Sara Michas-Martin 

When I got up a dead

beetle where my back had been

not a tick, should I be glad

my blood untouched

the body’s sliding board

I don’t understand

my tongue feeling large for my mouth

a loose bone floating in the foot

receiving impact

this being subtle and not so subtle

this evolving

my restless squirrels

my own exposed waiting

for what?

homocysteine: a word as pretty as gossamer

measure of inflammation

I listen to

a hammock filled with wind

and where all of it goes

and in a cloaked way

there is a dark river that flows

through a town named Christmas

we jumped from the bridge

100 times, teenagers then

backlit and yelping.
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Head shot of Fadhil al-Azzawi
Iraqi Writer Fadhil al-Azzawi: A Modernizer of Poetic Forms

"Al-Azzawi’s ghost still haunts the notebooks of our poets. For the generations that did not get to know him personally, he will remain forever like the father gone off to some distant, unknown land. Exactly like Iraq—especially Kirkuk—he possesses multiple identities."

via LITHUB
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Cover of Cesar Vallejo's Complete Posthumous Poetry
What Sparks Poetry:
Sandra Lim on the Poem as Self-Interrogation


"I don’t read this poem and think of the practical relevance or irrelevance of poetry, but I do get the sense of being both cursed and culpable from the way Vallejo renders conscious (and consciousness of) suffering. It may seem strange to say that the poem feels like a chance to notice when it expresses so much restless melancholy, but the speaker’s honesty with his doubts keeps his sense of compassion from hardening into self-congratulation."
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