When my hand couldn’t reach the bell,
I used to knock on the door.
Now my hand can reach the bell—
but there’s no door left to knock on.
I look back:
“Each face showed a different type of emotion. One prayed. Another begged. Yet another cried. The next
showed bitterness. The fifth had a smile tinged with pain.”
You left my floor littered with beautiful ideas.
No way to pick them up,
no way to erase the impure line
left by thinking on the floor.
In the autopsy of my life
they will pry open my chest
and from there will surface
a fist
clenched tightly
When our ancestors were born,
it was from those yonder mountains
the cool wind blew,
and it was in the river flowing down from there
they bathed.
Like consuming three meals a day,
they sang songs that were steeped
in the scent of grains.
you’ve died so many times in your dreams
that surely you can manage it once while awake.
the soul abandons the body a moment beforehand,
rising over what used to be home
How much is the land? How
much to get fish fresh from the market
and how much for the fishermen
to feed their families? How much for
a loved one who doesn’t leave?
When my co-citizens tell me “why don’t you go back to where you’re from?” it’s obvious that it never crossed their mind that I’m exactly in the one country that I’ve ever known: Italy. The place where I was born and raised. The place where I made my entrance into this world, and where I intend to live every one of my days until the very end.
It seems to be dragging its freight
like an enormous beast.
On Monday at dawn,
two children saw a body
floating in the current,
no stalker got you under his skin
trauma acquired from cinema conglomerates
for our bodies to be more responsive
to all the vibrations and sounds from the screen
in your mind the 4DX movie theater opens its doors wide
Manymuch people were lostmissedperished during the most recent fightquarrelclashes around and on the side inside of the hospital.
Collateral damageharm is expected; no biasedpartialunrequited damageharm was confirmedprovensatisfied on any particulardefinite side at all, according to unbiasedunbalanced indifferentunspecified observerswatchersspectators.
Bodies were buriedputthrown as respectfully as possible (it wasn’t possible).
we’re easy to recognize
dressed in our work uniforms.
those fellas are security guards. if you give them
something to guard they think themselves gods.
she wants to see if we have all we need
Doğan’s lifeless body bumped into one of Istanbul’s many small docks. He had no ID on him. There were bruises and nibbles from bream, mackerel, and bluefish; in the water’s rage, the body had quickly begun to rot, and plastic bags and seaweed were wrapped around it. Fishermen, believing at first they had landed enough food to feed the extended family, reeled in a nameless son.
At night, vows become ghosts.
Like in the past, they wander
the same streets and neighborhoods.
Leaves stir in trees
but the wind is still.
At least it’s Violeta Parra, you say as you listen to the people above sing, “Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.” Other times it’s been bachata, ranchera and progressive rock. We decided to put up with it, to not call the cops.
Humberto Ak’abal (1952-2019) was a K’iche’ Mayan poet born in Momostenango, in the western highlands of Guatemala.
I’m that carnivorous bird
that you avoid in common curves
although you desire my maniacal choir presence
you continue to fear an extinction
At the entrance, a cluster of burly plants swayed in the wind. Tiny white flowers have sprung up on a pile of dead stems, and it all hums together, collapsing in on itself. Here––I’ll see it later on myself––you love plants, especially rotting or withering ones. . .
it was a morning i will never forget, the morning i opened the door to the sound of them shouting,
let us march forward,
they always began with the same line,
the social scientists said of the onslaught of the sightless humans
Moga woke with a heavy head, her eyes full of sleep and sari damp with sweat. Immediately she felt a strong urge to lie back next to her son on the mat and enjoy the drowsiness of that hot morning.But the thought of the cashews, which had gone unpicked for two days, made her spring to her feet. . .
The small white flowers are everywhere, you know. They splinter, then splinter again. I wonder if vulnerability isn’t entirely compromised. Just yesterday someone posted a story about people who’ve jumped off the Golden Gate. And lived.
The sun rises. Everything goes on looking iconic [. . .]
One day, before Jassim’s death, Warqa, the dearest of his pigeons, landed above the cote and entered through the tower’s upper entrance, there in the Ashar district in southern Iraq. It was a bit after three in the afternoon when Jassim glimpsed the two wings beating slowly and descending. It was her, Warqa, returning home three years after she had set out on her journey [. . .]
The night before the wedding she’d tried on her wife’s floral party dress, which was of course too tight and too short on her. That she did this—putting a dash of rouge on her cheeks, a black line on her eyelids—might have caused consternation, but her bride-to-be just found it (so she said) funny. [. . .]
Berlin was one of the first cities I ever visited in Germany, and since then, I’ve been fascinated by its East/West history and the legacy of that period. I was immediately captivated by Sungs Laden because it touches on a less-known aspect of East German history.[…]
The sap of the plantains stains your clothes, hard to get them clean afterwards. During the preparations, the rain continues to fall. You open the kitchen window. The smell of wet earth mingles with that of the fritters or the plantains cut into thin slices before being plunged in hot oil.[…]
Panama, on this street and in this time we’re missing, Before my days and nights (And from this poem) oscillating like water between lilies, With its fortified walls and buildings[…]
Like frightened birds after a hunter’s shot—My dreams scatter in flight when I open up my eyes[…]
A crack is stained with the fog that begins on the plain.
The green of the curved jade grants transparency but also denies it:
leaves of thick dye, aroma that descends
clamoring at this somewhat empty start, condemned
from dye to aroma, peach that coats […]
The nun, Sister Hui, was very mysterious.
No one knew her family, or if she had one. No one knew whether she’d been raised rich or poor, educated or uneducated, in a village or in the capital city […]
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Humberto Ak'abal's website
©Violette Bule
Photo by Yasha Strongin
Credit: Test Test
Photo credit: Elisabeth Mohn
Photo Credit Georges Seguin (Okki) — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 3.0
Michael Milberger