. That rose will be born someday in a lover’s hand or between the shores of a book. © Soukaina Habiballah. By arrangement with the...

How I adore the café  door             there’s a newspaper             and a seat and, you know, I mean, that means I know             all the latest news. In and out flapping about             Waiter! one Lipton tea and my number . . . I dialed it on my...

Stick a toothpick of silence in your mouth! That your word should never bear witness! That your song should never be the echo of fire While a fire is being prepared for you in the afterlife! They told you That your feet should be nailed to the household! That you should never reach a market or a beach! They told you That you are your father’s when you’re young!    That you are your spouse’s when you’re married! That you are your grave’s once...

A drop of sky from Paradise streams A bud from the bonfires on Hell's branches A bundle of black rocks in the heart Grateful gifts for the verses that flow toward the moon A page of the epics where heroes' corpses lie buried& The past that advances shouting Charge! The odes sung by souls entering and leaving to doors opening and doors closing Distant graves approaching Girls never seen twice and beds seen many times Water in the blood, bread in the flesh, vows in the bone A...

At just that moment I was eyemate to a blind one and went among you You must have thought we couldn't see Some of you said you'd show us the house of God, then led us to dwellings you’re still building after centuries We didn't mind Some of you without a second thought told us your diaries and wives were your sacred customs We didn't mind Some of you claimed to speak of love and untied the knots concerning your bodies and tried to pin upon us the flowers that grew...

A long while ago now in those chipped years like a camel’s tail in those dim months like a desert mirage in those unchanging days blurring into each other everyone was brought head first into this world The golden oleaster flowers and the copper grains of sand smelled like an upset stomach Ugly people with no concern for their own souls would lock winter in spring and insult it left and right It was then that crawling water was discovered Everyone’s left eyelid would quiver in...

is there a zone of darkness between all languages, a black river, that swallows words and stories and transforms them? here sentences must disrobe, begin to roam, learn to swim, not lose the memory that nests in their bodies, a secret nucleus. will the columbine’s blue be a shade of violet when it reaches the other side, and the red bee balm become a pear, cinnamon- sweet? will my tench be missing a fin in the light of the new language? will it have to learn to crawl or to walk...

perhaps i was just drinking coffee or opening the newspaper. perhaps i was drawing the curtains or looking out onto the street when speech left me. still, i thought, what a rattling from deep in the wall, what a clattering in this room. no windowpanes shattered, no chairs toppled in the kitchen. the names on street signs vanished leaving only the ashes of letters. a tanker filled with words retreated above the houses, massive, silent, my swollen tongue twitched in my dry mouth. i escaped...

They await you: The new poem They await your downpour through my soul My hands shaping your features I stand with my heart agape To observe this desolate world As it falls into ruin Blood covers everything Prayers no longer know Where to go I await you I listen for your cautious footfall Yes The world has become a graveyard But the sun rises The breeze caresses a girl’s cheek The sea does not forsake its blue The swallows tell me of my childhood Hidden beneath their wings And...

What’s the deal with your face, Dad? It seems abandoned. You are not dead, but your face: as if immersed in water. Your skin is colorless and molten — the eyes impossible to penetrate, buried behind a mask of high tension wires, subtle electric growl. You vent short gusts, like those from the bellows we use for the hearth: Your eyebrows crease together, lips drawn taut, nose expels air and silence. You slouch a little, look away. Your hair is impeccably coiffed.   "Face...

The will to have no openings, to avoid areas where humiliation and assault take place. In terms of the blood stream, not wanting infrastructure, it’s the same. Sun chariot and moon chariot wheel at the slightest external touch, transporting bright shiny humiliations within the corpus and abracadabra out into every screaming corner. I use expensive drops: anger’s sweat, tablet, pastille, ointment. Balm. Brew three bags for a pot of coma. With a rock I block the cave’s...