• Poem

    Opportunities I never had Gifts never polished Materials unavailable A country that’s blocked People who are closed Friends that are shallow Schools that never taught Competitions I never wanted Words that set back Was it really fair Are we equal Pain and suffering you never lived Days I lost without light Tears shed every second Was it really fair are we equal

    READ MORE
  • Poems

    I am still the same boy who pretends to cover his ears in the face of the fireworks That were thrown under his feet by his loved ones and friends And he had to laugh in their faces After they exploded in the air next to him If my life were Less lead and fires I would not think of a picture of an explosive belt Except for the way you turn your bra to your waist to take it off

    READ MORE
  • Drift

    ou didn’t say anything but he took it as a promise, he took it as if you’d sailed so far from the shore that you couldn’t see the way back. Your life will be there where you want to own everything, you give names even to the plants, and the names feel awkward like pets’ dresses. There will be kids as well, they will cry, in them, there’s still too much of the sea, rockeries of the self haven’t emerged yet out of them, they are like water’s mirror, when leaning above them anybody can see their

    READ MORE
  • Who is like God?

    She’s vaster than the Creator, she has a body. Mary is struck by the unsettling feeling that she is the very likeness of herself, and a feathery nothing is making a nest for the newly arrived. And as I stroll towards her in thought, Mary appears, with Mary, hand in hand. Countless voices trimming her horizon; her sight stretches into the distance. Until in an unguarded moment, which might be best compared to pain, she tears the heavens down.

    READ MORE
  • Poems

    You are about four or five and your father seats you on a burning stove. Naked, before the bath. You excuse his forgetfulness with your fright and explain his insults and punches on account of your cries of pain. You do not know what hurts more. And you might think, maybe forever, that the man you love the mo

    READ MORE
  • Le voleur de robes

    Elle était toujours accompagnée d'un vieil homme silencieux à la peau maladive, au regard bleu méfiant, et aux cheveux blancs courts. On disait que c’était un investisseur qui cherchait où placer de l'argent. Les associations d'assureurs et d'armateurs, les producteurs de betteraves et les distillateurs, le syndicat des enseignants et la société des architectes, la mairie, tous déposaient à la réception de l'hôtel d

    READ MORE
  • I will crush you with tenderness and Two steps

    They traveled in silence. In Tefia's Agricultural and Penal Colony the silence was full of ghosts. Barracks-like buildings enclosied a rectangular courtyard. For twelve years, from 1954 under Franco’s law regarding vagrants and bandits, between eighty and one hundred homosexuals were detained there, sentenced for their sexual orientation. They had performed hard physical labour,

    READ MORE
  • POISSON D’AVRIL

    Dans cet extrait du roman de Mounira Abi Zeid Quand j’étais Dostoïevski qui n’a pas encore été publié, Le Libanais Saber de retour dans son pays natal confie ses malheurs à Lucie qui l’entend raconter son chagrin d’amour à Dubaï. -Je vais t’écouter ! Vas-y, parle ! dit Lucie. -Mon histoire d’amour a commencé au début du mois d’Avril quand une jeune employée Anglaise était entrée dans mon bureau à Dubaï.

    READ MORE
  • POEMS

    The lamps in my grandparents' house are unharmed, they look like in childhood. They grandparents are no more. I have fir cones from high school, bracelets from my teenage years, the hat I crocheted for my first cat. I have a broken vase, received from my oldest friend. I keep an empty bottle of perfume in the window. I have dried flowers, shards, old scarves, ugly drawings. Objects help. They make seem as if there is continuity.

    READ MORE
  • Franca Mancinelli, The Butterfly Cemetery

    Yet The Butterfly Cemetery is not an anthology of poetic prose or short stories, a novel, or even— at least not entirely—a book-length essay. It is a basketful of images and recollections whose final section details the genesis of the author's poetry. Mancinelli’s words possess a sober, courageous intimacy which avoids the risk of spiraling in on itself and which, inste

    READ MORE
  • Last Words of a Filipina Sex Worker in Dubai

    Dear Akira, In three days, I’ll be executed. I’ll leave my suitcase for you at the main office––a green suitcase! I hope that you will take possession of what I left inside it. You’ll find some things that might be useful to you and others–and perhaps these letters. You can have the radio that we both bought from the Dubai Mall.

    READ MORE
  • Deux contes POUTINE - APPUIE-SUR-LE-BOUTON

    Il faut dire que Putler avait appris sa leçon, celle qui l’avait laissé hors du Paradis, c’est pourquoi il dit : « J’ai crevé, comme tous les mortels, et maintenant je suis venu voir comment vont les affaires ici-bas. Et bien sûr, tandis que j’étais en haut, sur la terre, je n’ai accompli que de bonnes actions, je n’ai pas procédé à l’expansion des frontières, je n’ai pas renforcé l’état russe, je n’ai envoyé personne à la mort parce que je savais que tout

    READ MORE
  • Anti-hallucinogène/La Cicatrice

    -Il est l’homme qui m’a appris à pleurer. En fait, c’est à cause de lui que je me suis habituée à sangloter dès qu’il se met à pleuvoir. J’imite le ciel. Les nuages gris deviennent le reflet de mon âme émue. Les larmes coulent sur mes joues, alors que les gouttelettes d’eau tombent sur le sol. Cette simultanéité m’étonne, me trouble et me charme. Et je pense à lui.

    READ MORE
  • La revanche d’un élève

    Ce sont très exactement les mots que l’Abbé Corby dit à son élève, Charles, qui n’était pas intelligent et devint dix ans plus tard Roi des Francs et des Lombards, Empereur d’Occident. Charles se rappelait bien la leçon de l’abbé et un jour, ayant bu à la bouteille du pouvoir toxique, il ordonna qu’on lui amenât son maître, et quand ce dernier fut devant lui, mains et pieds liés et bâillonné, Charles lui demanda : « Estimes-tu toujours que je suis incapable de penser et de ressentir ?

    READ MORE
  • Petits pas

    Bonjour, mon amour, tu me conduis comme toujours J'ai souffert, j'ai commencé une course, Je tombe comme une miette dans du beurre. Je n'ai pas pu dormir pendant six jours, mais tu me conduis, mon amour, les moussons sont déjà en rupture, je te vois, mon amour... Je suis devenue un tournesol à mon tour, et je trouve le soleil toujours ... *** La vie a son propre point de vue... On peut essayer maintenant

    READ MORE
  • from Decarceration

    Crepuscular cupules in pulpy vigils. The joy of letting the harrow level out the soil of your being. * the inebriation of running yourself dry belonging when you find the way out in others. * Led back, drawn off once again towards your fluvial and insular solitude which you struggle to gather into a single pronoun. * You’re no longer your body you go beyond yourself like a law whose revocation you have demanded. * Core in which breaks out a fire that again takes on flesh.

    READ MORE
  • LA PLUME AILÉE

    Je parcours la route sans amis, le poids de la solitude de l’au-delà pèse comme une orange lourde sur mes épaules. Mon amie a disparu, son visage se décompose, ses mots s’évaporent, elle ne m’accompagne plus. Je flotte en me demandant si j’ai réellement existé. Le vent emporte un tableau ancien qui représente mon corps. Mes lèvres bougent à peine répétant les mêmes mots que je n’ai pas encore oubliés,

    READ MORE
  • Mon propre visage, pas celui d'autrui!

    Rishabh Keswani, le meilleur attaquant de RNA, était prêt à prendre le pénalty pour les champions en titre. Rishabh avait déjà marqué plus de buts que tous les autres dans le tournoi. « Allez, Rishabh! » Allez, Rishabh! Rishabh a ébouriffé sa coiffure normalement élégante et peignée, maintenant ruinée par la sueur, et a couru jusqu’à la balle.

    READ MORE
  • Teodora Lalova: Too much of a good thing is a bad thing

    Since I moved abroad, home has stopped being tied to a location, to a tight and simple definition. To be fair, I am not sure if it ever was like that for me, even simply by virtue of having family history in several parts of my native Bulgaria. At the moment, home feels like the place/moment where I love and am loved, where I can be vulnerable, where I can do what I enjoy doing and what I find purpose in (both professionally and personally).

    READ MORE
  • “A beauty not yet visible to our eyes”: A Dialogue with Franca Mancinelli

    The Butterfly Cemetery is a composite book, which collects more than ten years of writing. It is an unexpected book, which took shape all of a sudden, thanks to this long time period. The same thing happened to me as a child when I would play with butterflies: I would make a tomb of white stones for one butterfly, then another tomb. . . and suddenly I realized that I had put together a small cemetery. It is a special book because it was born first in English.

    READ MORE
  • POEMES

    black banners at sunrise black banners at sunset black on black are our days and nights black cars and black-clad men with dark machine guns riding on the back of black tanks and pickups firing aimlessly into the darkened sky as if in a bleak wedding driving on roads lined with rotting corpses singing a capella like a good choir stroking cats and taking selfies black phantoms emerging from the dead of the night

    READ MORE
  • Le Corps Invisible

    Elle a disparu, elle n’est plus là. Je me demande si j’ai été l’unique témoin d’un miracle diabolique qui m’a permis de vivre l’expérience la plus sensuelle de ma vie. Incapable de trouver une explication à ce phénomène bizarre, je me hâte de revenir chez moi, je m’esseule dans ma chambre, je rêve.

    READ MORE
  • A poem of Belarus

    And as an old soldier, Like an ex-warrior in the plains, the mountains and the marches, I have the right, after the war has left me to breathe without a reason for more other years. I have the right, To choose those snowy hills to lie down under them with an mysterious safety and happiness. Actually, things were not that worse, Life in my homeland was a joyful journey, sometimes, And a hard one in others.

    READ MORE
  • Intro

    As a little saint floats in the unholy land of the people with the pretended past, demons are too scared to walk this path... but to saint it’s home sweet home - Magic and witchcraft despair is here to last and its judgment day everyday to those who can’t last - An innocent girl indeed but pure is too naïve you can’t win a demon race if you don’t sell your soul away - But not to be mistaken my friend those people are hidden

    READ MORE
  • PANGOLIN STEW

    Anne, 43: «Personal hygiene is something fundamental in the man I am looking for. In addition, if you are classless or your look is very simple, don’t make me waste my time, please». Did you say ‘time’, Anita? But time is the only thing we have left now, girl. If you want to find that fashionable and spotless man you are looking for you need to adapt to the new circumstances, darling.

    READ MORE
  • DES RIRES AU BORD DE L’ABIME

    Je suis à la fois croyant, athée, agnostique, nul et superbe. Je suis le père des bâtards à mille racines, l’amant d’une Aphrodite cosmique dont le talent charme les habitants des continents multiples, le fils d’une mère au corps luxurieux qui s’étend de la mer jusqu’au sommet des Monts enneigés. Je forge mon destin à ma guise, je transgresse toutes les limites. J’existe, donc je résiste.

    READ MORE
  • Six letters for R. R.

    Which round number do you prefer? 0 messages 0 calls 0 missed calls 0 letters Lebanon From afar it looks like the start of a Balkan film, typical. Blood. Rain. Trains. Rain. Well no. Up close it was dry and hot and we traveled by plane. not meaning it was any easier on me, the urge to vomit, regardless of the mode of transportation Is here. Always here, inside the nostrils.

    READ MORE
  • THREE POEMS

    I swim into river of borders which touches the souls of the ethnic roots. It reaches the mass without orders, then gathers the nations to make it understood and answers achieved by the billion languages. The river is multi-coloured by initial default. We all put our toes in and feel the envisage. The river of languages will float till fulfillment of thoughts.

    READ MORE
  • POEMS

    This night. When it is about to break the shutters of the clouds and stick to the Afghan T-shirt, even though above the garden that I stride across it pours spitefully. I am smoking, drinking the leftover coffee, chatting to dwarfs and fireproof scientists of my brain the same way I was still chatting with you ten minutes ago. I was holding grace under control. The words. Now I am levitating with a limp.

    READ MORE
  • POEMS

    having drunk bottoms up the cup of autumn they roll their despair The wind – a deceiver at heart – tricks them that it is able to tie to each branch their breath flickering in the thin green veins They follow in its footsteps hoping for some life after the fall I measure my steps as words said after love I measure my words as steps near hills of tamed foliage It is not difficult to escape It's hard to hold on to the passion for escaping

    READ MORE