Najwan Darwish
Translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Take refuge in language:
it's the only solid ground
for ships pitched by waves of misfortune.
Take refuge in language:
it often took refuge in you
to vent all its passions,
a snake seeking shelter from the flames
within the flames,
a man running from one lion
into the jaws of another.
Take refuge in the words of the forefathers,
for the words of your contemporaries
cannot comfort a wound
or prevent a suicide
or stop these poison gases
that drive you from your home
and ruin your place of exile.
From city to city, you lost your life
and remain
with a wealth of losses.
I saw you lose,
I heard you lose,
I touched, tasted, smelled your losses, as I had never
touched, smelled, or tasted before—
as if the senses were made for this.
The sun of loss rises over your life
and calls itself an Andalus,
and your days flow in the Darro river:
The water does not remember
a family,
does not hear
the voice of a friend,
and has no sense for justice.
Your memory flows through the water
but you don't follow it
to the river's mouth;
it doesn't even know
that it's your memory.

The sun of loss rises
while your days roar in silence.
from the journal MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW
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Cover of Shangyang Fang's debut collection, Burying the Mountain
"One-Legged Bird"

"The loneliness that drenches Burying the Mountain derives from rejection and alienation, but also from portent. '[The] border,' Fang declares, 'is the beauty we live for. Is closest to our ruin.' For a writer so committed to appreciation of high art, ruin may be the dulling of beloved artworks or encroachment by sociopolitical realities."

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Cover of Marie-Claire Bancquart's book, Toute Minute Est Premiere suivi de Tout Derniers Poemes
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Jody Gladding on Marie-Claire Bancquart 's [—What did you say?  Lost empires,]

"Bancquart’s poems are spare, grounded, and, for all their attention to demise, surprisingly light. Just the thing for a pandemic. This poem with its 'lost empires' and 'catastrophes' counterbalanced by a shrinking soap bar seemed particularly suited to the moment. I was struck by Bancquart’s vertiginous shifts in scope/scale, producing the same effect they do in cartoons—making us laugh."
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