By MO FEI
Translated by STEPHEN HAVEN and LI YONGYI
The sky pure as after an oath,
You note threads of dark fate,
Tassels stitched to words.
By MO FEI
Translated by STEPHEN HAVEN and LI YONGYI
By YANG JIAN
Translated by STEPHEN HAVEN and LI YONGYI
They said:
“Tear off the erhu strings,
Smash its body.”
We ended up without music.
By DAVID LEHMAN
The drill instructor was not in a good mood. He had had a mi-
graine all weekend. The weather sucked. He hated sports and there
were going to be no pleasantries about the Yanks, the Mets, the
Knicks, the Nets, or any other team. He knew as I knew that every-
thing depended on one thing: the book. You went by the book. Fol-
low orders and stay out of trouble.
New Poems by our Contributors
This month, we’re featuring two authors with new poems from Guatemala and Greece.
This month we are welcoming newcomer Maurice Emerson Decaul (whose work will also appear in Issue 10 this fall) and welcoming back Tess Taylor, Luisa A. Igloria, Cliff Forshaw, and Valerie Duff.
Please join us in welcoming Ukrainian poet SERHIY ZHADAN to our pages—and look for more of his work forthcoming in our print journal.

All poems translated by Ostap Kin. With an introduction by Polina Barskova.
This month we welcome a poet new to our pages: Colin Channer, whose work will also appear in Issue 10 (Fall 2015).
Please enjoy five new poems by our contributors.
On the same side
turn a car
into a parallelogram,
an oft-read Bible,
a shelf of books
with a few
missing, a man
sitting and a woman
standing. Her hand
is on his shoulder.