By Sevda Akyuz
almost but not quite
sounds like an apt
description of all things I
went through
under and above
in and out
up and down
but mostly down
mossy stone
by the...
Night Terrors
N
Two Poems by Nilgün Marmara
T
Translated by Sevda Akyuz
From the Typewritten Poems
KALEIDOSCOPE SIMILE
OPTIMISTICALLY
The pain of established estrangement
Their own enemies without love or cognition
and a black phrase chained by ruthless shellfish.
A reason for a stranger?
A reason for establishment?
A reason for an established stranger...
Four Psychedelic poems by Eşref Ozan Baygin
F
Translated by Seda Suna Uçakan
The Bastard’s Year (II)
While reality was closer
With the effect of the first fallen word
I fell asleep, and
Then spiders kept my cave.
I waited for my slap
Accompanied by the prophets who
Do not tell a secret in their own voice
With their wise...
Two poems by Volkan Hacioğlu
T
ON READING EUGENE ONEGIN
A little Eugene Onegin
A little rain. . .
A pistol getting wet at a duel,
The bullet of despair fired into the trees.
Long and meandering ridgeways,
“Let’s go,” says the Fountain of Bakhchisaray.
Through the foggy valleys have hied
The springs of unbridled times.
By the shadowy shores...
Two Poems by Kuzey Topuz
T
March—I woke up to snow in my hospital bed.
April—three days have passed without any dreaming—we met.
May—I turned twenty-four and this was enough for you to be mad.
Three Poems by Birhan Keskin
T
TRANSLATED BY ÖYKÜ TEKTEN
BROKEN VORTEX
I’m in a barren, dim, and arid void
I’ve hung the kilims against the wind
Here I am
in an afternoon nap on the stalks
the world is down there, the mountains far away
I’m as resentful as this hillside
but colorful, in the wind, kilims
and the end of harvest, weary...
Flattening the Curve
F
By Aydin Behnam and John Casquarelli
You must believe me. I had never done anything like this before. Yes, it was his first time coming to my unit. It was my fault. I started it all. I read it in an old book I found in the attic and I mentioned it to him. The book said that it used to be an old custom. I’m so stupid! I should have known better. He had a way of...
Speaking of Which: Work in Progress
S
By Uche Nduka
1
they maced their faces multiple times they broke
their eyeglasses tenth ride of the Mounted Units
this...
Poems in Times of Corona
P
Scott Martingell
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
I’m definitely getting tracked and docile
But random celebrities
Reminding me I’m home
Is not my idea of soma.
Systemic response
Is kicking in amongst the primates
Creating new vectors
Of chronic frustration, chains of...
Context Collapse (continued)
C
Context Collapse is a long, mock-academic, critical essay poem. Beginning in ancient Greece and continuing beyond the present, it examines how the increasingly wide gulf between poets and their audiences are mediated by new communications technologies and changes in publishing economies, and how this, in turn, significantly impacts poetic form.
Context Collapse
C
Context Collapse is a long, mock-academic, critical essay poem. Beginning in ancient Greece and continuing beyond the present, it examines how the increasingly wide gulf between poets and their audiences are mediated by new communications technologies and changes in publishing economies, and how this, in turn, significantly impacts poetic form.
Things you Have Touched
T
A piece of tissue-thin onion-skin paper to which you pressed your vermilion-inked seal, and so sealed my fate. Belying the fragility of the parchment, it is an iron-clad document that “releases” me—as if I were a prisoner or a caged animal—from the mother who wanted me and the motherland that did not, to cross the great, roiling ocean to call another, “Mother.”