Poetry

This translation of Dante Alighieri’s “Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d’ombra” by Alan Bern was published as an illustrated printed broadside, currently out of print, but you can view the original image from Lines & Faces here (or above). Sestina translated by...

Footparts of the story’s dreamed crosspaths. A rounded ghost running through the darkening streets of the city buying gifts for everyone. Only maps of travel pretending there is a single route back from the cut edges of a flattened folly. Also published by...

Sway To drop a light grey sock over each dark shoe waiting, no boat no coffin, to carry her feet away— she will walk back again— remove the shoes, socks will drop away.   I Sometimes at night, some nights, wake me to silence, its thrum is invitation to walk head...

Paprika by Alan Bern At the very back of our ancient Frigidaire is a little bag made of white cotton; the red letters on it spell Paprika. Sweet, we remember. I rarely see the bag—for fifteen years it’s sat there following our Budapest trip. Annie, your brain’s...

suckerfish mutualist  By Alan Bern when I ride our Devil Ray with a Remora partner down we travel our suction increasing as we descend what a fabulous spinplunge down beside rocky Sea Mounts unlike those skyview dreamtrips this view is open water and when we reach...

in memory of Manlio Rossi-Doria, 1905-1988, anti-fascist prisoner of Mussolini, agricultural economist, and senator Manlio, welcome back, Bud, your skull from the wall out to my elbow, you were short, Bud, in dreamed quatrains, I’ve missed you these three decades...

1315, Master of Saint Cecelia San Francesco, you are so small,head in a simple halohands pierced in prayer upto Maria and her one son.As a toddler, Gesú is a small adultholding a colored birdmaking a two-fingered signacross her bosomy chest. • Francesco, holding the...