Fernanda Burgath – “my mother said that…”
my mother said that
that her mother’s said
that her mother and grandmother
also said
that yes, you have to do
the great-grandmother said yes
because who first said that yes
was the husband, the brother
the priest, the wooer
or any other...
Boris Slutsky – How They Killed My Grandmother
How did they kill my grandmother?
This is how they killed my grandmother:
In the morning a tank
Rolled up to the city bank.
One hundred and fifty Jews of the town.
Weightless
from a whole year's starvation.
Pale,
with the pangs...
Fernanda Burgath – Ultimate
Today I woke up
such an angry
angry bitch
I didn't know where to put
so much anger
Then
I stopped for a moment
took a deep breath and
realized that the anger
came up from my uterus
I went for a walk...
Grace Nichols – Spell Against Too Much Male White Power
There is too much male white power at loose in the world
There is too much male white power at loose in the world
The smell of Pretoria
The breath of the Pentagon
The eye of the Kremlin
How...
Fiona Sampson – Sonnet eight – Summer Dusk
On summer evenings
air thickens – and settles,
dust dropping onto shelves of books
silently – settles.
These evenings
lift from the pages of books,
or out of dreams.
Write your name in the dust
that blooms on...
Fiona Sampson
Fiona Sampson has been published in thirty-seven languages and has just received two major European prizes: the Naim Frasheri Laureateship 2019 and the European Lyric Atlas Prize 2020. She has also received the Zlaten...
Grace Nichols – Atlantic
Married as we were to your brown
untourist beaches, unconcerned
with the many shores you touched,
as children, we thought that you, Atlantic,
belonged to us, your below-sea-level offspring.
See us playing cricket,
turn-down bucket making wicket –
ball a spin-off...
Jane Hirshfield – Against Certainty
There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us.
Each time I think “this,” it answers “that.”
Answers hard, in the heart-grammar’s strictness.
If I then say “that,” it too is taken away.
Between certainty...
William Butler Yeats – The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is...
Jane Hirshfield – My Eyes
An hour is not a house,
a life is not a house,
you do not go through them as if
they were doors to another.
Yet an hour can have shape and proportion,
four walls, a ceiling.
An hour can...