We are so grateful to all of our partner-poets for sharing their work with us—please enjoy their beautiful words in our Featured Poetry catalogue.
By Márton Simon (Translated by Timea Balogh)
“I smear the makeup you left behind / on my face in an effort to love myself. / And I think I’ll eventually drink these two bottles / of perfume that have been here since— / what else could I do with them?”
By Madhur Anand
“Found a dead bird on the rented back porch on Rice Lake. / Found it. Not encountered it. More like: glad we did not / not see it.”
“I collect poets who throw themselves out of hospital windows in Voronezh. / I wheel a teacart in a large house, its clattering spoons / announce my arrival.
“no country plants innocence / in its daughters we are fertile / for droughts”
By Rainie Oet
“My hands are open—the worm points straight up, / drops of its blood rising one at a time.”
By Jai Bashir
“In the rain, we circle around like dogs / who can’t find sleep, we carve the dark // out of plums, purple as an uncurled thumb”
“Your life amounted to saving cent / seven as you lost yours. Bare ruined choirs / sing to you now in your blistering senescence.”
“From your fingers, / the salt was a blessing. I had to take / my shirt off.”
By Al Maginnes
“And though he knows / five languages and a thousand names for God, he walks // to the edge of the settlement, listening again for the silver bird”