Do You Speak Persian?
By Kaveh AkbarSome days we can see Venus in mid-afternoon. Then at night, stars
separated by billions of miles, light travelling years
to die in the back of an eye.
Search Results
Ama-ar-gi*
By Dunya MikhailOur clay tablets are cracked
Scattered, like us, are the Sumerian letters
“Freedom” is inscribed this way:
Ama-ar-gi
Naming Things
By Zeina Hashem BeckZeina Hashem Beck performs the poem "Naming Things" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Song of the Exiles
By Holly KarapetkovaThere never was a garden
only a leaving:
miles and miles
of footprints in the dirt.
2001 Mill Road, Alexandria, VA
By Marcos L. MartínezThere are immeasurable ways to count days: on the median the sunflower tracks UV streams: east to west then sleep; an acorn gets weeded out of the common area ‘til another live oak drobs a bomb then sprouts till, yanked away again;
Iraqi-Style Fish Shop, Damascus
By Heather Derr-SmithThe fish are opened up like salad bowls,
Slid between the metal bars of baskets,
Roasted in the wood-fired ovens, Iraqi style.
The flesh glows as if it were made of glass.
Attribution
By Jee Leong KohMy grandfather said life was better under the British.
He was a man who begrudged his words but he did say this.
I was born after the British left
an alphabet in my house, the same book they left in school.
Above the Thin Shell of the World
By Marci Calabretta Cancio-BelloI fell in love with a North Korean
by falling asleep on his shoulder
in a South Korean subway.
origin stories (reprise)
By Safia Elhilloi was born in the winter in 1990 in a country not my own
i was born with my father’s eyes maybe i stole them he
doesn’t look like that anymore i was born
in seven countries i was born carved up by borders
#flyingwhileblack
By Imani CezanneThere is no moment when I am more reminded of my Blackness
than when I am at an airport walking through TSA
The Security Administration
Whose job it is to keep the planes from terrorism