Valerie Bacharach: Night, Descending
Night explodes in fractures of shining glass.
Sidewalks hold storefront fragments,
deadly crystals glitter,
almost beautiful with still-red blood.
Angele Ellis: Dances of Death | In Tango Below a Narrow Ceiling, an experimental young Syrian poet makes his book-length debut in English
What would happen in this vast dagger
If America stopped eating human flesh
For three days?
Riad Saleh Hussein: Like a Star in the Sky, Like a Buck in the Jungle
Here is a rock and two eyes
Here is a moon, there is a goose
And still there are more things I could not see
Philip Terman: On the Way to Get Chicken Wings We Listen to a Podcast About a Somalian Struggling to Come to America
Most of the others have turned themselves in.
But Abdi is in the basement with his brother.
Riad Saleh Hussein: from Destruction of Blood Circulation
But love letters become time bombs…
Where should I begin?
You said: start from the alphabet’s massacre!
Michael Simms: Here are the most popular Vox Populi posts of 2019
In 2019 Vox Populi published 751 posts, usually two per day, resulting in over 8 million views. Here is a list of our most popular posts in 2019 listed by category: poetry, personal essays, political articles, and art/music/cinema.
Philip Terman: Darwish and Amichai Share Poems in Heaven
the breath of their words
shaping the winds
across the deserts
of their homeland,
which is the same homeland
Iman Chahine Sharba: God of Dreams
God passed away empty handed
But with regret
And like a sly boy
Broke with his shoe
the last dry loaf of bread.
Philip Terman: Such Abundance
When he called for help,
they put him on hold
longer than he could stand
and he broke
the phone in half.
Doug Anderson: That Quotation from the Talmud
I understand the world will be what it is
when I’m dead. I sometimes look at my hands
and know they are not mine. This body on loan.
Riad Saleh Hussein: The Bad Guy
And the woman said to me:
You hallucinate too much
The names of fish and seaweeds
You open the kingdom of your brain day and night for the lost caravans of gypsies
Philip Terman: A Minyan Plus One
was taken from us on the Shabbat, the most joyous of the holidays, the only holy day even God Himself . celebrates, the emulation of Eden, the day of completion. … Continue reading
Riad Saleh Hussein: Smoke
Depressed and open like the sea, I stand, angry, coherent and continuous, to tell you about the sea, when the window has two eyes to see my despair, the walls … Continue reading
Riad Saleh Hussein: A Serene Evening
This evening is serene, This evening is not calm. I am a man or a pack of dynamite— Under my trench a red goose or a black unicorn. The woman … Continue reading
Vox Populi 