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New Year’s By the Sea, Spinning Top and Cup

Huang Fan

‘A cup is an open mouth / You kiss each day’

Three poems by Huang Fan, translated by Margaret Ross.

For Pessoa and My Cows Arrive

Lan Lan

‘I read your love poem, / a failure.’

Two poems by Lan Lan, translated by Diana Shi and George O’Connell.

Birds

Zheng Xiaoqiong

‘in the Huangma Mountains, everything rots readily’

A poem by Zheng Xiaoqiong, translated by Eleanor Goodman.

Song of the Bicycle and the Fence and Greenland

Hu Xudong

‘How reliable did the gods have to be / to make his parents meet on an island / the size of a continent?’

Two poems by Hu Xudong, translated by Margaret Ross.

Two Poems

Zoë Hitzig

‘just like that, I’m just your state, state of play’

Poetry by Zoë Hitzig.

Three Mukhatabat

Najwan Darwish

‘He said to me: / Love led me / to pity my own self, / to grieve it / with a vertical grief.’

Poetry by Najwan Darwish. Translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid.

Moon

Bernadette Van-Huy

‘It hides in the wings during the day’

Poetry by Bernadette Van-Huy.

Lovers’ Quarrel

Tamara Nassar

‘Certainly we are not too old for that day / as dense as age on your bedroom floor.’

Poetry by Tamara Nassar.

Two Poems

Sylvia Legris

‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’

Two poems by Sylvia Legris.

The One It Came All This Way For

Victoria Adukwei Bulley

‘all the furs & bright feathers won’t beat / the sunlight on my face like I’m the one it came / all this way for’

Victoria Adukwei Bulley writes four poems in response to twenty-eight photographs from Magnum Photos.

Two Poems

Momtaza Mehri

‘Rub my scalp and tell me who I could have been. / Feed me a morsel or two.’

Two poems by Momtaza Mehri.

At me and beautiful problems

Eve Esfandiari-Denney

‘ancestry.com fucks with my mind’

A poem by Eve Esfandiari-Denney.

Two Poems

Maya C. Popa

‘Things assume a sort of peace / if you accept life’s limitations.’

Poetry by Maya C. Popa.

Nearly White Girl Girling on Behalf of Sonic Fluency

Eve Esfandiari-Denney

‘I hope to hear the spirit of my mother’s native pessimism faintly pass through a line of translated poetry’

Poetry from Eve Esfandiari-Denney.