31 December 1999 - Ian Mortimer

Pick a year, any year -
and the chances are that I cannot remember
where I was on New Year's Eve
except this year. I was in the square
dancing with my mother who was
drunk for the first time since 1966.

To the Serpent - Aimé Césaire

I have had occasion in the bewilderment of cities to search for the right animal to adore. So I worked my way back to the first times. Undoing cycles untying knots crushing plots removing covers killing hostages I searched.

To One Sick - José Asunción Silva

So you go too? So you’re weak?
So you lack the breath of life and thirst
For the pure air, the wild auroras?

Hope - Fenny Sterenborg

Arduous days and nothing to believe in
and now even I understand the stubbornness of grief

De Profundis - Georg Trakl

There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts—
How sad this evening.

Misaddress - Glennise Ayuk

the popular opinion hovers like a low stratus cloud,
a cumbersome disguise cloaks unwieldy
on the hearts and heads of the girls and women,
made increasingly so by raindrops of shame
that soak in,

Sunset - Ivan Theofilov

          Oh how I love the joyful sunset
          that comes like an antique vendor
          of shawls and coral bracelets,
of music, wood carvings and colored dusk!

The Shot - Ogundare Tope

each line
on her face is
a story of war,
each crease
tells of battles
fought and lost,
wounds brandished,
hope taken captive.

Lines to Haroun and Yahia - Isaac Al Mouseli

Th' affrighted sun ere while he fled,
    And hid his radiant face in night;
A cheerless gloom the world o'erspread
    But Haroun came and all was bright.

Absentee Husband - Denny Moonde

Its late in the night has he called you yet?
Is he heaven sent?
How can love be absent?
Is what you share fair and decent?