Enjoy these new poems by our contributors.
Table of Contents:
Tina Cane
–Essay on States
–Regime
Benjamin S. Grossberg
–Worshipping the Ancestors
Iain Twiddy
–Crack Willow
By BURLIN BARR
Table of Contents:
Repairing Holes in Concrete Walls
The furnace always was
too hot, having been
converted from one mode of operation
to something else entirely;
its source of power mysterious, improvisatory;
changing: it looked like a tree
Poems by LARA SOLÓRZANO DAMASCENO
Translated from the Spanish by IGNACIO CARVAJAL
Poems appear in both Spanish and English.
Translator’s Note
Lara Solórzano’s poetry is a contestation, a reprieve from fear. Her work exhibits a precise aesthetic and a fundamental grounding in urgency. Historical memory characterizes every figure and spirit in the verses that name societal constraints faced by women. Along with that naming of violences—and ultimately more important than it—the poems ring with an unequivocal rejection of them. It honors me to offer these translations from the collection El bestiario de las falenas.
—Ignacio Carvajal
Our June Poetry Feature includes new poems by our contributors: LISA HITON, ROMEO ORIOGUN, PATRICK RIEDY, and CORRIE WILLIAMSON.
Table of Contents
Lisa Hiton | “Sodomite”
Romeo Oriogun | “The Unsung Shore”
Patrick Riedy | “Ice Fishing”
Corrie Williamson | “Kissing the Good Green Earth”
By D.S. WALDMAN
Kentucky, United States
64-West
After Calvino
When you ride a long time in the private
night of your pickup cab
you enter eventually
into a desire you cannot name a greater dark
that wants only what
Poems by DEREK CHUNG 鍾國強
Translated from the Chinese by MAY HUANG 黃鴻霙
Poems appear in both Chinese and English.
Translator’s Note
Cha chaan tengs, local diners that serve comfort food all day, are a cornerstone of Hong Kong culture. At a cha chaan teng, you can order beef satay noodles for breakfast, a cup of milk tea stronger than any Starbucks coffee, lo mai gai (glutinous rice and chicken wrapped in a lotus leaf), and more. To many Hongkongers, cha chaan tengs evoke a sense of familiarity and nostalgia. Indeed, it was precisely these feelings that drew me, a Hongkonger living in America, to translate Derek Chung’s (Chung Kwok-keung) remarkable poems.
Chung wrote “The Cha Chaan Teng on Fortune Street” in 1996 about a Cha Chaan Teng he visited in Sham Shui Po while running an errand. He no longer remembers what the errand was for, he writes in a blog post, but “words have helped [him] remember concrete details of that cha chaan teng.” At the same time, he also wonders whether there is something about a place that is lost forever once it no longer exists, no matter what we write down. As evocative as the details in this poem are, from the “soft clink” of utensils to the “grease-soaked hair” of a waiter, the poem ends on a note of uncertainty, unsure of whether words can safeguard memory.
Avon Valley, Western Australia
Just below, a roo doe digs into the softest
soil it can find — avoiding rocks — to make
a hollow for itself and the joey heavy in its pouch;
it lifts, digs, turns drops lifts digs turns drops.
Poems by HUMBERTO AK’ABAL
Translated by LOREN GOODMAN
Table of Contents
Humberto Ak’abal (1952 – 2019), a poet of K’iche’ Maya ethnicity, was born in Momostenango, Guatemala. One of the most well-known Guatemalan poets in Europe and South America, his works have been translated into French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Scottish, Hungarian and Estonian. The author of over twenty books of poetry and several other collections of short stories and essays, Ak’abal received numerous awards and honors, including the Golden Quetzal granted by the Association of Guatemalan Journalists in 1993, and the International Blaise Cendrars Prize for Poetry from Switzerland in 1997. In 2005 he was named Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture, and in 2006 was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
Loren Goodman was born in Kansas and studied in New York, Tucson, Buffalo, and Kobe. He is the author of Famous Americans, selected by W.S. Merwin for the 2002 Yale Series of Younger Poets, and Non-Existent Facts (otata’s bookshelf, 2018), as well as the chapbooks Suppository Writing (The Chuckwagon, 2008), New Products (Proper Tales Press, 2010) and, with Pirooz Kalayeh, Shitting on Elves & Other Poems (New Michigan Press, 2020). A Professor of creative writing and English literature at Yonsei University/Underwood International College in Seoul, Korea, he serves as the Chair of Comparative Literature and Culture and Creative Writing Director.
By SARA ELKAMEL
Camels on the Moon, 2021, Mixed media and collage on cardboard. Artwork by Sara Elkamel.
Cairo, Egypt
When you’re not looking
I try on your big brown shoes,
pick a spot to run to, practice ducking
from winged pellets on the street—
Poem by SILVIA GUERRA
Translated from the Spanish by JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL and JEANNINE MARIE PITAS
Poem appears in both Spanish and English.
Silvia Guerra
Translators’ Note
“Moss on a Smooth Rock” is from Un mar en madrugada (A Sea at Dawn), by the Uruguayan poet Silvia Guerra, published in 2018 by Hilos Editora, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The English version of this book is forthcoming from Eulalia Books in 2022.
Guerra’s work is notorious for its complexity, its concreteness of image and abstraction of thought, and its convention-defying syntax, capitalization and punctuation. With a long-standing interest in linguistics and psychology as well as a deep affinity for the natural world, Guerra’s poems go beyond the self in an effort to imagine the world from the standpoint of other beings, living and nonliving. For centuries, humans have assumed a monopoly on consciousness, even arrogantly denying the subjective experience of other mammals. But scientists are at last confirming what any dog or cat owner has always known: animals are not unfeeling automata any more than we are. But while only some creatures are proven to be sentient, can we be so certain that others are not? “How can we be so sure that plants feel no pain?” asks Polish poet Wisława Szymborska. What about rocks? Guerra dares to imagine they are.
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Celebrating 15 Years