This poem appears originally in Which Way Was North, published by Louisiana State University Press. Poet Anne Pierson Wiese will be a guest at Amherst College’s LitFest 2024. Register for this exciting celebration of Amherst’s literary legacy and life.
By VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA
Translated from Hindi by ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA
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New poems by ADRIENNE SU, ELEANOR STANFORD, KWAME OPOKU-DUKU, and WILLIAM FARGASON
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Solitude
By Adrienne Su
My body rebelled
against the amorphousness
of American
motherhood, which asked
me to be available
as if I were five
women: two grandmas,
New poems by our contributors CHRISTOPHER BAKKEN, CYRUS CASSELLS, JAMES RICHARDSON, CATIE ROSEMURGY
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New poems by our contributors NATHALIE HANDAL and ZACK STRAIT
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Nathalie Handal:
Zack Strait:
Translated from the German by STEVEN CRAMER
Translator’s Note:
“Night Drive” is from Departures from Rilke (Arrowsmith Press, 2023), poems that repurpose, update, or upend lyrics from Rainer Maria Rilke’s New Poems (1907/08), often leaving Rilke’s premises almost altogether.
— Steven Cramer
New poems by our contributors VIRGINIA KONCHAN and GABRIEL SPERA
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Virginia Konchan:
Gabriel Spera:
The wheat wants an apology,
for taking me this long
to show my wrists
to the thresher boy.
White women give my father shaded looks.
Bringing babies to do their dirty work,
mumbled in passing.
I am paid in jelly doughnuts
for my day on the boycott.
My dad leads my baby brother
to the front of the grocery store doors
for a meeting with the manager:
two men
and a five-year-old interpreter.
What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful.
—Mahmoud Darwish, “To a Young Poet”
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