By KEVIN DEAN
Part One
It was winter by the time Mina and I met. I was on my usual afternoon stroll in Garden City when I saw him coming toward me by the United States embassy. He went slowly along the compound’s perimeter wall, his hands in the pockets of his brown leather jacket. I’d just purchased some oranges from a fruit seller on the street, and I took one and began to peel it. Mina didn’t look happy, and I was unsure if I should say hello to him or not.
Your speech
tongue in cheek, like descriptions of cocktails
in this bar full of handsome strangers
who won’t meet my eye
Translated by PERWEEN RICHARDS
The Falling Sun
Great-Grandfather’s name is Hage, which means “revered and noble,” though to some it means “loquacious,” while others deny all definitions and emphasize that the name means “he who imitates the sun or its likeness.”
“At that time, people thought the sun had fallen to Earth. ‘De K’al… De K’al… De K’al… The sun has fallen… The sun has fallen… The sun has fallen…’ they screamed.” That’s how the story was told by our great-grandfather—he who knew all the secrets of the past and how it was. It was known that he had memorized everything that storytellers told about those distant eras and their events.
By STELLA GAITANO
Translated by SAWAD HUSSAIN
I am completely alone, even though I’m not by myself. Here, filthy chickens scratch at the earth around me in search of worms and kernels. Next to me sits a pile of tatty newspapers—old news that I chew over when I’m beset with a yearning to read. I also keep a lot of family photos. Pictures of my children at different ages, from birthdays and other occasions, as well as pictures of work colleagues. Life that we have lived, frozen on these rectangles of stiff paper; how quickly we are ushered into the past by just glancing at one.
Rockport, ME
Saturday
At the laundromat the whir of machines,
whorled & busy, the pleasure & difficulty
of stillness Waiting, sockless, I aspire to be
the cross-legged woman reading a magazine,
By ALI SHAPIRO
Lightning Talk on I-90 by Ali Shapiro
Ali Shapiro’s work has appeared in Gertrude, Popula, PrairieS
By MARÍA NEGRONI
Translated by ALLISON A. DEFREESE
Poems appear below in English and the original Spanish.
Translator’s note:
The Dickinson Archive is a series of 72 short meditations exploring the creative process through the lens of New England poet Emily Dickinson’s lifework and words. Dickinson said she was in the presence of poetry when “I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off.” The Dickinson Archive is a book that elicits such responses. Its poems, based on a few of the 9,000 words that Dickinson used most often, get under our skin and into our bones—whether our internal scaffolding is thick as a mammoth’s tusk or delicate as the rib of a songbird. Though María modestly describes the book as a “tribute,” the unique and unconventional pieces in this archive showcase Negroni’s own experimentation with form and language. Moments in these translations where word choice or grammatical structure may give the reader pause are not accidents; they are examples of Negroni at her finest as an experimental writer forging a cadence, locution, and syntax all her own. The Dickinson Archive is a book about play and creation. What light and lightness to translate such poems, to join this dialogue between women that spans continents and centuries, to channel the spirit of Emily Dickinson’s work through María Negroni’s words.
By ADAM CLAY, KHADIJAH QUEEN, ROGER REEVES, ANALICIA SOTELO, and RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ
To kick off Poetry Month we’re bringing you selections from Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s new anthology, You Are Here, out this month from Milkweed Editions.
As part of her signature project, “You Are Here,” 24th US Poet Laureate Ada Limón has commissioned fifty-two contemporary American poets to observe and reflect on their place in the natural world. The resulting anthology of original poems is a timely portrait of the myriad ways the natural world speaks to us and reflects us. Some of the poems included here contend with the destruction of nature, while others consider its abundance and resilience—and some do both at the same time. While these poems emerge from deeply personal perspectives, together they reveal that nature, like poetry, is universal—and that our interpretations of the natural world are grounded in the nature of our humanity. They also serve as a call for readers to take in the nature all around them, wherever they are.
(from the Foreword to You Are Here, by Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress)
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