At the Blue Note

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 75th birthday.

for Karen Bentivenga

Sometimes in the heat of the snow
you want to cry out

for pleasure or pain like a bell.
And you wind up holding each other,

listening to the in-between
despite the abyss at the edge of the table.

Hell. Mulgrew Miller plays like a big
bad spider, hands on fire, the piano

trembling like crystal,
the taste and smell of a forest under water.

The bartender made us a drink
with butterfly wings and electric wire.

Bitter cold outside, big silence,
a whale growing inside us.

The Snout

We present this work in honor of the Moroccan holiday, Enthronement.

Poetry will be your dress
when you yield your soul
back to its maker
You’ll strike down your enemies
through mortal silence
and the language assassinated
under your fingers
With it you’ll tattoo
the snout of the good-for-nothings
and you’ll bring down the sphinx a peg or two

Translation by Pierre Joris

A Due Description of the Tunisian Revolution

We present this work in honor of the Tunisian holiday, Republic Day.

The revolution that burst out the rose of wind in the sand,
And for which Anemone bled in the field

Is now led by grave wisdom
Filling our lungs with incense’s rotten fume …

Birds are alarmed by the hissing of the leaves
The mole broadens the strategy of the pit,
And announces today the birth of his (nightly) ninety-ninth party
While, from a thousand sheds, echoes Surat The Merciful.

Country Church at Night

Not so much silence
as voices, hushed.
Not so much voices
as emptied sound.
Not so much sound
as pulsing in dark.
Not so much pulsing
as stillness, alive.
Not so much dark
as starlight, waiting.

Double Threads

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 65th birthday.

In the Siwa Oasis, Abeela wants 35 pounds
for the woven straw sack

She knows the value of foreign desire
her bills a tight roll

But her sister Amer is still empty handed
henna scribbled palms

Eternal

Margarita Losada Vargas
Colombian
b. 1983

i try a word that names you
a word
that inhabits your whole being
that flees from the form
and replaces your absence

a word that wanders all over you
like an eye

that never closes

Translation by Nicolás Suescún

Keys

The keys that don’t open doors
are the keys that lock them,
and keys tangled in chains
have nothing but the drama of jingling.
But the key that dies in my pocket
reminds me it is time
that I became a reasonable woman
who lives in a house
without keys, without doors.

Translation by Khaled Mattawa

Love makes woman a man and man a woman

It is not enough for you to touch me with your hand
love is touching me with everything, with woman and distance
and a bunch of grapes.
It is not enough that you take me under you and on top of you
you have to drag me by feet and into nightmares as well.
Love is not a relationship between two individuals like they told us
but rather two universes melting, a mixture of water with water.
It is to love women as if I were you, to lust after their breasts
to be riven seeing their naked flesh
to gasp when a woman lifts her hair with her hand to put it behind her
and just as your heart weakens when you see a hanging fruit
my heart weakens for the same reason.
Without air between us we are breathless
without the sun rising above me and above you we are eyeless.
The idea: love makes woman a man and man a woman
and makes water into love
and love into life.
I incarnate in you like I incarnate in light and soil
and you incarnate in me like life and death.
I assembled you only because I collected you from here and there:
some of your heart I brought from a train station
some of your eyes from glasses in bars
some of your skin from a cemetery
meanwhile you are here
and not here.

Translation by Miled Faiza and Karen McNeil

When You Eyes Go to Bed Worn Out

When your eyes go to bed worn out
with so much unending waiting
when the smile once more comes back to us
and vital still between us
by that time
over there beyond the old oak tree
in that street which my dreams keep watch over today
together we will remember
we will talk of the smell of weariness
we will retell each other the war.

Translation by Janet Brof

I press my head down

I press my head down
It’s the result of insomnia oppressing me
I press my head to you and to my miserable memoirs
The night is pressing me too
But I’m so tough

Now it’s the sound of your scream coming
And there is blood
And there is the smell of tear and tear gas
A soldier is pressing my head down by his boots
Someone is pulling the trigger
Now there is a gun between my eyebrows
I feel the blood pressure in my head
The cowards have run
I press a cold hand in my cold hand

Someone was calling my name all the night
I feel the pressure of a lump in my throat
My throat is wounded
And I hear you screaming in the ear of someone who is all dead
I feel the pressure of life
And its wounds
And its marks
And I feel the pressure of the graves upon the solitude of dead
bodies

I press my fists to the wall and I swallow my cry
You are still screaming in the wild howls of the wind
I press my head down
A vessel is pressing a nerve
And I press a bottom to flash my life back
To go back to a scene where I’m opening a window towards light
Where everybody rise out of the graves
Where I hold a warm hand in my hand
And we are laughing in our homes and in our rooms
There I hear the sound of peace
And my heart beats normally
And that’s a better day with a green background

Translated by Mohammad Hoseini Moghaddam

Poets Corner

Celebrating a world of written and spoken verse

21st Century Poems