poetry

Francisco Gavidia (1863-1955) was a well-respected public figure in El Salvador known for his work as a writer, politician, lawyer, historian, educator, and journalist. His wide-ranging body of work includes everything from poetry and plays to music, pedagogy, and literary translation. In 1964, the Salvadoran government created a medal for intellectual merit named after Gavidia, to be awarded each year to a Central American writer or journalist who has made significant cultural contributions.

I didn’t believe I would ever learn to die

I wasn’t around when death was for free

But I was there when my maternal grandfather paid the price of cotton labourers’ sweat that made his Ottoman suit

The price of bare miles to the women of Bosnia

The price of their tears on the chests of their men before the war

The price of God’s banners

The price of the emperor’s frivolousness and long-term sickness

Balkan blood dripped on my school shirt

The teachers found vows of vengeance in my backpack, and so fabricated chapters of history

I wasn’t around when death happened by chance, on the road

But I was there when my paternal grandfather paid the price of a signature at the bottom of a page, the price of surrendering his village at the bottom of the mountain, of taking the occupier’s hands off of it, the rebel’s taking his hands off of his waist. With the move of a pen, my grandfather’s ink numbed the slope. With the folding of a paper, the mountain folded history, with a handshake, he took the valley’s hand from the tank’s muzzle.

The almond trees died in the cardiac operation rooms, the wedding horses shrouded their eyes with henna and killed themselves.

No one cleansed my ethnicity. But the mountain’s spinal cord broke. And so broke my chance to ever ascend it together, to look at Christ’s footsteps on the lake and copy them.

I’m not the miracle

I didn’t walk on water and I didn’t heal myself of your love’s ailments

But it was my heart’s water which I learned to turn into asphalt whenever I remembered you

I learned to flee the lava that dripped from the mountains of your fear

And I didn’t learn death

I wasn’t there when death was a once and for all lesson

Where the memory of the rocket betrayed it and so forgot the way

The bullet that never meant to cease being a pen

The massacre that passed by the main road and fired peace

When I was walking in the back road

Picking yellow daisies and watching wars drawn in cartoons

I didn’t believe I would ever learn to die

Until Beirut’s war drowned my mother’s lullaby in the well

The scent of invasions emanates from the cooking oven

The commando’s voice enters Um Kulthoum’s cassette

The skulls that paved the city road, they leave the poster hanging beside the bed and lull me, tapping my soft head like a long latmiya. So I stop crying, or they stop crying in it.

My heart grows in the well like a pomegranate tree, each time a branch is broken I climb another on my way to you. All of me breaks, so I become a nest. The birds look in the water and see the laughing face of a Bosnian, I look in it and see your face.

I am the child of tubes crossbred in a medical lab

I smelled the scent of dead horses in my father’s sperm

And I retreated

I was born in the seventh month

After I was beaten by Bosnians in my mother’s womb

And I retreated

I didn’t believe I would ever learn to die

Until the Hebron massacre was committed on the cake of my ninth birthday. I lit the candles on the carpets of Abraham’s house. They melted there alone and no one sang upon them. The birthday gifts fall into the well, the gifts fall, vows of vengeance, in my backpack

The vows would’ve dug my grave had they any hands

The almond trees would’ve stepped on it had they a spinal cord

The mountains would’ve praised it had they any poems

The Bosnian’s tears would’ve creviced its stones had they any beaks or claws

And I would’ve come out

To learn the first lesson

That the smashed skull in the poster is my skull

And that the blood on my shirt

Is my blood

---

source: https://www.lyrikline.org/de/uebersetzungen/details/4355/12874 biobibliographical note: https://www.lyrikline.org/en/authors/asmaa-azaizeh

Time to add some poetry to your feed! Here's a little something by @brianbilston@mastodon.online, the Banksy of the poetry world, about monetizing your followers.

#BrianBilston #Poetry #Humor #Humour #Monetization #SocialMedia #Monet

Chimalpahin, or Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin (1579-1660), was born in Chalco, in what is now central Mexico. He is best known for writing the history of Mexico in both Nahuatl and Spanish. The better known of his surviving works is Relaciones, or Anales, which includes testimonies from indigenous people and descriptions of the events before and after the colony was established. He died in Mexico City.

I shall plough

everywhere

and move on

Out of your soul’s press

and your body’s distillery

I shall be drunk on your last breath

In the palms of your hands

I shall place all of me

All time will pass

Me and you

everywhere

we shall be

• -

And while we are aware of our profound sadness

we force our bodies to pass through infinite tunnels

where the world is preoccupied with perfecting its plans

to eliminate our children

Q: You are an Arab artist?

A: Me? God forbid! I am a criminal, thank God. God was merciful and kind to me.

---

The mornings green, yellow

and honey hued

In the time of the apricots

The smell of burning sugar

Children playing in the dust

while my mother makes coffee

and milk and tea

My mother

In the time of the apricots

Always my mother

---

source: https://www.shaeirat-project.com/by-the-time-of-the-apricots Kotob Khan ed., Cairo, 2019 – translation Youssef Rakha

In the Time of the Apricots is a tour de force. A cycle of poems, it embraces the entire life experience of a woman poet who happens to be Palestinian. We can find, without being able to disentangle them, daily life and politics, desires, childhood memories, motherhood. The insistent memory of the mother is like the refrain of this long and finely chiselled song.

The variety of poetic forms is brought into play and their meticulous arrangement into an ode to life recited in an almost natural voice by this duet of splendid readers, each in her language, is a drama in stereo where anger, sensuality, reportage, elegy, fantasies, the infinite tenderness of mothers, heady melancholy of this season of apricots and the smell of Turkish coffee all mix.

biobibliographical note:

Carol Sansour is a poet from Palestine whose first book, في المشمش, In the Time of the Apricots, appeared in a trilingual edition in 2019 in Cairo by Kottob Khan ed. The French translation has been published in Geneva by Héros Limite ed. in May 2022, coupled with her second collection, Jamila.

She co-manages the Shaeirat Project and is the director of the Athens Palestine Film Festival. Her work is translated into French, English, Italian, Spanish and German.

Carmen Peña Visbal, born in Barranquilla, Colombia, is a poet, journalist, lawyer, and expert in strategic communications. Visbal has studied human resources at the Industrial University of Santander; law at the Free University of Colombia; human rights at the ESAP (Escuela Superior de Administracion Publica); security and national defense at the War College of Colombia (Escuela Superior de Guerra); criminal law and forensic sciences at the Catholic University of Colombia; senior management at Nueva Granada Military University; and political management and governance at the University of the Rosary. She has held numerous leadership positions in journalism, government, and consulting. Visbal’s collections of poetry include Dite (1994), Las vestiduras de mi alma (1998), Mi voz no te alcanza (2008), and Todo silencio es esencial (unpublished). She has also been included in several anthologies such as Poseia Colombiana del siglo XX escrita por mujeres, Vol. 2 and Siete Poetas: Dreams of a country at peace without mines.

When you walk under the rain, take off your shoes and walk barefoot. Let your feet feel the water on the ground, let them soak a little. Let your feet sink into the mud, feel its softness and play with it using your toes.

But whatever you do, do not look up at the sky. That gray sky with its black clouds. You will see death hovering above you, smiling a terrifying smile. You will see deadly smoke in the air. You will see the souls of children gazing at you with pity. You will see the rain turning red, mixed with blood.

You will not like the sight of the sky, so don’t look at it. Look at the ground, at the puddle of water. You will see your reflection in it. Look closely and remember who you are. This is you, and this is the land where you grew up.

This puddle, debris will fall on it at any moment and might hit or kill you. Run away from it and stop at another puddle. Look at your reflection again. Remember who you are, then run again.

And when the rain stops and the puddles dry up, look up at the sky. Have you understood what has happened to you? Have you finally realized what is going on around you? Have you grasped that you are forgotten, perhaps even dead to those people? Those who stripped you of your identity and took away your safe refuge. Those who killed your family and broke your spirit. The time has come.

You will go and fight so that the sky returns to its blue, the clouds to white, and the rain to clear!

You will fight so that the sun rises, plants grow, and you breathe oxygen instead of gunpowder.

And either you return victorious, or you do not return at all.

---

source: https://wearenotnumbers.org/when-it-rains-blood/

Reem Sleem is a student in the Department of English Language, Literature, and Translation at Al-Azhar University. She is ambitious, loves learning languages, ​​and has a passion for reading personal development books and novels of all types.

Virgilio Dávila (1869-1943) was born in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. Though he experimented with a Romantic style of verse, he is often mentioned as the primary representative of the Modernist movement in Puerto Rico. The influence of Rubén Darío, for example, can be clearly noted throughout his work. He devoted many of his poems to the indigenous beauty of his native island and unique syncretic culture therein. He was widely published by the time he died in Bayamón in 1943.

I heard the voice of myself / in the middle of war and death / wondering if I was a ghost.

Amédée Brun (1868-1896) published his first poems when he was only seventeen, and later studied law in Paris. His poetry is usually categorized under the Romantic period, and, despite his short life, he managed to publish prolifically. His works include novels, poetry, and short stories inspired by his observations of quotidian Haitian life.

If Gaza hadn’t been killed, I’d be at my house, waiting to tell my friends how wide the Nile is, what it’s like inside an Egyptian movie theatre, and the best place in Cairo to order Koshari.

If Gaza hadn’t been killed, we’d be in a chalet, playing cards. Ouda would be losing, of course. He’d throw his cards, while Essa laughed at him. We’d awkwardly sing “bring me to life.”

If Gaza hadn’t been killed, I’d be walking with Bassem along Omar AL Mokhtar Street to Al Susi falafel shop. We’d eat two falafel sandwiches with hummus, each. Then to Abo Soad shop for hot Konafa.

If Gaza hadn’t been killed, I’d wake up early. cursing all the alarms in the world, going to work, drinking my morning coffee with the mates and wondering if I will ever not be late to work.

If Gaza hadn’t been killed, I’d sit with Bahaa at Al Baqa Cafe, where we’d repeat our daily jokes about the drones forever passing overhead, as Al Baha Al Abyad kissed the blushing sunset sky.

---

source: https://therumpus.net/2024/03/22/march-beyond-the-page/

Basman Aldirawi (also published under Basman Derawi) is a physiotherapist who graduated from Al-Azhar University in Gaza in 2010. Inspired by an interest in music, movies, and people with special needs, he has contributed dozens of stories to the online platform We Are Not Numbers, that gives a voice to the victims of Israeli aggression in Gaza; he has also published on many other online platforms. Basman contributed to the anthology Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, 2022 and the Arabic poetry anthology Gaza, the land of poetry, 2021. He is temporarily located in Egypt.

Nahuatl poet Tochihuitzin was born sometime near the end of the fourteenth century and died near the beginning of the fifteenth. He was a contemporary of Nezahualcócotl and, in fact, is said to have rescued Nezahualcócotl once as his enemies surrounded him with every intention to slay him. He differs slightly from many of the well-known Aztec poets in his chosen subjects, opting not to write as much about the glory and grief of war as about metaphysical questions.

Photo courtesy of prothomalo “They are killing my people.” Mosab Abu Toha I will not be silent. When Sri Lankan soldiers murdered seventy thousand Tamil civilians in the Vanni during the last months of the last Eelam War ...

Born in Ayllu Qaqachaca, Department of Oruro, Elvira Espejo Ayca is a painter, weaver, poet, musician, documentary filmmaker, and storyteller in the oral tradition. She is a graduate of the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in La Paz. She has had numerous exhibitions and, in January 2013, was named director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore (MUSEF) in La Paz.

Read the winning entry, Lemon Blossoms by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha.

Jeannette L. Clariond is a poet, translator, and editor. Her published collections of poetry include Mujer dando la espalda (finalist for the Ramón López Velarde National Poetry Prize, 1992); Desierta memoria (winner of the Efraín Huerta National Poetry Prize, 1996); Todo antes de la noche (winner of the Gonzalo Rojas National Poetry Prize, 2001); Leve sangre, Marzo 10, NY (performed in Madrid using dance and music); 7 visiones (with Gonzalo Rojas); and the retrospective anthology Astillada claridad (UANL, 2014). She is also the author of the prose memoir Cuaderno de Chihuahua (Fondo de Cultura Económica). In 2003, Clariond founded the publishing house Vaso Roto Ediciones, which she has directed since then. She was awarded a Fundación Rockefeller-Conaculta grant in 2004 for her translation of Charles Wright’s Black Zodiac, a BANFF Translators Grant in 2004 for The School of Wallace Stevens: A Profile of North American Poetry (co-edited with critic Harold Bloom), and recognition from the Italian Institute for Culture in 2008 for her translations of the poet Alda Merini. For her poetry and her contributions to translation and culture, she was awarded the Juan de Mairena Prize by the University of Guadalajara in 2014.

From the River to the Sea every street, every house, every room, every window, every balcony, every wall, every stone, every sorrow, every word, every letter, every whisper, every touch, every glan…

Maria Farazdel is a native of the Dominican Republic who has lived and worked in New York since the age of 17. She received her BA from Hunter College, MA in Education from Fordham University, and PhD in School District Administration from Long Island University. Formally an Assistant Principal, she has taught English as a Second Language and Bilingual Education. She is a member of Dominican Poets USA and the literary group Camila Enriquez Ureña. She is the author of the books My Little Paradise, Amongst Voices and Spaces, and Laberinto de la Espera.

Seed Seed, so tightly wound, a tiny world waiting for rain, rays, and welcoming ground to uncage your dream unfurl your flag create this intention of brown and bright green. Stem and leaves growing...

Poem by an unknown author. According to Abraham Arias-Larreta in Literaturas Aborigenes de America (1976), “The Mayan Uinal was a period of 20 days, each of them with a different name. The Mayan year, or Haab, was composed of 18 Uinales and a final period of 5 days, the Xma Kaba Kin, nameless days.”

I am drawing an image of me that remains embedded in an undissolved dream of mine.

You may take my hands and lock them in your chains You may also blindfold me.

You bereaved me from the light and I marched You robbed me of the bread and I ate. You plundered the land from me and I ploughed.

I am the son of the land and for that I find goodness in this earth anywhere I happen to be: The ants of this land feed me The branches of this land foster me The eagles of this land will shield my open revolt

Yes You may take my hands And lock them in your chains You may also blindfold me But here I will stand tall And here I shall remain until the very end.

(April, 1970)

---

source: palestineinsight.net From: El Azmar, Fouzi. POEMS FROM AN ISRAELI PRISON. Intro. By Israel Shahak. New York: KNOW Books, 1973.

An owl winks in the shadows
A lizard lifts on tiptoe, breathing hard
Young male sparrow stretches up his neck,
                   big head, watching—

The grasses are working in the sun. Turn it green.
Turn it sweet. That we may eat.
Grow our meat.

Brazil says “sovereign use of Natural Resources”
Thirty thousand kinds of unknown plants.
The living actual people of the jungle
        sold and tortured—
And a robot in a suit who peddles a delusion called “Brazil”
        can speak for them?

        The whales turn and glisten, plunge
                and sound and rise again,
        Hanging over subtly darkening deeps
        Flowing like breathing planets
              in the sparkling whorls of
                     living light—

And Japan quibbles for words on
        what kinds of whales they can kill?
A once-great Buddhist nation
        dribbles methyl mercury
        like gonorrhea
                      in the sea.

Pere David's Deer, the Elaphure,
Lived in the tule marshes of the Yellow River
Two thousand years ago—and lost its home to rice—
The forests of Lo-yang were logged and all the silt &
Sand flowed down, and gone, by 1200 AD—
Wild Geese hatched out in Siberia
        head south over basins of the Yang, the Huang,
        what we call “China”
On flyways they have used a million years.
Ah China, where are the tigers, the wild boars,
                   the monkeys,
                      like the snows of yesteryear
Gone in a mist, a flash, and the dry hard ground
Is parking space for fifty thousand trucks.
IS man most precious of all things?
—then let us love him, and his brothers, all those
Fading living beings—

North America, Turtle Island, taken by invaders
        who wage war around the world.
May ants, may abalone, otters, wolves and elk
Rise! and pull away their giving
        from the robot nations.

Solidarity. The People.
Standing Tree People!
Flying Bird People!
Swimming Sea People!
Four-legged, two-legged people!

How can the head-heavy power-hungry politic scientist
Government     two-world     Capitalist-Imperialist
Third-world     Communist      paper-shuffling male
             non-farmer     jet-set     bureaucrats
Speak for the green of the leaf? Speak for the soil?

(Ah Margaret Mead . . . do you sometimes dream of Samoa?)

The robots argue how to parcel out our Mother Earth
To last a little longer
                    like vultures flapping
Belching, gurgling,
                    near a dying doe.
“In yonder field a slain knight lies—
We'll fly to him and eat his eyes
                    with a down
         derry derry derry down down.”

             An Owl winks in the shadow
             A lizard lifts on tiptoe
                         breathing hard
             The whales turn and glisten
                         plunge and
             Sound, and rise again
             Flowing like breathing planets

             In the sparkling whorls

             Of living light.

                      Stockholm: Summer Solstice 40072

https://poets.org/poem/mother-earth-her-whales

A poet and professor at the Universidade Federal da Bahia, Lívia Natália is the author of five poetry collections: Água Negra (2011), Correntezas e Outros Estudos Marinhos (2015), Água Negra e Outras Águas (2016), Sobejos Do Mar (2017), and Dia Bonito pra Chover (2017). In 2016, her poem “Quadrilha,” which describes the grief of a woman whose lover was killed by the Polícia Militar, was censored throughout the state of Bahia. All copies of the poem—which had been displayed publicly on billboards as part of the Poetry in the Streets project in Ilhéus—were ordered to be destroyed.

Three poems from Naser Rabah, written in Maghaazi Camp, Gaza. Our New Neighbor 1. If we were to plant bullets What would the earth sprout, I...