Susan Barba 6/30/25 Susan Barba 6/30/25

Richard Remembers My Mother Singing

Was it the crane
“Groong” by Father Gomidas?
“O crane, whence have you come?
I heed your call.
“O crane, what word
from our homeland?
“You did not answer,
rising like the wind.
“Fly crane,
further from our land.”
Or was it the song
about the rose,
the one that still unspools
from her cassette?
*
Have you seen the clearcut
to the north of Sandwich Road?
Dead wood is all that’s left.
But the line of the hills beyond,
he says with his Irish lilt,
you can see it now,
and draws his hand through air—
I see the hills I see a bird aloft

–Susan Barba

Susan Barba is the author of two poetry collections, Fair Sun and geode, which was a finalist for the New England Book Awards and the Massachusetts Book Awards. She is the editor of American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide, which won the 2023 American Horticultural Society Book Award. Her poems and prose have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, PN Review, and elsewhere. She works as a senior editor for The New York Review of Books.

Najwan Darwish 6/30/25 Najwan Darwish 6/30/25

A Comment Beneath a Painting by Mahmoud Sabri

I have an appointment with you in the future,
but isn’t that future
the same
as this past we’ve just entered?

***

Women in colors of mourning
emerge from your painting
and sit down
on the sofas in my room.
I’ve often seen their faces
in the Good Friday icons,
and in elevations of color
that sweep their silent lamentations
between two cities that just might be
Baghdad and Jerusalem,
or any two sisters
born beneath the sign of Saturn.

***

The women
came down from the icons
and into the slaughter.

***

I think these cups, brimming with wine,
are poisoned as well.
In the empty spaces
between the lines of exile
I have an appointment
with you.

–Najwan Darwish, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

Najwan Darwish is a poet from Jerusalem, Palestine. He has published nine poetry books in Arabic and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. New York Review Books, which published the English translation of his books Nothing More to Lose (NYRB Poets, 2014) and Exhausted on the Cross (NYRB Poets, 2021) describes him as, “one of the foremost Arabic-language poets”. He has received several awards, most recently The Sarah Maguire Prize (UK, 2022), the Cilento International Poetry Prize (Italy, 2023), and Le Grand prix de Poésie étrangère (France, 2024). Najwan Darwish co-founded and directed several cultural and artistic projects throughout the Arab world and served as an advisor to several Palestinian and Arab cultural initiatives and literary Festivals. He has held several key positions in cultural journalism and has been the Chief Cultural Editor of the Arabic-language London-based newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed since 2014.

Kareem James Abu-Zeid, PhD, is an award-winning translator of poets and novelists from across the Arab world. He has received the Sarah Maguire Prize, PEN Center USA's translation prize, Poetry Magazine's translation prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, and an NEA translation grant, and has thrice been a finalist for the PEN America Translation Prize. His translation of Najwan Darwish’s No One Will Know You Tomorrow: Selected Poems 2014 – 2024 (Yale Margellos, 2024) is currently a finalist for the 2025 PEN America Translation Prize in Poetry. He is also the author of the book The Poetics of Adonis and Yves Bonnefoy: Poetry as Spiritual Practice.

Najwan Darwish 6/30/25 Najwan Darwish 6/30/25

A Patch of Gray

How long will we walk with the stars in the dead of night? – Al-Mutanabbi

This light gray in the clouds
and Shakespeare’s green summer—
in a little while a blade from the play
will come down on you.
Don’t trust a stone from the sonnets,
and don’t believe you’re coming home from school in the eighties.
You’ve started getting used to it,
the new rhythm of your name.
You look at the sky: a dark patch of gray.
You look at the earth: a perilous piece of steel.
And you say: How long, how long without the stars?
How long, how long without us?
A patch of gray,
light gray in the clouds.

–Najwan Darwish, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

Eugene Goldin 6/30/25 Eugene Goldin 6/30/25

so gone

Tell my old institute
I appreciate all they’ve done
But as for right now
I am so gone
I can’t even be found
By tomorrow.

–Eugene Goldin

Eugene Goldin is a poet who lives on Long Island. He has taught at several colleges and several yoga studios. His poems have been published in numerous journals, including the Ilanot Review, the American Aesthetic, and the Tipton Poetry Journal.

Julie Foster 6/30/25 Julie Foster 6/30/25

Early May

A cardinal sat on the fence and
I measured your height with blue chalk
outside, the golden yellow sun
as you collected pebbles

I tried to write
while you pulled out your pink baby pool.
This is the only spring when you will be two.
The green grass keeps on growing, and,
after a long, dark winter
the air smells of oranges and lilacs.
I open the deck umbrella,
and a bee flies out.

–Julie Foster

Julie Foster (maiden name "Canaris") is a poet and fiction writer from Long Island, New York who has been teaching 10th and 12th grade English for the past 12 years. Originally trained in classical piano, she switched majors in college to focus on theatre and creative writing. She is a proud second generation Greek/Cypriot American who likes to infuse her culture, music, rhythm, color, and food in her works. She has been recently published in The Lyric Magazine. She wrote "Early May" when her oldest child was two, and two years after Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on her home. Julie is honored to be published by The Columbia Review.

Zixuan Xin 6/30/25 Zixuan Xin 6/30/25

my belly eye is a teenage priest and

–Zixuan Xin

Zixuan (Angel) Xin is the founder and host of proVERSE and the poetry editor of The Lit, a student-run literary magazine based in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. She is also a poetry mentee with The Adroit Journal. Her works are forthcoming or featured in Milk Press, Eunoia Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and Great Plains Review. She has been recognized by Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, The Poetry Society of New York, Roanoke College, The John Locke Institute, ONLY POEMS, and Scholastics Arts and Writing.