Translations are a puzzle. Say you’re reading Talal Itani’s translation of the Qu’ran (because you realized you haven’t read the central text of the world’s 2nd largest and fastest-growing religion) and come across Surah 24:43:
Continue reading “And You See the Mountains, Imagine Them Fixed”
Of Godhead and Gravestones
Rip the words from my tongue
before they find form
Imagine a fictional world in which all your beloved (or despised) dead writers get one last swan song from beyond the grave. Do they find themselves in “heaven,” “hell,” or something far stranger? And will they ever get around to answering some of literature’s greatest mysteries for us, such as:
Continue reading “Literary Afterlife: An Interview with 5th Wall Press”
four figures in the desert, by a rock, or a stone
the language
that they speak
only makes
sense
under the
water.
“Have ye thought upon Al-Lat and Al-‘Uzzá
and Manāt, the third, the other?
These are the exalted gharāniq [cranes], whose intercession is hoped for.”
goodbyes for exodus
i.
there is a girl on our street who for a dime will eat any insect
that doesn’t die on its way to her mouth. her dad watches and talks to us about god and how lonely it must’ve been to not know for so long which language to learn. if there is food in my house, it’s gone. hunger is proof that I’ve struck only those people
who’ve entered my dream oblivious that they’ve come back for more. the girl tells me that if I don’t close my eyes
The Collidescope 