By KAREN CHASE
Light falls on ramshackle paint,
blue wooden slats, taxi pink and green tint sky,
fans paddling the outside breeze inside,
as Key West light vanishes into the Gulf.
A pebbled field with Fort Taylor at one edge,
sea at the other, objects undone by waves,
the sea, one forceful foot.
By DIANE MEHTA
In the operatic corner in the library,
Italian dialects heckle one another—
whose language is honey
on the tongue and who has disjointed
heads off syllables on the pikes of the invaders—
“Ma ti, vècio parlar, rezìsti.”
By YULIYA MUSAKOVSKA
Translated from the Ukrainian by OLENA JENNINGS and YULIYA MUSAKOVSKA
If their history together hadn’t begun this way,
they both would have been left alone, each with their war.
August—hellish, the bathhouse filled with bodies.
She squeezes the familiar palm and comes to life again.
Everything that has happened and didn’t happen to them,
is established, set in stone, unforgettable,
By CHO JI HOON
Translated from the Korean by SEKYO NAM HAINES
Translator’s note:
Cho Ji Hoon’s “Sorrow of Phoenix” appeared eleven months before the Pearl Harbor attack in the literary magazine Moonjang in 1940. This poem, along with “Old Fashioned Dress” and “Monk Dance,” published a year earlier, are considered to be among his major works. Born in 1920, Cho Ji Hoon grew up under Japan’s oppressive colonial rule after the demise of Chosun Dynasty in 1910 and has said that the foundation of his poetry was his attachment to what was vanishing from his native culture. He longed for the beauty of traditional Korea.
April Is Poetry Month: New Poems By Our Contributors
MARK ANTHONY CAYANAN, DAVID LEHMAN, and YULIYA MUSAKOVSKA (translated by the author and OLENA JENNINGS)
Table of Contents:
Mark Anthony Cayanan
—Ecstasy Facsimile (These days I ask god…)
David Lehman
—The Remedy
—A Postcard from the Future
—Last Day in the City
Yuliya Musakovska (translated by the author and Olena Jennings)
—Angel of Maydan
—The Sorceress’ Oath
Kharpert rooftops, Ottoman Empire, c. 1910s. Photo by unidentified photographer, copied by K.S. Melikian of Worcester, MA.
Project SAVE Photograph Archive. Courtesy of Arra S. Avakian
Kharpert
Stories
When I woke in the morning
and begged for stories, Gram said
don’t talk too much, flies
will get into your mouth.
I still wanted a story.
She’d say later, after our work.
She tied an apron around me,
pulled the stool to the table,
gave me parsley, cracked wheat,
ground lamb, and my own basin
of water to wet my hands
as we worked together.
Poems by KERRY JAMES EVANS, CHINUA EZENWA-OHAETO, RICHARD MICHELSON, and LAKSHMI SUNDER
Table of Contents
Kerry James Evans
—Maria
—Honeybee Psalm
Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto
—It’s Either Men Made God or God Made Men
Richard Michelson
—Vermin
—The Wedding in the Cemetery
Lakshmi Sunder
—My Mother Cuts My Nails
By KEI LIM
For Willem (2002-2016)
i
your evergreen forest
knit from pine boughs and hemlock
frayed by even the gentlest winds
without the swell of your breath
to shelter beneath
roots loosen quicker than I can tie them
slipping through my fingers to tangle
deeper into the earth
still, I forage in circles
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Steel kicks in this belly.
Girls with threadbare braids
weave between motor beasts and cement bags.
Tin roofs give way to glass columns.
Stretching as if to pet the clouds.
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Celebrating 15 Years