The Great Cosmic Hum
“the hum you could never / obliterate, molecules buzzing, hum of 87 floors of refrigerators cooling, / hum that keeps the building in the sky”
Poetry
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.
Lullaby
“The others are fiction today, / pages I turn leaf by leaf. But not / you. Your heart thrums across / the sharp wire. I hear it sing.”
House of Prayer
“I praise once again, I symmetry / like the wings of a migrating bird, I repeat alhamdulillah / and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat, like the rokrok / of an egret.”
The Theory of Sinking
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?”
BRAIN HEMORRHAGE, EARLY FALL
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.”
Hope
“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.
Poetry We Admire: America
By Kim Harvey
This July, as we ring in another Independence Day in America, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to reflect on what our country means to us, how we relate to it and to each other, and how we will shape its future. In this month’s PWA, we offer you five powerful poems with distinct and diverse viewpoints on the topic of America.
Valence
“no country plants innocence / in its daughters we are fertile / for droughts”
Blood Diary (Diane): Strawberry Red, Mirror Black & Home
By Rainie Oet
“My hands are open—the worm points straight up, / drops of its blood rising one at a time.”