Public Republic

Molly Weinberg (this poem was written while she was in camp during World War II) Foto: Allie_Caulfield I am the Jewish Press Agency, I know all sorts of things about the Lager, Everything from primary sources, From the best informed places, Perhaps you doubt this? Listen to the latest camp report.

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: Robert S.Donovan Without laboratories, without conservatories, without observatories, the small town sighs in the afternoon; pears are dropping down through people’s dreams and the town clock is struck dumb at ten to five, like a calf gaping at the men in bloodstained aprons. The mosque used to be the tallest building here,

Aksinia Mihailova Photo: glitter feet At night, against the curtains so many moths are beating their wings, their silver dust tracing rows of knots, writing down my most enticing dream.

Simon Perchik Photo: zedzap I listen the way bells widen for petals :my fingers climbing in a circle and the sky I thought was lost –your lips already wings, folded back covered with rock cracking open and the storm-drenched spark means nothing.

Mariana Velichkova Photo: *~Dawn~* You will move on with your life like nothing happened You will continue to laugh and smile like nothing happened You will meet new people and make new friends like nothing happened And still you can’t forget about it that, which never happened…

Aksinia Mihailova Photo: jenny downing In the morning, when I brush my hair looking in the mirror, he is reading his newspaper, Many days in a row I keep telling him my incessantly recurring dreams of the city of white walls and a dreadfully hollow frame, of the city of Breton and immensely alluring lilies […]

Donal Mahoney Photo: lepiaf.geo Thomas said you can’t go home again but I did for my sister and the christening of her first. Everyone, on folding chairs, against the whitewashed basement walls, was there for ham and beef and beer, the better bourbons, music, argument and talk. Maura came; she hadn’t married. Paddy, fist around […]

Eric Sutherland Photo: alicepopkorn ( in and out ) I can see you need a lifeboat a set of strong arms wrapped around you one brave hand reaching up from the abyss

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: s.e.re Now I feel easy because I expect nothing. The roughly polished glass of the North Sea is far off, yet through a roundabout way reaching the equator. Africa (blue nomads among men-eating sands) a week ago lent its back to a Leonid shower: stars fell piercing through hot and cold atmospheric […]

Eric Sutherland Photo: kevindooley I make my way a joyous escape to the jagged cliff-crowned doorway to the mountains here water shapes every surface with a wavy swirling motion like fingerprints left by a great ancient ocean each rock face bears these marine tattoos

Simon Perchik Photo: Alejandra Mavrovski Because there’s only one East loneliness seems a natural, you sit the way astronomers focus mirrors and your radio all night picking up moons, planets old songs from the 40’s –your hand never leaves the dial even to brush away the dim light fallen across the table.

Roger Craik Photo: Johan Larsson Lust and all its urgent traffic gone and unimaginable now, I watch the daylight fading on the wall beyond her roundish arm, and thinly start to dream. I’m eighty headlamp-glaring miles from home where, side by side, the two decanters stand that used to be my grandparents’, now mine. I’d […]

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer Снимка: jsome1 Often I Wish I Were a potato. Eyes opened in all directions. Unafraid of the cold earth. The difference between life and death for somebody.

Eric Sutherland Photo: Cristóbal Alvarado Minic copperhead sleeps in cool shade as I pluck blackberries from thorny vines and place them between my lips, a dragonfly watches from my shoulder, the sky is a mist of humid July air, it droops heavy toward the ground everywhere my eyes gaze upon the horizon, and though I […]

Claudia Bierschenk Photo: griffithjune49 (Co. Clare, 1997) your chatter carried echoes of an ancient tongue with every cup of tea we sipped away the hours spotting clouds draw in from the hills ready to run out and bring the washing in at any moment you loved to watch sheets flutter like wings on the clothesline

You are cordially invited to the North American Premiere of The Air around the Butterfly / Въздухът около пеперудата. Katerina Stoykova-Klemer will read poems in English and Bulgarian, answer questions, and sign books. Refreshments will be provided. Thursday, August 27, 2009 7:00pm – 9:00pm Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning 251 West Second Street Lexington, […]

Roger Craik Photo: Ctd 2005 Afterwards I pulled up one blue sheet Above us both. It made a cave and there we lay. The blue light that we made Was ours alone. I told you then how many caves, More than the number of our days, Were ours to have in London, Venice, Amsterdam, But […]

Tanya Kolyovska Photo: lepiaf.geo We did not have much time. The stooped back wind (we are all of us maimed) showed the road in the woods. The silence made us look like shadows that had ruined their bodies. We wanted to feel our skin and become one whole with it again. … Sincere, we strictly […]

Roger Craik Photo: michale When your last letter came at last, it came not as you said it would, by hand, in my mailbox — your nerve, I thought, was not equal to that – but in the trusty U.S. Mail.

Simon Perchik Photo: Johan Larsson Even in summer, long johns and fleece-lined jackets just in case — you drive across though the silk scarf already resembles the thinning air this time without its wings