By STEVEN LEYVA
“… and there is promise in such sweat.”
—John Proctor, from The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
Given this ruddy, straightened wig no one could place
my face on a spectral scale of “ethnic.” I slid
on and off stage. I spoke plain. I didn’t name names. Some
audiences mistook me for Muscogee Creek. I spoke
in first person. Under that wig I wore cornrows
in Oklahoma’s emaciated winter.
The wolf belongs to the boy I to the wolf
I ask permission to still be myself this time of night.
Sem barriga, sem fome, sem bebida. Blue notes
from a dead man’s tribute creep up my balcony.
Damn, you know how you know a song,
By BRUCE SNIDER
Over a hundred men suspected of being gay are being abducted, tortured and even killed in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya…
—CNN
Looking out at the blue sky
we listen to news
of men in Chechnya. Touching
counters, our washrags move like ghosts.
You sweep the kitchen. I tend the cry
of the washing machine, the low roof
that is our only roof.
By LEONARDO TONUS
Translated by CAROLYNE WRIGHT
they say that the most impressive of all crossings
is not thirst
or the fear
afterwards.
The humiliation
no longer wounds
what does not exist
they say
bodies in a boat
of bodies
veins
eyes
skin
penis
nails
vagina
35 Enter inhale. Enter time. Enter inheritance.
Enter or else. Enter doors with handles,
without handles, manually manipulated. Enter alone
feelings. Enter tension. Struggle entering
bitterness enter. Love turning towards lust enter.
Historic languages enter. Human conditions of
oppression enter. Enter roadside assistance. Enter
talented man killed too soon. Gravemarker write
L.O.W. Enter near Dayton settlement but
specifically at Englewood location. Enter chirping
bird sounds out of the ceiling again. Enter your
own music mixing up into the chirps of birds. Enter
memory again. Enter thought again. Enter more and
more gunshots. Enter yelling. Enter empathy and
critical engagement.
By LANDA WO
“Grief is never more than a house being rebuilt.”
Ntolle Mbuyi1
Little Cabindan history
All the Cabindan strategies were there
To mount the portrait of a free Cabinda.
The historic chief discoursed on education
The Cabindan earth sketched a faint smile.
By KC TROMMER
Louise Bourgeois, MASS MoCA
Inside the bounded mercury,
we keep going. All circuits that close
make serpents of us, constrict
and envelop every tender corner until
only a small portion
is distinct, our feet dangling like the end of a
sentence. We suspend ourselves
in a room full of light but take none in.
“Raise high the roof beam, carpenters.
Like Ares comes the bridegroom,
taller far than a tall man.”
—Sappho
A brief architectural brief
By JOÃO LUÍS BARRETO GUIMARÃES
Translated by CALVIN OLSEN
to Alexandra and Ricardo
on the arrival of Gui
We all have credit,
Said the bankers.
A matter of faith.
—Hans Magnus Enzensberger
By BRUCE BOND
When the smoke cleared and took with it the sirens
and the uniforms strung across our sofas,
what remained were rivers, mist, whisper as a habit,
red dawn in the eyes of the sleep-deprived.
In the brush, here and there, beside the highway,
the revenant scent of metal and decay.
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